Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit? The answers to these questions were so obvious in the first centuries o
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Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction, Radu Bordeianu
Part One: Early Pneumatologies
1. The Jewish Origin of Christian Pneumatology | John R. (Jack) Levison
2. The Holy Spirit, Witness, and Martyrdom | Geoffrey Wainwright
3. Whose Sins You Shall Forgive... The Holy Spirit and the Forgiveness of Sin(s) in the Fourth Gospel | Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM
Part Two: Historical Perspectives
4. The Theology of the Holy Spirit in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom | Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
5. The Unexpected God: How Christian Faith Discovers the Holy Spirit | Brian E. Daley, SJ
6. Beyond the Filioque Disputes? Re-assessing the Radical Equality of the Spirit through the Ascetic and Mystical Tradition | Sarah Coakley
Part Three: Pneumatology Today
7. The Holy Spirit and Ecumenical Dialogue: Theological and Practical Dimensions | Cardinal Walter Kasper
8. Creative Giver of Life: An Ecological Theology of the Holy Spirit | Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ
9. Dust and DNA: The Intertwining of Word and Spirit in History and the Trinitarian Life | Robert D. Hughes III
10. How Does the Holy Spirit Assist the Church in Its Teaching? | Richard R. Gaillardetz
11. An Evangelizing Communion: The Church, the Holy Spirit, and Vatican II | Paul G. McPartlan
Suggested Further Reading
Contributor Biographies
Index
It Is the Spirit Who Gives Life
It Is the Spirit Who Gives Life New Directions in Pneumatology
Edited by
RADU BORDEIANU
The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
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To William Thompson-Uberuaga
Contents
Introduction, Radu Bordeianu ix
Part One: Early Pneumatologies 1. The Jewish Origin of Christian Pneumatology 3
John R. (Jack) Levison 2. The Holy Spirit, Witness, and Martyrdom
22
Geoffrey Wainwright
3. Whose Sins You Shall Forgive . . . The Holy Spirit
and the Forgiveness of Sin(s) in the Fourth Gospel Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM
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Part Two: Historical Perspectives 4. The Theology of the Holy Spirit
in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
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5. The Unexpected God:
How Christian Faith Discovers the Holy Spirit Brian E. Daley, SJ
122
6. Beyond the Filioque Disputes?
Re-assessing the Radical Equality of the Spirit through the Ascetic and Mystical Tradition Sarah Coakley
153
Introduction, Radu Bordeianu
Part Three: Pneumatology Today 7. The Holy Spirit and Ecumenical Dialogue:
Theological and Practical Dimensions Cardinal Walter Kasper
177
8. Creative Giver of Life:
An Ecological Theology of the Holy Spirit Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ
195
9. Dust and DNA:
The Intertwining of Word and Spirit in History and the Trinitarian Life Robert D. Hughes III 10. How Does the Holy Spirit Assist the Church in Its Teaching?
214 248
Richard R. Gaillardetz
11. An Evangelizing Communion:
The Church, the Holy Spirit, and Vatican II Paul G. McPartlan
273
Suggested Further Reading
297
Contributor Biographies
305
Index
311
Introduction Radu Bordeianu
Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit? The answers to these questions were so obvious in the first centuries of Christian history that the Scriptures of the New Testament and the earliest Christian writers did not feel the need to deliberately address the identity of the Spirit. The more stringent question was this: what does the Spirit do in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the life of Jesus, in the community of disciples, in the Church, and in the world? The Spirit is what the Spirit does: Giver of Life, or the Lord who speaks through the prophets, and consequently Christians worship and glorify the Spirit together with the Father and the Son, to use the language of the Creeds. Writing in the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus observed a slow process of better understanding the identity and mission of the Holy Spirit throughout the centuries, as the light broke upon the Church gradually.1 One would expect that today, centuries later, pneumatology would be exponentially further developed than in the patristic era. And yet contemporary theology only rarely asks who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does. That is where the present volume attempts to bring a contribution. “It is the Spirit who gives life” (John 6:63), Spiritus est qui vivicat, is the motto of Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. True to its dedication to the Spirit, since 2005 Duquesne has organized the Annual Holy Spirit Lecture and Colloquium—first 1 Gregory’s opponents referred to the Spirit as a “strange,” “unscriptural,” and “interpolated” God (Or. 31).
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under the unsurpassable leadership of William Thompson-Uberuaga, followed humbly by the present author—gathering world-renowned theologians who have advanced the field of pneumatology in an ecumenical spirit. Each lecture is delivered publicly, so, on the one hand, it is meant to address an educated general audience. On the other hand, the lecturer also meets privately with nine scholars to analyze the lecture and a list of “Further Readings,” included here at the end of the book. Each essay included in the present volume not only reflects the lecture as it was delivered publicly; it also represents the fruit of this scholarly consultation. Hopefully this edited volume will prove helpful to scholars and students of theology alike. Reflecting the current state of pneumatology, this book gathers the first eleven Holy Spirit lectures as they were originally published, arranged thematically with additional editorial changes to ensure stylistic uniformity.
EARLY PNEUMATOLOGIES In order to understand how Christians have come to worship and glorify the Spirit of God, together with the Father and the Son, one must begin by exploring the role of the Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures. John R. (Jack) Levison—W. J. A. Power Chair of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University—investigates “The Jewish Origin of Christian Pneumatology” in his lecture delivered in 2017. He observes that today pneumatology is a theological endeavor that is almost exclusively confined to Christianity, but from a biblical perspective such an approach is unacceptable because the term ruah (in its various meanings) appears 378 times in the Old Testament. Levison documents a significant shift that occurred around the return from the Babylonian exile, sometime between 587 and 445 BCE. Throughout the earlier Jewish Scriptures the spirit was indeed active, but Haggai and the author of Isaiah 56–66 re-read earlier Exodus accounts and attribute to the spirit the same roles that the pillar, the angel, and the cloud fulfilled as divine agents. In this later re-reading, it is the spirit who stands in the midst of Israel and guides God’s People to the Promised Land; the spirit has acquired a hypostatic or personal quality—if one were to use later theological language in order to understand this shift—five
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hundred years before Christian experiences of the Spirit as divine. By recording this development, particularly in Haggai 2 and Isaiah 63, Levison places Christian pneumatology within the larger scheme of Israel’s history. Levison’s conclusions inspire contemporary theologians to recapture the characteristics of earliest Jewish pneumatologies—communal, steeped in ancient traditions, crisis-oriented, and historically relevant. Geoffrey Wainwright—the late Robert Earl Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University—highlights the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, a transformation that conforms Christians to Jesus Christ and his witness, his martyria, in the inaugural 2005 lecture entitled “The Holy Spirit, Witness and Martyrdom.” This is the sense in which Wainwright reads various passages in the New Testament that convey the idea that Christians are formed into Jesus the martyr. The Holy Spirit reminds Jesus’s followers of the teachings of Christ and assures them of their status as adoptive children of God. Moreover, the Spirit is the power behind Christian proclamation and gives words to Christ’s disciples when they testify in hostile courts. Relevant in the context of recent militant atheist persecution, political unrest, and religious strife, Wainwright highlights the importance of standing up to the oppressor and confessing Christ, especially when that confession has political implications, as exemplified by first- and second-century martyrs such as Polycarp, who, in their allegiance to Christ their king and savior, stood up to the Roman empire’s authorities. Wainwright invokes biblical and early patristic testimonies that present martyrdom as eucharistic sacrifice, as well as the connection between the ongoing witness of the Spirit in the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. It is precisely the Spirit who makes possible this sacramental sharing in the action by which Christ conquered the world. Wainwright then provides a Wesleyan hymnological interpretation of biblical and apostolic themes relevant to the “imitation” of Jesus in martyrdom and challenges our contemporary disunity, especially among traditions that share the veneration of the same martyrs who are united in the Kingdom of God. Continuing in the same methodological vein, which carefully reads New Testament texts through the prism of later traditions, Sandra Schneiders—Professor Emerita at Jesuit School of Theology
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at Berkeley, California—looks at the great commission passage in John 20:21–23 through the prism of René Girard’s scapegoat theory in her 2009 lecture “Whose Sins You Shall Forgive . . . The Holy Spirit and the Forgiveness of Sin(s) in the Fourth Gospel.” Schneiders argues that, in the face of the escalating violence in our world, the entirety of the ecclesial community is called to carry on Jesus’s reconciling work. She notes that Jesus is the repository of the fullness of the Spirit, so the resurrected Jesus gives the Spirit to his disciples, thereby making the community his presence in the world and constituting the community of disciples as a New People of God in whose midst is the New Temple, the risen Jesus. Just as the Paraclete proved the world wrong about its sacrificial system of killing in order to restore peace in the case of Jesus’s crucifixion, so will the same Advocate reveal the injustice of the scapegoat principle. For Schneiders, who reads the paschal mystery of Jesus through the lens of Girardian mimetic theory, it becomes clear that the disciples have the mission to forgive sins non-violently and refrain from the death penalty or excommunications that perpetuate the scapegoating practice, which lead to Jesus’s crucifixion in the words of Caiaphas: “It is expedient that one man die rather than that the whole nation perish” (see John 11:50 and 18:14). Hence, it is the Spirit that re-creates the community of disciples as the new Israel, and not scapegoating sacrifices. Sacralized scapegoating is also unnecessary for maintaining the community, which now shares in the life of Jesus through the Eucharist.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES The section on “Historical Perspectives” debuts on a liturgical note, with Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s discussion of “The Theology of the Holy Spirit in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” originally presented in 2007. The Emeritus Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at Oxford University sets out to present the kenotic Spirit who hides himself in revealing himself and Christ, who is simultaneously other and near, concealed and working within us. This paradoxical character of the Spirit is revealed consistently in the service most commonly used in the present-day Orthodox Church, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. In the Liturgy, the Spirit makes present the Upper
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Room of the Last Supper and equally the Upper Room of Pentecost. This leads Ware to speak of two forms of real presence: that of Christ and that of the Spirit, with two corresponding forms of communion in Christ and in the Spirit. The Metropolitan analyzes eleven moments in the Liturgy that illustrate the Spirit’s role in the Eucharist, emphasizing, for example, that the consecration cannot be considered complete before the threefold “Amen” at the end of the epiclesis. For this reason, in the Orthodox tradition, the celebrant adopts the eastward position, facing in the same direction as the people, for he is praying with them and in their name to God the Father. Thus, the consecration is performed by God the Father, acting invisibly through the Holy Spirit, and visibly through the community. The fruit of communion in the Spirit and in Christ is union with one another, as illustrated in the Liturgy of St. Basil: “Unite us all, as many as are partakers of the one Bread and Cup, one with another in the communion of the one Holy Spirit.” Ware ends his essay by highlighting that the Spirit is not only a kenotic Spirit who hides himself in order to show us the face of Christ; he is also a compassionate Spirit, the Spirit of liberation who in the Eucharist empowers us to share in the Spirit’s liberating ministry. The Liturgy thus becomes the life-giving fountain from which all the Church’s social and political actions proceed. Ware emphasizes the missionary Spirit of apostolic evangelism, even though the social dynamic and missionary purposes of the Spirit are not explicitly mentioned at the specific moments in the Liturgy when the participation of the Paraclete is invoked, but are abundantly present in the Orthodox tradition. Brian E. Daley, SJ—the Emeritus Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame—wrote in 2011 about “The Unexpected God: How Christian Faith Discovers the Holy Spirit.” From the onset, the Spirit is acknowledged as “a strange God” in the sense that Christian authors, beginning in the fourth century, have found it difficult to speak of the Spirit, while at the same time acknowledging the Spirit’s transformative and healing action. Gregory of Nazianzus rests his pneumatology on the Scriptures and then, in an original attempt, formulates a distinctively Christian theology of the Spirit. Daley warns against misreading authors such as Tertullian, Hippolytus, or Didymus the Blind, to be entirely cohesive with Gregory’s
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vision. While Hippolytus seems to have conceived of the Spirit as grace or “economy” that need not be thought of as having personal status, by the late 350s, the discussion shifted toward the “substantial” status and the persona of the Spirit and the appropriateness of referring to the Spirit as homoousios with the Father and the Son, as Daley shows in his analysis of Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Cyril of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo. The difficulty of properly speaking of the Spirit, in Daley’s opinion, is that he—or she, or it—is simply too close to us, acting as the fire that brightens our lives from above, the power that transforms us within, without having a visible, objective “face.” In the past, this undefinable character of the Spirit unfortunately resulted in defining ourselves over against one another, finding our identity in differences. Rather, the Spirit calls us toward a spiritual unity that is both threatening and exciting. Sarah Coakley—the Emerita Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge—provided in 2016 another historical perspective in her lecture on “Beyond the Filioque Disputes? Re-assessing the Radical Equality of the Spirit through the Ascetic and Mystical Tradition,” this time focusing on spirituality and gender issues as they are relevant today. She considers that the treatment of the Spirit as “the third” in the order of the Trinity might have implicitly undermined the radical equality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son, with several consequences. For example, the debates around the Filioque might have never arisen if another important aspect of the Christian Tradition would have been given its proper due: namely, the role of the Spirit in ecstatic, charismatic, or contemplative prayer. Drawing from monastic and ascetic traditions of the medieval and early modern historical periods, Coakley underlies the contemporary ecclesial and personal significance of this distinctive “participative” trinitarianism that results from the radical equality of the Spirit. She thus utilizes the works of Gregory of Nyssa, William of St. Thierry, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Gregory Palamas, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross to connect participative indwelling in the Trinity with the nature of desire as transformed in the Spirit, which in turn reveals the relations among the trinitarian person within the inner life of God.
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PNEUMATOLOGY TODAY In 2006, Cardinal Walter Kasper—Emeritus President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity—explored the theme “The Holy Spirit and Ecumenical Dialogue: Theological and Practical Dimensions” and received an honorary doctorate on the occasion of his visit to Duquesne University to deliver the Holy Spirit Lecture. He points out that, ecumenically, we live in a paradoxical situation in which the Spirit both unites and is the subject of our disagreements. Some tensions stem from an imbalanced christological and pneumatological approach. This imbalance is more than a theoretical problem. It has significant practical impact, given the association of institution, juridicism, and universal aspects of the church with the christological and the connection of the charismatic, mystical, and local characters of the Church with the pneumatological. Properly understood, however, the Spirit of Christ is the principle of unity, the dynamic character of the ecumenical movement, and the one who uses all churches and communities as means of salvation, as clearly stated in Unitatis Redintegratio 2–3. These ecclesiological and pneumatological principles are directly relevant for Kasper’s analysis of the rapid and worldwide emergence of charismatic movements, accompanied by the decline of mainline Protestant and Catholic churches. Included here are Catholic charismatic renewal movements and their accompanying “pentecostalization” of the Catholic Church, which Kasper regards primarily as a pastoral opportunity, not only as a pastoral challenge that presents itself as an alternative to diocesan structures and parish life. Pointing out that Catholic charismatic renewal movements remain inside the sacramental and institutional structures of the Church, Kasper harkens back to a balanced christological–pneumatological ecclesiology and ascribes to these movements a dynamic and stimulating role not only within the local community but also universally. Consequently, he calls for a dialogical and communitarian church in which the faithful can offer their particular gifts, and the church receives and benefits from these gifts. We experience a kairos in which pneumatology promises to nurture the transformation of the ecumenical movement, where unity will be a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a renewed Pentecost.
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Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ—Distinguished Professor of Theology Emerita at Fordham University—spoke in 2008 about “Creative Giver of Life: An Ecological Theology of the Holy Spirit.” One can hardly exaggerate today’s level of ecological devastation, with its deep-seated connection to social injustice, particularly the plight of poor women affected by environmental damage. Hence, Johnson speaks of the Spirit as Lord and Giver of Life, both human and natural, in contrast to previous a-cosmic theologies. She describes the Spirit as breathing life into the exuberant, interrelated universe, weaving connections between all creatures, and repairing what gets damaged. Such a powerful ecological vision mandates theology to extend divine solidarity to all creatures. The Creator Spirit dwells in compassionate solidarity with every living being that suffers. Johnson certainly does not glorify suffering, but works out an implication of the Spirit’s relation to an evolutionary, suffering world with an eye toward divine compassion. The Spirit groans with the labor pains of all creation to bring the new creation to birth (see Rom 8:22–23). In this cosmic pattern of cross and resurrection, omnipotence is redefined as the power of love that brings creation into existence, sustains it, and compassionately directs it toward a new future. In Johnson’s memorable words, it is as if at the Big Bang the Spirit gave the world a push, saying, “Go, have an adventure, see what you can become. And I will be with you.” Thus, the whole physical world becomes a primordial sacrament of divine presence, and the Church is called to care for the Earth, to convert minds and hearts through contemplative, ascetic, and prophetic practices. Robert D. Hughes III—Emeritus Professor at the University of the South School of Theology in Sewanee, Tennessee—not only gave the Holy Spirit Lecture in 2010 but also received the des Places-Libermann Award in Pneumatology for his book Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in Christian Life (2008), as a committee of specialists recognized Hughes’ important contribution among the newest publications in pneumatology. His contribution to the present volume extends the work in Beloved Dust into the larger realms of creation and history. Using the double helix of the DNA as a new vestigium and resonance of the trinitarian missions, Hughes explores the intertwining between the missions of the Son and the Spirit in contemporary Spirit-Christology and Christological-Pneumatology and their retrospective applications to
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the Filioque controversy. Analogous to DNA, the missions of the trinitarian persons in the economy point to both their eternal inseparability in distinction and their being of the same substance (homoousios). Hughes contends that the self-communication of God is truly monopatristic, of the Abba-Fount as emphasized in the Eastern traditions. But that one eternal act of self-expression from the Father takes the form of the helix—two simultaneous processions, one of generation and one of spiration. These processions do not merely exist alongside each other but are inseparably intertwined, as predominantly understood in the West. Since DNA is the structure of life, Hughes also explores its analogous characteristics to the missions of the Son and the Spirit in giving life to all creation; a brief discussion of interreligious dialogue points to the need to engage with Asian and African theologies that deal with the reality of other spirits besides the Holy Spirit. Hughes believes that, in the end, Christian theology will retain the intertwining between the missions of the Son/Word/Wisdom and the Spirit even beyond covenants and their communities, but always discerning these other spirits in the name of Jesus. Richard R. Gaillardetz—the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College—spoke in 2013 about “How Does the Holy Spirit Assist the Church in Its Teaching?” He contends that, as result of an underdeveloped understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, we often misinterpret Vatican II’s repeated statements about the bishops’ exercise of the charisma vertitatis certum as they safeguard and teach the apostolic faith in light of the Holy Spirit. Drawing on the Council’s insight that the church in its totality is constituted by its participation in the triune life of God, Gaillardetz explores the concrete consequences that follow from the conviction that the same Spirit, active in the teaching of the bishops, is active as well in the spiritual instinct for the faith given to all Christians. If the bishop receives the sure charism of truth at ordination, that does not imply that the apostolic faith becomes the bishop’s private possession, since the bishop cannot teach the apostolic faith without being embedded in a living apostolic community of faith. Unfortunately, the modern practice of titular ordination has contributed to the idea that the charisma veritatis certum refers to a supernaturally infused knowledge conferred at ordination without any reference to the faith
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of a local church. Such a misunderstanding can be overcome in the mutual gift exchange among the faithful, bishops, and theologians. Hence, a new understanding of ordination should move away from an ontology that confers special powers on the ordinand toward a “relational ontology” focused on the reconfiguration of the person into a new ecclesial relationship. Such “ecclesial re-positioning” requires the empowerment by the Holy Spirit necessary for that ministry. Gaillardetz then reminds us of another important conciliar insight: namely, that the church is pilgrim, so its official teachers, assisted by the Spirit, exercise their ministry under the limitations of human history, finitude, and sin. The assistance of the Spirit does not compensate for lack of study, prayer, and consultation as if grace takes over where human abilities reach their limits. Rather, the Spirit acts in these human processes. In 2014, Paul G. McPartlan—the Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism at the Catholic University of America— delivered the lecture entitled “An Evangelizing Communion: The Church, the Holy Spirit, and Vatican II.” Pneumatology offers the key to holding together two seemingly opposite movements: the outward emphasis on mission and proclamation, and the inward gathering in communion; both directions are present in contemporary ecumenical dialogues and in the four constitutions of Vatican II. Admittedly, at first sight, Sacrosanctum Concilium does not abound in references to the Holy Spirit. But it presents the Spirit as empowering all the aspects of liturgy, resulting in the introduction of three new eucharistic prayers into the Roman rite soon after the Council. Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV now include a double epiclesis: one over the elements of bread and wine, and one over the people. Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes are so intimately united that they need to be read together. The Church is an evangelizing communion because the Trinity, whose life it shares, is a missionary communion. Like a heartbeat, the Church goes out to gather in; it is an evangelizing communion by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is at work everywhere in the world saved by Christ. Consequently, the Church has no monopoly on the Spirit and needs to be attentive to the world for signs of the Spirit’s activity. The discernment of these signs is the task of all the faithful because, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the entire people
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of God share in the salvific work of Christ. Lumen Gentium presents a “pneumatological ecclesiology” in which the faithful of every rank have received special graces or charisms. Dei Verbum attributes the unity of Scripture as a whole, the tradition of the Church, and the analogy of faith to the Holy Spirit, affirming that “sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the same Spirit [with a capital “S”] in whom [or “by whom”] it was written.” The same Spirit who inspired Scripture guided and guides the course of tradition, so Scripture must be read in the Spirit. The present volume represents the beginning in a long series of explorations in pneumatology, to which the Holy Spirit Lecture is committed. Besides further studies in pneumatology proper, future trajectories include further biblical studies focused on the New Testament’s references to the Holy Spirit, but with attention to their Jewish roots. Moreover, contemporary pneumatology needs to pay attention to a multitude of global perspectives, focusing especially on African and Asian theologians who live in a world inhabited by spirit/spirits/Spirit. The inter-religious dimensions of pneumatology will thus emerge naturally, exploring the potential of a Spirit-centered approach that complements present Christocentric perspectives, but in a way that does not separate the economies of the Spirit and the Son. The connection between pneumatology and anthropology also needs further consideration, as theology needs to respond to the contemporary thirst for a richer understanding of the human person, both individually and communally. This latter aspect of anthropology is closely related to sociology, and the role of the Spirit in forging relationships among human beings and with the rest of the universe should be front and center. Indeed, the task of pneumatology is to bear testimony to a renewed outpouring of the Spirit that we witness in our days—a Spirit who revitalizes our world, our churches, and our souls. It is the Spirit who gives life.
PART ONE
Early Pneumatologies
1
The Jewish Origin of Christian Pneumatology John R. (Jack) Levison
WORD PLAY The Jewish Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, includes some crucial words.1 These words are like old-fashioned keyholes through which you would peek and see another room. These words, in our parlance, are like hyperlinks, opening to a reservoir of meaning. Key nouns in the Hebrew Bible include:
Berakah—blessing, occurs 71 times; Shabbath—sabbath, occurs 111 times; Torah—teaching or law, occurs 223 times; Shalom—peace or well-being or just “hello!” occurs 237 times; Ḥesed—mercy or covenant faithfulness, occurs 251 times; Berith—covenant or agreement, 289 times; Rûaḥ—breath, wind, or spirit, occurs 378 times in the Jewish Bible.2
1 The translation of the biblical texts that follow are my own and often coincide with the NRSV. 2 These numbers are based primarily upon the software Accordance, as well as a variety of lexicons.
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Among these nouns, the one that occurs most frequently is rûaḥ, translated as breath, wind, or spirit. And yet, pneumatology, the study of the spirit of God, is considered a Christian enterprise. Trying to understand the Old Testament without the dominance of rûaḥ is like trying to understand Pittsburgh without the steel industry—or the Steelers themselves! By the same token, trying to understand pneumatology as if the word rûaḥ did not occur 378 times in the Jewish Bible makes no sense. Starting anywhere other than the Old Testament makes no sense, given the prominent role of rûaḥ in the Old Testament. Yet studies of pneumatology tend to start elsewhere than the Jewish Bible or the Old Testament. There are several reasons for this, but I will suggest only one for the time being. Theologians argue the point that pneumatology is a Christian discipline by suggesting that rûaḥ in the Old Testament is an impersonal force. It comes on the judges—Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson—like the rush of a wind. It is promised to Israel in an outpouring, like a torrent of rain. But in the Old Testament, it is argued, rûaḥ is not a person. Not ever. So the study of the spirit as a person or a hypostasis—pneumatology proper—finds no place, it is argued, in the Old Testament. That development, understanding the spirit as a person, took place only in the New Testament era and afterward. That line of argument I hope to dispute—actually to dismantle—in three stages. First, I will set up the necessary background. Second, I will offer an analysis of two pivotal texts from the Jewish Bible. Third, I will suggest how this analysis ought to influence the future of pneumatology.
BACKGROUND I have organized this section of the lecture as a countdown: 3, 2, 1. I will address three key dates, two key biblical traditions, and one thesis.
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Three Dates Three dates frame our discussion. In 587 BCE, Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and deported many of its leading figures, including the king, far away into exile. Forty-eight years later, in 539 BCE, after Persia conquered Babylon, the new Persian ruler Cyrus allowed the exiles to go home and rebuild Jerusalem. As a result, some Israelites in exile returned to Palestine. They faced drought, famine, and confrontation with the people who had been left in the land in 587 and now laid claim to the ancestral land the exiles’ grandparents had left. The inability to get the job done due to drought and other challenges leads to the third date, 445 BCE, and the mission of Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem. It was important to begin a lecture on the holy spirit—a theological topic—with three dates from Israelite history reflecting the genius of the Jewish Bible, where tradition, confession, and theology—pneumatology, even—combust in the context of human history.
Two Traditions Two Israelite traditions, the spirit and the exodus, proved indispensable for what occurred in Haggai 2 and Isaiah 63. The first of these traditions is that of the Spirit of God. We can say for certain that by the eighth century BCE, prophets referred to the Spirit of God or rûaḥ. The prophet Micah claimed that he was filled with rûaḥ of the Lord, knowledge, power, and might (Mi 3:8). His contemporary in the Southern Kingdom, Isaiah, depicted a coming inspired messianic figure (Is 11:1–9), upon whom the rûaḥ would rest. Hosea, an eighthcentury BCE prophet in the northern kingdom quotes his opponents, who claim: “The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad [məšuggā’ ‘îš hārūaḥ]!” (Hos 9:7). These eighth-century prophets believed that rûaḥ was in full force. This keen interest in rûaḥ continued for six centuries, into the book of Daniel, probably the latest in the Old Testament to be written, in the mid-second century BCE. For three chapters, foreign rulers
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acknowledge rûaḥ as an exceptional divine spirit within Daniel. Thus, the tradition begun in eighth-century writings spanned over six hundred years, extending to the book of Daniel. There is another way to look at this tradition. The first reference to rûaḥ ’Elōhim occurs in the Bible’s second verse: in Genesis 1:2, rûaḥ ’Elōhim hovers over the abyss. At the end of the Jewish Bible, in 2 Chronicles 24,3 the phrase occurs for a last time. From the beginning to the end of the Jewish Bible, rûaḥ ’Elōhim is mentioned consistently. Whether we look at it chronologically (700s to 100s BCE), canonically (Genesis to 2 Chronicles), or numerically based upon the 378 occurrences throughout the Jewish Bible, rûaḥ features prominently. The tradition of the spirit is substantive, its impact inexorable. The second tradition that provides our background for reading Haggai 2 and Isaiah 63 is that of the divine agents of the exodus. From stories in the earliest traditions of Exodus to the Persian era prayers of Nehemiah, from the recollections of Deuteronomy to the reminiscences of the psalms, from the pedestrian prose of Numbers to the elevated poetry of Isaiah 40–55, with almost indiscriminate devotion, Israel hung its fate, like harps on exilic willows, on the conviction that God was present through various agents during the exodus from Egypt. The memory of God’s presence was persistent, but certainly not static. Sometimes God is present at the exodus in pillars of cloud and fire. Sometimes God is present just in fire or a cloud. Sometimes God is present through an angel. Sometimes God is present in God’s presence, God’s face—pānîm. And sometimes these agents are thrown into a theological blender and combined, as in Numbers 14:13–14, where Moses, his back against the wall, pleads, “for you, O Lord, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go in front of them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.” All of this is confusing . . . and enlivening. No one sat down during the void of Babylonian exile and ironed out the creases. No one returned to Palestine in 538 BCE and excised alternative traditions. No one wrote, “It wasn’t a pillar; it was a cloud.” No one contended, 3 The last book in the Christian Old Testament is Malachi; the last book in the Jewish Bible is 2 Chronicles.
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“It wasn’t a cloud; it was God’s pānîm, God’s presence.” All of these agents jockeyed for attention in Israel’s memory. All of these thrived, not just on the surface, but in the marrow of Israel’s memory, as we shall see when we return to discuss them.
One Thesis These two swaths of tradition merged during the Babylonian and Persian eras—between 587 and 445 BCE. Prior to 587 BCE, the spirit was deemed to be active, but not an agent acting on God’s behalf. This scenario changed when Haggai and the author of a lament in Isaiah 63:7–14 accomplished something unprecedented: they introduced the holy spirit into the traditions of the exodus, in which God had rescued Israel from Egypt through a cadre of divine agents—pillars, an angel, clouds, and God’s presence or pānîm. Now, claimed these prophets, the holy spirit took on the role of those agents by standing in Israel’s midst and guiding them, once again, to the promised land. The implications of this development are stunning. The agency that Christians eventually attributed to the holy spirit arose, not with Christian doctrine and experience, but five hundred years earlier, when two Israelite prophets imputed agency to the spirit. The essence of Christian pneumatology, therefore, should be traced deep into the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures. Taking this point of origin as our guide, Christian pneumatology becomes less about an exclusively Christian experience or doctrine and more about the presence of God in the grand scheme of Israel’s history—and Christianity as ancient Israel’s heir. To help you grasp the significance of this early merging of spirit and exodus traditions, imagine traveling from the Scottish mainland to the Orkney Islands, directly into the path where the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean collide. The meeting of the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea is akin to what happened pneumatologically during the Babylonian and Persian eras of Israel’s history, when spirit and exodus—two great swaths of tradition—met. This marks the birth of the holy spirit, or, in more acceptable theological terms, the origin of pneumatology as we know it.
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Another illustration would be the journey of marriage, during which two strong personalities have blended. There is no clear line between the spouses’ values, commitments, and vocations. The two, in practical ways, have become one. The merging of spirit and exodus is similar: characteristics of each remained, though they merged, too, into something unique.
ANALYSIS The Babylonian and Persian eras, particularly the years 587–445, were disheartening and disorienting for the people of ancient Israel. We could forgive them for jettisoning their traditions, dismissing them as unrealistic, unattainable, entirely forgettable. But they took another tack by reinventing them in the teeth of disappointment, even despair. For example, the author of Isaiah 40–55, sometime during exile, recast the exodus tradition by combining it with vivid creation imagery in order to inflame hope for a new exodus (Is 51:9–11). As we shall see, Haggai and the author of Isaiah 63 breathed new life into the exodus tradition as well by blending it with belief in the spirit of God. The consequent transformation proved to be both unprecedented and unparalleled.
Haggai 2:5 Haggai 2:4–5 reads, Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts—the word that I cut with you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit stands among you; do not fear This text can be dated not long after the return from exile in 538 BCE and probably before the initial restoration of the temple in 515 BCE. In the twenty-five years after the decree of Cyrus in 539 BCE, Haggai urged his countrymen and women to get on with the task of reconstructing the temple with the promise, “My spirit stands among you.”
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The memory of divine agents emerges, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, with singular clarity in Haggai 2:5 with the choice of the verb, ‘amaḏ, “to stand,” to depict the spirit’s presence at a particularly threatening moment in Israel’s distant past—the exodus from Egypt. Pinned between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea, Israel faced annihilation even before they became a nation. Yet pillars of cloud and fire accompanied them. All of a sudden, as evening set and peril reared its head, The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. (Ex 14:19–20a) The pillar of cloud stood between Israel and the Egyptian army, hot in pursuit, and protected them, on the cusp of escape, for one more necessary night. In fact, the very word pillar is built from the same verbal root as to stand or to take one’s place. “And stood”4 is wayya‘ămōḏ; “pillar” is ‘ammūḏ. Therefore, when Haggai promises that the spirit stands (‘ōmeḏeṯ) in Israel’s midst, he does not choose a verb cavalierly; Haggai 2:5 evokes both the verb, ‘amaḏ (stand), and the noun, ‘ammūḏ (standing pillar), in the exodus story. The equation is a simple one: As God protected Israel from the Egyptian army when the pillar of cloud stood behind them, so now will the rûaḥ stand in their midst as they return from the Babylonian exile and confront enormous challenges ahead. What the pillar once did, the spirit now does. There is, Haggai assures his people, no need to fear. There may be another historical point of reference as well. Subsequently in the exodus tradition, the cloud appears at a tent outside the camp, where Moses would customarily meet God: When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all
4 My translation.
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the people would rise and bow down, all of them, at the entrance of their tent. (Ex 33:9–10) Again, the pillar (‘ammūḏ) would stand (wə‘āmaḏ) at the tent’s entrance. When the people saw the pillar of cloud standing there, they bowed down at their own tents. The pillar, in short, signaled the presence of God in Israel’s midst, while Moses and God talked face to face. For Haggai, there is no palpable pillar to which he can point during the early years of rebuilding after 539 BCE, no corporeal cloud that exists to signal God’s presence. But there is something else that can stand in Israel’s midst and signal God’s presence. There is spirit, rûaḥ. Again, the equation is a simple one: Just as God was present when the pillar of cloud stood at the tent of meeting after Israel’s escape from Egypt, so now God is present after their escape from Babylonian exile, not through a visible pillar, but when the invisible spirit stands in their midst. No, there is no need to fear.
Isaiah 63:7–14 Haggai was not alone in speaking of the spirit in this way. A lament in Isaiah 63:7–14 contains one reference to an angel, followed by three references to the spirit in close succession, two of them to the holy spirit: In all their distress . . . the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved [or rebelled against] his holy spirit; therefore he became their enemy; he himself fought against them. Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit, who caused his glorious arm to march at the right hand of Moses,
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who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the depths? Like a horse in the desert, they did not stumble. Like cattle that go down into the valley, the spirit of the Lord gave them rest [or guided them] Thus you led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name. (Is 63:7–14) The line about the angel is notoriously difficult in part because the Hebrew text and the Greek translation differ from one another. The Hebrew can be translated like this: In all their distress, the angel of his presence saved them. The Greek translators opted for this: It was no ambassador or angel but the Lord himself that saved them The Greek translators took exactly the opposite interpretation of the Hebrew—it was not an angel that saved Israel—perhaps because they were reluctant to attribute salvation to an angel rather than to God. For theological reasons, then, as well as some real difficulties with the Hebrew wording, the Greek translators interpreted this text differently from the Hebrew. This is not unusual. For example, Genesis 2:4 in the Hebrew says that God completed God’s work on the seventh day. This implies that God violated the sabbath by working on the seventh day—God completed the work on the seventh day. The Greek translators solved this problem with a tweak, by simply changing “seventh” to “sixth”: God completed God’s work on the sixth day, the Greek translation says. Then God rested on the seventh. This scenario becomes significant when we glance at English translations of Isaiah 63:9. Some English translations straightforwardly follow the Hebrew. The New International Version, for example, reads: “and the angel of his presence saved them.” The New Revised Standard Version, on the other hand, follows the Greek: “It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them.”
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When we work with the Hebrew text of Isaiah 63:7–14—and I am prone to think the Hebrew represents the original text—we see immediately that it is rife with allusions to the exodus tradition. Verses 11–14 read: Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea . . . Who divided the waters before them . . . who led them through the depths . . . (Is 63:11–13) Into this setting the prophet inserts one reference to an angel and three to God’s rûaḥ: •
The angel of God’s presence saved them;
•
But they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit;
•
Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit, Like cattle that go down into the valley, the spirit of the Lord gave them rest [or guided them]
•
In order to appreciate the pneumatological innovation in this passage, we need to take it apart bit by bit.
The Angel of God’s Presence First, the angel of God’s presence. We saw already that the angel and the pillar inserted themselves between Israel and the Egyptian army, according to Exodus 14:19. Later, after passing through the Red Sea, God issues a promise and a warning: I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him. But if you listen attentively to his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites. . . . (Ex 23:20–23)
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Later still, in the midst of a terrifyingly blunt negotiation between God and Moses, the angel seems to be supplanted by God’s presence or face—pānîm. Initially, God reiterates the promise that an angel will lead Israel, according to Exodus 32:34: “But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; see, my angel shall go in front of you.” Then, a few moments later, God promises Moses something else: “My presence [pānîm: pānay] will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Ex 33:14). These two traditions—God’s angel and God’s presence—which compete in the book of Exodus—become one and the same agent in Isaiah 63: the angel of God’s presence. This in itself is a significant theological innovation. But it is not the sole innovation. Creativity continues with the introduction of the holy spirit. The author shifts imperceptibly from the angel of God’s presence to the holy spirit, suggesting that the angel and the spirit are one and the same: The angel of God’s presence saved them . . . but they rebelled against God’s holy spirit. Angel and spirit are the same divine agent.
The Spirit But that is not all. From where does the conception of rebellion against God’s holy spirit in the next couple of verses arise? The exodus tradition has none of this. However, there is a strong warning about rebellion against God’s angel in Exodus 23:21: “do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him.” What has happened? Precisely what we saw in Haggai 2:4–5. The spirit has taken on the role of an agent in the exodus tradition. For Haggai, this agent is the pillar which stood in Israel’s midst; now the spirit stands there. For Isaiah 63, this is the angel of God’s presence against which Israel was warned not to rebel; now Isaiah 63 says Israel rebelled against God’s holy spirit. The angel of God’s presence and the holy spirit are one and the same. 5 5 The same verb is not used in Isaiah 63 as in Exodus 23—but nearly so. The verb in Exodus is mrr, which was easily confused with the verb used in Isaiah, mrh, which means “to rebel.” The Septuagint translators understood this verb in Exodus as rebellion (mrh), ἀπείθει.
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A similar shift occurs in the last reference to the spirit in this communal lament. The spirit of the Lord gave them rest (or guided them— the Hebrew is difficult to determine)—leads full circle to God’s presence, face, or pānîm in Exodus 33:14, in which God promised, “My pānîm [presence] will go with you, and I will give you rest.”6 What has happened? Yet again, the spirit has taken on the role of a guiding agent in the exodus tradition. In the exodus, God’s presence or face or pānîm would give Israel rest; now Isaiah 63 says the spirit of the Lord gave Israel rest. The presence or pānîm of God and the spirit of the Lord are one and the same. This otherwise ordinary communal lament, tucked inconspicuously into the final chapters of Isaiah, contains a remarkable and unprecedented pneumatological innovation in four steps: 1. The author merges two distinct agents of the exodus: the angel and God’s presence. In Isaiah 63, the two have become one: the angel of God’s presence. 2. The author then shifts nearly imperceptibly from this angel to the holy spirit: “The angel of God’s presence saved them . . . but they rebelled against God’s holy spirit.” 3. The holy spirit takes on the role of the angel: rebellion against the angel in Exodus 23 becomes in Isaiah 63 rebellion against the holy spirit. 4. The spirit of the Lord takes on the role of the pānîm or presence of God: the rest God’s presence or pānîm would give in Exodus 33 becomes in Isaiah 63 the rest the spirit of the Lord gave.
Summary For more than half a millennium, from the eighth-century prophets Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah, to the book of Daniel, written around 160 BCE—six full, rich centuries—many Israelites embraced the presence and power of rûaḥ. Prior to the composition of Haggai 2:4–5 6 The Hebrew verb could be interpreted in either of two ways. Perhaps it is a promise of rest: “I will give you rest.” Perhaps it is a promise to lead: “I will lead you.” The form in Isaiah 63:14, tənîḥennū, could be translated either give rest or lead, since the verbs in this form are nearly identical.
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and Isaiah 63:7–14, however, Israel’s poets, prophets, and storytellers deemed the spirit to be active—but not an agent acting on God’s behalf. This scenario changed when the author of an otherwise typical communal lament, at some point after 587 BCE, and the prophet Haggai, at some point after 539 BCE, accomplished something unique. Drawing on the exodus tradition, in which a pillar had stood in Israel’s midst, Haggai encouraged his compatriots with the claim that now, centuries after the exodus, the spirit stood in their midst. Drawing as well on the exodus tradition in which Israel had been warned not to rebel against the angel, the author of Isaiah 63 charged them with rebelling against God’s holy spirit. Drawing yet one more time on the exodus tradition, in which God’s presence or pānîm would give Israel rest, the author of Isaiah 63 claimed that the spirit of the Lord had given Israel rest. These innovations took place sometime between 587 BCE and 445 BCE. To put an exclamation point on this chronology: these prophets spoke of the spirit as standing, giving rest, and being rebelled against more than five centuries before Jesus’s feet touched the earth or the apostle Paul sailed the Mediterranean, more than 800 years before the Christian Council of Nicaea in 325, and more than nine centuries— nearly a millennium—before the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
IMPLICATIONS I am not the first to notice the significance of Isaiah 63 for the study of pneumatology. Joseph Blenkinsopp, for example, noted that: The association of the Spirit with the Presence or the Face of God (also in Ps 139:7) indicates that the Spirit (ruah) has now become the object of theological reflection, a kind of hypostasis similar in that respect to the Face (panim), the Angel (mal’ak) and, later in the Targum, the Word (memra’). We are at the beginning of a development that will eventuate, on the one hand, in the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit and, on the other, the rabbinic concept of the ruah haqqodes as the spirit of prophecy (ruah hannebu’a).7 7 Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56–66: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries 19b (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 261.
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Renowned Old Testament theologian Walter Eichrodt introduced his discussion of spirit in the post-exilic or Persian era in this way: It almost seems as if in Judaism everything which earlier generations had learned and enunciated about the working of the spirit of God came alive more than ever before, and exerted a direct influence on the conduct of daily life. . . . This may be seen first of all in the development by which the spirit of God is made markedly independent, so that it can now be portrayed as a so-called hypostasis, that is to say, a separate entity which acts of its own motion, and is of itself concerned with human affairs.8 While this lecture is not the first occasion on which someone has noted the significance of Isaiah 63, though its connection to Haggai 2:4–5 seems to have gone largely unnoticed, it may be the first time someone has analyzed Isaiah 63 and Haggai 2 in detail, with an eye toward understanding its significance for Christian pneumatology. To explore its significance, I would like to offer several suggestions for the future of pneumatology, based upon an origin during the Babylonian and Persian eras of Israel’s history.
Pneumatology and Hypostasis Tangled up in theology in general, and pneumatology in particular, is the perennial challenge of vocabulary. How to identify the Spirit? Invariably, scholars and theologians adopt the language of hypostasis. Joseph Blenkinsopp and Walter Eichrodt both did this. But the conception of hypostasis, worked out in relation to the spirit, stems principally from the fourth-century Christians known as the Cappadocians—Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. To put this in the simplest of terms, these influential Christian theologians espoused what can be summed up in the Trinitarian formula, “Three Hypostases in one Ousia,” that is, three persons in one being. Each person of the Trinity, which share a common ousia with one another, is an hypostasis by virtue of what differentiates that person from the other two. 8 Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. John A. Baker, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), 60.
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For instance, the Son shares ousia with the Father but is a separate hypostasis because he was begotten, while the Father begets. This is a far cry from Haggai 2 and Isaiah 63. Separated from the Cappadocian fathers by dint of language (Hebrew versus Greek), chronology (more than eight centuries), empires (Persia versus Byzantium), and theological commitments (monotheism versus trinitarianism), there is a great deal that distinguishes the Cappadocian fathers from Babylonian and Persian era prophets. So there is little to commend introducing a term brought to currency by the Cappadocians into a discussion of Israel’s prophets. It is an anachronism to interpret either Haggai 2 or Isaiah 63 as instances of the “hypostatization” of the spirit. Theologians must discover other categories that take the Jewish origin of Christian pneumatology seriously. I have opted for divine agency because the spirit takes on the role of divine agents in the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Pneumatology arose less from an interest in clarifying the theological category of an hypostasis than from what we might call an inner-biblical or exegetical move. The birth of pneumatology resulted from the amalgamation of two specific biblical traditions—the exodus and the spirit.
Pneumatology and History Pneumatology grew first in the soil of history. This is history experienced, confessed, and adapted—history as a concoction of politics, tradition, and theological reflection. Pneumatology, in other words, should not start from a standpoint outside of history. Pneumatology may eventually be about the divine economy in the Trinity, the inner logic of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it cannot begin there. Why? Because it did not begin there. If contemporary pneumatology is to be faithful to its point of origin, then it must have as one of its central loci the relationship of the Holy Spirit to history. Pneumatology arose, for the first time in history, then, in reflection upon God, of course, but not God in the abstract. The understanding of the spirit as a divine agent took root in the relationship between God and the long history of a concrete community—Israel’s longstanding community, from exodus through exile all the way to the excavation and rebuilding of a temple.
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Pneumatology and Tradition Haggai and the author of Isaiah 63 reached back into the exodus tradition in order to discover a way of encouraging Israel so that they could move ahead into the uncharted terrain of exile and reconstruction. They did not invent a theological concept de novo. They did not create the spirit ex nihilo. They knew their tradition, engaged it with theological sophistication—it is hard to miss this in Isaiah 63—and modified it by allowing the spirit to take on the role of divine agent during the exodus. Haggai delivered a promise that simultaneously recalled the pillar’s strategic presence in their venture from Egypt and, in his own day, the spirit’s strategic presence in their adventure in Persian Palestine. The lament in Isaiah 63 engaged the exodus tradition even more deeply. The prophet affirmed that nothing had negated the holy spirit’s presence as a divine agent among the people of the exodus, so nothing could now, in his own day, annul the spirit’s presence in the years that would follow Babylonian exile.
Pneumatology and Community If we take our cue from Haggai and Isaiah 63, then we are compelled to affirm that spirituality is not primarily an individual affair. These two texts, buried deep in Israel’s bowels, suggest something else. The origin of pneumatology—the first expression of the spirit as an agent—occurs in a context concerned explicitly with communities rather than individuals. Isaiah 63:7–14 is, in fact, a communal lament, like many communal laments in the Psalms. The words of Haggai 2 are addressed to the community as a whole, from its governor to the people of the land. Pneumatology, at its point of origin, was communal. Contemporary pneumatology, therefore, should retain a keen interest in the work of the holy spirit in communities—not just individuals within them.
Pneumatology and Crisis Haggai addresses a haggard community, fresh from exile, daunted by the challenges ahead. The command, “Do not fear,” along with
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the promise, “the spirit stands among you,” alike address their crisis. The lament in Isaiah 63 is equally crisis-oriented. Though it begins in a positive vein by recounting God’s gracious deeds done “for us”— including salvation by the angel of God’s presence—the poem turns quickly to communal lament. Twice the community asks, “Where is?” Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea? Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit? Why, they wonder, is God in absentia? Crisis—not joie de vivre—is the crucible of pneumatology. Catastrophe is the birthplace of reflection on the holy spirit. In both prophetic texts, the spirit, understood here for the first time in history as a divine agent, confronts the fear and disappointment of fledgling communities that face an uncertain future. There is a place for joy in the holy spirit, for peace, for robust worship, too. But the birthright of those who claim to experience the spirit is first and foremost the ability to look ahead with confidence—not necessarily to success but to divine accompaniment. The pillar. The cloud. The angel. God’s pānîm. And now, for Haggai and the author of Isaiah 63, the spirit accompanies Israel in dark times. A pneumatology that effaces this reality, a pneumatology that ignores the crisis orientation of this origin, can never be a full-throated expression of the holy spirit.
Pneumatology and Judaism In an unfortunate but entrenched move, scholars have tended to characterize the post-exilic era as pedantic and legalistic—a falloff from the high ethical and theological apex associated with Israel’s great prophets, such as Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. After the return from exile, Israel cast its vision, the argument goes, from theology to casuistry, from imagination to legalism, from prophet to Pharisee. It is often argued that the post-exilic era, with its rigid legalism and shrill monotheism, gave birth to Judaism, which understood itself to be void of the holy spirit. Renowned patristic scholar Geoffrey Lampe, for example, wrote this in the influential Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible:
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the Spirit continues to be thought of as being, pre-eminently, the Spirit of prophecy, manifested in the distant past in such great figures as Elijah (Eccl 48.12) or Isaiah (vs. 24), but which was now no longer present in Israel.9 Pioneering Pentecostal scholar Gordon Fee wrote, Noticeably missing in the intertestamental literature . . . is the sense that the Spirit speaks through any contemporary “prophet.” This is almost certainly the result of the growth of a tradition called “the quenched Spirit,” which begins in the later books of the Old Testament and is found variously during the Second Temple period.10 This characterization of Judaism as sterile and legalistic served aptly as a foil for the rise of Christianity as a grace- and spirit-filled movement. The present study of Haggai 2:4–5 and Isaiah 63:7–14 puts the lie to this characterization—caricature, really—of earliest Judaism. These prophets do not represent the end but the beginning of an era of remarkable creativity, when exodus and spirit could combust to create something fresh, something old but also entirely new. This pneumatology was kinetic, even explosive—new ways of comprehending the spirit formulated from longstanding traditions. It will not do, therefore, to contrast the demise of Judaism, through tedious legalism and an absence of the spirit, with the rise of a graceand spirit-filled Christianity. It will not do because it is not true, however convenient it may be for Christians to contrast death and life, law and grace, Judaism and Christianity.
CONCLUSION I conclude by suggesting that contemporary pneumatology— whether of the sacramentalist in grand cathedrals or purveyors of ecstasy in Appalachian arbors—ought to resemble the newborn 9 George A. Buttrick, “Holy Spirit,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1981), 630. 10 Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), 914.
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pneumatology of the Babylonian and Persian eras. If pneumatology in the years ahead is to bear a keen resemblance to the child born in Israel, then it must be historically relevant, steeped in ancient traditions, communal in character, crisis-oriented, and, without putting too fine a point on it, Jewish. Pneumatology began in ancient Israel with a burst—a big bang—of creativity. If we retrace our steps, recapture that creativity, and rekindle that intensity, perhaps we can expect the future of our pneumatology to be robust, ample in resources for embracing the challenges that lie ahead.11
11 This lecture was subsequently worked out in detail in John R. Levison, The Holy Spirit before Christianity (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University, 2019).
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The Holy Spirit, Witness, and Martyrdom Geoffrey Wainwright
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the sevenfold Spirit which is before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the first witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth (Rv 1:4–5). The writings of the New Testament make strong connections between the Holy Spirit and witness. The Greek terminology for witness (martys, martyrein, martyria, martyrion) provides our English word for the ultimate witness, the “witness unto death”: martyrdom. My main purpose here is to display how, and to what ends, the Holy Spirit works to conform Christians to “Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,” and for whose “appearing” we wait (1 Tm 6:13–16). First, we shall look at the Apostle Paul, both for the setting of a theological frame for our topic and for the sake of his existential example. Then, other biblical literature will be examined for what it says about testimony in the circumstances of persecution and in the cause of evangelism. The next step will be to observe the links established historically and theologically between the passion and death of Christ and the sacrificial martyrdom of his disciples. Finally, we shall treat the part played by martyrdom in the building up of the Church
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and in the attainment of salvation. In all this, our focus will highlight the pneumatological dimension of witness to the gospel. What we discover here about witness and martyrdom may, in reverse, hold implications for our understanding of the Holy Spirit, but these will remain as hints rather than being developed in detail in this place.1
THE PAULINE THEOLOGY AND EXAMPLE We may begin innocuously enough with what the Apostle says in Romans 8:15–16: “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with [or “to”] our spirit [auto to Pneuma synmartyrei tô pneumati hêmôn] that we are children of God.” That is the foundation of all Christian prayer, beginning with the prayer that the Lord himself taught to his disciples. It would take us too far afield to investigate the variant reading in the Lukan version of the Lord’s Prayer, whereby “May thy Holy Spirit come upon us” is substituted for “Thy kingdom come.” Nevertheless, the ambivalent phrasing of that petition opens up for us an eschatological prospect in which to consider the work of the Spirit. The Apostle Paul confirms that perspective when he immediately continues: “And if we are children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:17–18). Moreover, from those verses it appears that the way to glory lies through suffering, and even a suffering that somehow shares the suffering of Christ (eiper sumpaschomen hina kai sundoxasthômen, 1 G. W. H. Lampe spoke of “a pneumatology of martyrdom” (recognizing that martyrdom also had a “christology,” a “soteriology,” an “anthropology,” and even a “demonology”). In a chapter on “martyrdom and inspiration” in the early Church, he wrote that “the martyr’s testimony was believed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Christian who confessed his faith in circumstances of persecution was regarded as closely akin to the prophet as a recipient of revelation and a proclaimer of God’s word”: “The Christian was essentially a missionary, and martyrdom was for him the supreme and most effective mode of evangelism.” See William Horbury and Brian McNeil, eds., Suffering and Martyrdom in the New Testament: Studies Presented to G.M. Styler by the Cambridge New Testament Seminar (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 118–135. For a brief, multi-faceted pneumatology, see Geoffrey Wainwright, “The Holy Spirit,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 273–95.
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v. 17). And this is all given a corporeal dimension by the frequent mention of our bodies in the same chapter: having already “the first fruits of the Spirit,” we await “the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23): “If the Spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (v. 11). The “love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” will see us through all danger, even “death” (vv. 38–39): Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (8:35–37, citing Ps 44:22) As the opening verses of Romans 8 make clear, the condition of all this is that we have appropriated to ourselves the redeeming work of Christ, the Son sent “in the likeness of sinful flesh” so that sin might therein be condemned and we might “walk according to the Spirit” (vv. 1–10). It is the Spirit who aids our stumbling lips when we groan and pray for full salvation in the midst of a creation that is itself groaning for liberation from decay (Rom 8:22–27)—just as it is the Spirit who (we shall soon see) puts words into the mouths of those who confess Christ in the setting of the hostile court room. It is the same Spirit who, knowing the depths of God, reveals to believers “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:6–12); and this no doubt brings consolation and hope to those who are being persecuted for Christ’s sake. Thus Paul, above all in Romans 8, sets a theological frame for our topic in terms of euchology, soteriology, and eschatology. Elsewhere the Apostle’s own sufferings are intimately linked to his witness to the gospel. Already in Acts, in the thrice-told story of Paul’s conversion, Ananias is instructed by “the Lord”: “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he
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must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15–16). Ananias baptizes Saul/Paul that he might “regain [his] sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (9:17–18) and become “a witness for the Just One to all men” (22:12–16). Upon his preaching in the synagogues, “the Jews” both in Damascus and repeatedly in Jerusalem plotted to kill him (9:22–30; 23:12–21; 26:21). Paul’s Roman citizenship (22:25–29; 23:26–27; 25:8–12, 21; 26:32) proved to be the means of getting him to Rome, in accordance with a vision from the Lord: “Take courage, for as you have testified about me at Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also at Rome” (23:11). The Apostle stayed in Rome for two years, welcoming all who came to him, “preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered” (28:30–31). There the story in Acts ends, but a strong tradition has it that Paul underwent martyrdom in the imperial capital, under the emperor Nero, but in circumstances of which we are otherwise ignorant.2 In his epistles, Paul views his own sufferings and impending death as integral to his witness to the gospel. In 2 Corinthians 6:1–10, he writes—in the face of internal controversy—that, as servants of God in the cause of the gospel, we commend ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger; by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit [!], genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. Later in the same epistle, he speaks in mock boasting of his service to Christ 2 The earliest literary allusion to the martyrdoms of both Peter and Paul is probably found in the First Letter of Clement, chapter 5. The oldest liturgical tradition commemorates both Peter and Paul on June 29, “passi sub Nerone.”
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with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Cor 11:23–27) Harassed by the satanic “thorn in the flesh,” the Apostle hears the word from the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:7–10). Might it be legitimate to hear in the “beatings” of 2 Corinthians 6:5 (cf. 11:23–25) an echo of the stripes of Christ’s passion by which we are healed (Is 53:5; 1 Pt 2:21–24)? Certainly, the Apostle declares that “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17): “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). Sensing the approaching end of his own life, and perhaps of the world, Paul reaffirms in his Second Letter to Timothy the connections between the gospel, his own proclamation of it, and the sufferings and rewards for the Spirit-indwelt preacher and those who accept the message: I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (4:6–8) Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David, as preached in my gospel, the gospel for which
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I am suffering and wearing fetters like a criminal. But the word of God is not fettered. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory. The saying is true: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself. (2:8–13) Do not be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel in the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of our works but in virtue of his own purpose and the grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus ages ago, and now has manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, and therefore I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what I have entrusted to him. Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. (1:8–13) What is related of Paul by himself and in the Acts of the Apostles corresponds to the warnings and promises recorded of the Lord himself in the Gospels. To these we now turn, locating the testimony to be rendered by Christ’s disciples in hostile circumstances in relation to the more general witness to the gospel with which the followers of Jesus are charged.
FORENSIC CONTEXT AND EVANGELISTIC SCOPE When Jesus sent the Twelve out on mission, Matthew records that he issued a warning that yet contained a promise of support by the Holy Spirit:
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Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. . . . You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved (Mt 10:16–22). Mark places almost the identical warning and promises in what scholars have called the “apocalyptic discourse” during the last week of Jesus’s earthly life (13:9–13), emphasizing that “the gospel must first be preached to all nations” (v. 10)—or, as Matthew this time adds, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14; cf. 28:19–20). Luke locates in yet another context the promise of the Holy Spirit’s instruction of what to say when the confessors of Christ are hauled before the courts (Lk 12:11–12). The Johannine equivalent is found in the so-called “farewell discourses” of Jesus in the fourth Gospel. The world is still hostile, or at least ignorant (Jn 14:17, 30; 15:18–19; 16:33). Jesus promises that he will send to his followers the Holy Spirit, who will “indwell” them (14:17). Notice that the terminology bears a forensic cast: the “Spirit of truth” is the “allos Paraklêtos”—another Advocate (14:16). The tables, however, are now turned: besides defending believers, this Counselor functions in prosecuting mode; he will “convict” (elenxei) the world in terms of sin, justice, and judgment (16:8–11). This does not mean that God has abandoned the world that he loved to the point of giving his only Son for the sake of its salvation (3:16–18). Jesus tells Pilate that the very purpose of his own coming into the world was “to bear witness to the truth” (18:37). Jesus sends his disciples into the world in order that their witness may bring the world to believe in his divine mission; and their sanctification in the truth as well as their unity among themselves are to be integral to their testimony (17:17–23). To
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aid their witness, the Holy Spirit will “take the things of Christ” (ek tou emou) and “announce” (anangelei) them (16:14–15; cf. 14:25). What, then, does the Holy Spirit inspire the followers of Christ to say in these situations? The crux of the matter—literally—may reside in the confession of Jesus as Lord. Oscar Cullmann suggested that witness under persecution was the context for the Apostle Paul’s declaration that “No one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).3 Thomas’s acclamation of the risen Christ as “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28) may have been paradigmatic for confession in the face of a persecuting emperor such as Domitian, who took for himself the title “dominus et deus noster” (Suetonius, Domitian, 13). The German theologian and preacher Helmut Thielicke imagined a twentieth-century equivalent in which someone would have shouted “Jesus is Führer” in the midst of a Nazi rally. In the middle of the second century, in an imperial context, Polycarp of Smyrna refused to say “Caesar is Lord,” to “swear by the fortune of Caesar,” or to “curse Christ”: The governor persisted and said: “Swear and I will let you go. Curse Christ!” But Polycarp answered: “For eighty-six years I have been his servant and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme against my king and Savior?” But the other insisted once again, saying: “Swear by the emperor’s genius!” He answered: “If you delude yourself into thinking that I will swear by the emperor’s genius, as you say, and if you pretend not to know who I am, listen and I will tell you plainly: I am a Christian. And if you would like to learn the doctrine of Christianity, set aside a day and listen.” The proconsul declined Polycarp’s offer. As he was about to be burned, “a holocaust prepared and made acceptable to God,” the aged bishop looked up to heaven and voiced what rings like a eucharistic prayer:
3 Oscar Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions, trans. J. K. S. Reid (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949), 25–30.
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O Lord, omnipotent God and Father of your blessed Christ Jesus, through whom we have received our knowledge of you, the God of the angels, the powers, and of all creation, and of all the family of the good who live in your sight: I bless you because you have thought me worthy of this day and this hour, to have a share in the number of the martyrs in the cup of your Christ, for the resurrection unto eternal life of both the soul and the body in the immortality of the Holy Spirit. May I be received this day among them before your face as a rich and acceptable sacrifice, as you, the God of truth who cannot deceive, have prepared, revealed, and fulfilled beforehand. Hence I praise you, I bless you, and I glorify you above all things, through that eternal and celestial high priest, Jesus Christ, your beloved child, through whom is glory to you with him and the Holy Spirit now and for all ages to come. Amen.4 What, more fully, was the content of the Christian witness that might lead to martyrdom, even if not necessarily so? According to Acts 1:8, the risen but not yet ascended Christ promised his disciples: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” The first witness borne at Pentecost in Jerusalem, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was to “the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11). Peter interpreted the descent of the Holy Spirit as a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy concerning a universal outpouring of the Spirit, in a day when “whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:14–21). Addressing himself to the “men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem” (including presumably the visiting “Jews and proselytes”), the Apostle went on to present the foreordained story of Jesus of Nazareth, “a man attested to you by God with many mighty works and wonders and signs,” having been “crucified by the hands of lawless men,” but now raised up by God and established as both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:22–36). Peter’s concluding summons and offer was: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name 4 Herbert Musurillo, ed. and trans., “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 2–21. Cf. Bruno Chenu, The Book of Christian Martyrs (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 36–43.
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of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). And “those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41), who “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). When Peter repeated his recital before the court of the Sanhedrin, he concluded: “We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him”—and “when they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill him” (Acts 5:27–33). In turn, the Apostle Paul also sums up the gospel that he preached to the Corinthians—a delivery of what he himself had received—in terms of Christ’s death and resurrection: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:1–11). This message he had brought to them “not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Holy Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2:1–5; cf. Rom 15:18–19). He recalls to the Thessalonians that “our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thes 1:5), and “you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thes 1:6). In welcoming the message, they had “turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thes 1:9–10). The mention of imitation in affliction brings us to the next stage in our display of witness to Christ under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.5
5 Hans von Campenhausen stressed the christological shaping of the distinctively Christian idea of martyrdom, but he probably overplayed the contrast between the apostles as original “witnesses” to the Resurrection of Christ and the “martyrs” as sharing in Christ’s Passion. See Hans von Campenhausen, Die Idee des Martyriums in der alten Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1936). (Substantially unchanged 2nd edition 1964). The themes of death and resurrection, of suffering and glory, are woven together in the idea and practice of witness from the start and remain so.
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WITNESS UNTO DEATH AND THE IMITATION OF CHRIST The First Letter of Peter was written to encourage the persecuted Christians in Asia Minor: Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. . . . If one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God (1 Peter 4:12–16). Peter presents himself as “a witness of the sufferings of Christ” and expects to “partake in the glory that is to be revealed” (1 Pt 5:1). The risen Christ had predicted to Peter: “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go”—thus showing, says the narrator, “by what death he was to glorify God” (Jn 21:1–19). Christ immediately instructed Peter, “Follow me”; and the Prince of the Apostles did indeed follow his Master in the way of the cross. Peter himself had earlier confessed that he had nowhere else to go, since Jesus alone, the Holy One of God, had the Spirit-filled words of eternal life (Jn 6:61–69). A tradition known to Origen tells that Peter chose to be crucified head downward, and Jerome attributes Peter’s choice to humility at his unworthiness to suffer in the same position as Christ.6 The fourth Gospel records the Apostle John as having stood at the foot of the Christ’s Cross with Mary and the other women (Jn 19:25–27). From the pierced side of Jesus “came out blood and water,” and “he who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you also may believe” (Jn 19:34–35). This event appears to be alluded to, perhaps among other things (say, the 6 Origen is cited by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, III.1 (Patrologia Graeca [PG hereafter] 20:216). Jerome: “A quo [Nerone] et affixus cruci, martyrio coronatus est, capite ad terram verso, et in sublime pedibus elevatis; assesens se indignum qui sic crucifigeretur ut Dominus suus” (De viris illustribus, 1; Patrologia Latina [PL hereafter] 23:638).
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baptism of Jesus), in a complex and otherwise puzzling passage in the First Letter of John: This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has borne witness to his Son (1 Jn 5:6–9). In his great commentary on the Fourth Gospel, Raymond Brown showed himself skeptical of taking John 19:34—a move found already in Chrysostom and Augustine—as the Evangelist’s equivalent to an institution of baptism and the eucharist. Nevertheless, in the case of the Epistle’s concept of “the Spirit, the water and the blood as three ongoing witnesses,” the Spirit may “be pictured as working through baptism and the eucharist”: The logic of the argument is that all Johannine Christians recognize the life-giving powers of the Spirit, of baptism, and of the eucharist; and they should reflect that all three were already symbolized in the outpouring of the Spirit, water, and blood on the cross (John 19:30–35). Thus the sacraments testify to the salvific character of the death of Jesus; and by constituting people as children of God and feeding them with heavenly food and drink, the sacraments are ways in which true believers share in the action by which Christ conquered the world (16:33). If not as a matter of Gospel exegesis, then at least as a matter of Epistle exegesis, and certainly as a matter of theological interpretation, Brown is thus too ready to join Rudolf Schnackenburg in the judgment that “the Spirit is the principle of life from which the two sacraments [of baptism and eucharist] acquire their supernatural power.”7 7 See Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, 1st ed., The Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982), in particular 572–585, 594–599; Brown, The Gospel According to John, 1st ed., vol. 2, 2 vols., The Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 936–937, 446–452. Rudolf Schnackenburg, Die Johannesbriefe, 3rd ed., Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 13 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1965), 261.
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Raymond Brown lists ancient interpreters who link John 19:34 and/ or 1 John 5:6–8 with the sacraments in one way or another, sometimes seeing the water and the blood as references respectively to the first sacrament and to martyrdom, the “baptism of blood” (see Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, and indeed Thomas Aquinas).8 An old liturgical text connects the Passion of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the eucharist in a way that is particularly pertinent to our topic. The fourth-century anaphora in the eighth book of the so-called Apostolic Constitutions, after the narrative of the Last Supper and the offering of “this bread and this cup,” continues: And we beseech you to look graciously upon these gifts set before you, O God who need nothing, and accept them in honor of your Christ; and to send down your Holy Spirit upon this sacrifice, the witness of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, that he may make [apophênêi] this bread body of your Christ, and this cup blood of your Christ; that those who partake of it may be strengthened to piety, obtain forgiveness of sins, be delivered from the devil and his deceit, be filled with Holy Spirit, become worthy of your Christ, and obtain eternal life, after reconciliation with you, almighty Master.9 Here the Holy Spirit, as both the Witness of Christ’s Passion and the consecratory Power in the eucharist, figures both in “anamnesis” and in “epiclesis” (as the liturgiologists say). Note also that the fruits of communion, given through the Holy Spirit, include both becoming “worthy of Christ” and the attainment of “eternal life”—two themes that readily fit with a martyr’s witness. As a Methodist, I may be allowed to recall that John and Charles Wesley, in their Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745), developed the text from Apostolic Constitutions in the following way: Come, Thou everlasting Spirit, Bring to every thankful mind 8 Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2, 951–952. The Epistles of John, 575. For a full consideration of the Fathers on the matter, see Sebastian Tromp, “De Nativitate Ecclesiae ex Corde Iesu in Cruce,” in Gregorianum 13 (1932): 489–527, especially pp. 523–526. 9 Translation from Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed, trans. R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming, 3rd ed. (New York: Pueblo, 1987), 111.
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All the Saviour’s dying merit, All His sufferings for mankind; True Recorder of His passion, Now the living faith impart, Now reveal His great salvation, Preach His gospel to our heart. Come, Thou Witness of His dying, Come, Remembrancer Divine, Let us feel Thy power applying Christ to every soul and mine. . . . (#16)10 For the Wesleys, as hymns 128–157 in the same collection show, the “living faith” was embodied in “the sacrifice of our persons,” as our selfoblation is joined to Christ’s, and all in the strength of the Holy Spirit: Whate’er we cast on Him alone Is with His great oblation one; His sacrifice doth ours sustain, And favour and acceptance gain. . . . (#137, v. 3) Father, on us the Spirit bestow, Through which Thine everlasting Son Offer’d Himself for man below, That we, even we, before Thy throne Our souls and bodies may present, And pay Thee all Thy grace hath lent. O let Thy Spirit sanctify Whate’er to Thee we now restore, And make us with Thy will comply; With all our mind, and soul, and power Obey Thee, as Thy saints above, In perfect obedience and love. (#150) This inclusion of the self-oblation of believers in the self-oblation of Christ is vital, if the “imitation” of Jesus in martyrdom is not to be 10 Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, no. 16; see G. Osborn, ed. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1869), 226. A facsimile of the original edition of the Hymns on the Lord’s Supper—a collection whose ecumenical importance has emerged in the second half of the twentieth century—appeared under the auspices of the Charles Wesley Society, Madison, N.J., 1995.
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seen as some kind of Pelagian “addition” to the redemptive sacrifice of Christ who “through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14). To the theme of martyrdom as the imitation of Christ we now come. Stephen is traditionally given the title of “protomartyr” or “first martyr.”11 Having delivered himself of a history of Israel culminating in “the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered,” Stephen met the rage of his accusers in this way: “Full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.’” And as they were stoning him to death, he prayed “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” and cried aloud “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:54–60). Thereby Stephen, in the act of bearing mortal witness to Christ, transposed into christological key the very words of Jesus on the Cross at Luke 23:46 and 34: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” and “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In his own contexts, the Apostle Paul summoned his readers: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1); “Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:1–2). There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, said Jesus on the eve of his Passion, commanding his disciples also to love one another and thereby share in the character and indeed the very nature of God (Jn 15:9–17; cf. 1 Jn 4:7–11). Self-donation appears to belong to the life of the Triune God both ad intra and ad extra.12 In the early second century, Ignatius of Antioch rushed from Syria to his expected and desired death in Rome. The good bishop considered that he might thereby “not only be called a Christian but found
11 In addressing the Lord, the Apostle Paul speaks of “the blood Stephanou tou martyros sou” (Acts 22:20). 12 See, for example, from two quite different theological camps, D. Lyle Dabney, Die Kenosis des Geistes: Kontinuität zwischen Schöpfung und Erlösung im Werk des Heiligen Geistes, Neukirchener Beiträge zur systematischen Theologie (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997) and David B. Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004).
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to be one. For if I am found to be one, I can also be called one, and be faithful when I am no longer visible to the world. . . . Then I will really be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world will not even see my body” (Ignatius, Letter to the Romans, 2–4). More commonly, martyrdom is not deliberately sought but rather accepted, if it should come, as the last moment in a life of witness.13 The account of Polycarp’s martyrdom, in the middle of the second century, presents him both as an imitator of Christ and as himself an example to be imitated, noting that his witness impressed even the pagans: We are writing to you, dear brothers, the story of the martyrs and of blessed Polycarp who put a stop to the persecution by his own martyrdom as though he were putting a seal upon it. For practically everything that had gone before took place that the Lord might show us from heaven a witness in accordance with the gospel. Just as the Lord did, he too waited that he might be delivered up, that we might become his imitators, not thinking of ourselves alone, but of our neighbors as well. For it is a mark of true and solid love to desire not only one’s own salvation but also that of all the brothers. This then was the story of the blessed Polycarp, who, counting those from Philadelphia, was the twelfth to be martyred in Smyrna; yet he alone is especially remembered by everyone and is everywhere mentioned even by pagans. He was not only a great teacher but also a conspicuous martyr, whose testimony, following the gospel of Christ, everyone desires to imitate. By his perseverance he overcame the unjust governor and so won the crown of immortality; and rejoicing with all the apostles and all the blessed 13 Historically, it was in Asia Minor, sometime between Ignatius and Polycarp, that a terminological distinction emerged between “martyr” and “confessor” (a “witness unto death” as compared to a brave witness that does not end in being killed). See Theofried Baumeister, Die Anfänge der Theologie des Martyriums (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 257–306. The author summarized the arguments of his entire book in “Märtyrer und Verfolgte im frühen Christentum,” Concilium 19, no. 3 (1983). (English language edition, no. 163). Theologically, Karl Rahner stressed the active character of martyrdom as the fruit of a free decision, a faithful conviction, a self-surrender—with Christ and by his grace—into the hands of the living God, and thus the “death of deaths” and the Christian witness; see his “Excursus on Martyrdom” in Karl Rahner, Theologie des Todes, Quaestiones Disputatae 2 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1958), 73–106.
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he gives glory to God the almighty Father and praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, the savior of our souls, the pilot of our bodies, and the shepherd of the catholic Church throughout the world. . . . We pray that you are well, brothers, who live according to the word of Jesus Christ and the gospel (with whom be glory to God the Father and the Holy Spirit), for the redemption of the faithful elect, for in such wise was the blessed Polycarp martyred; and may it be granted to us to come into the kingdom of Jesus Christ following his footsteps.14 In the Gallic persecutions of AD 177 at Lyons and Vienne, the servant girl, Blandina, was among those who “were comforted by the joy of martyrdom, their hope in the promises, their love for Christ, and the Spirit of the Father.” Blandina was not only spiritually but physically and iconically conformed to the scourged and crucified Christ: Blandina was hung on a post and exposed as bait for the wild animals that were let loose on her. She seemed to hang there in the form of a cross, and by her fervent prayer she aroused intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their ordeal, for in their torment with their physical eyes they saw in the person of their sister Him who was crucified for them, that he might convince all who believe in him that all who suffer for Christ’s glory will have eternal fellowship in the living God. But none of the animals had touched her, and so she was taken down from the post and brought back to the jail to be preserved for another ordeal. . . . [T]iny, weak, and insignificant as she was, she would give inspiration to her brothers, for she had put on Christ, that mighty and invincible athlete, and had overcome the Adversary in many contests, and through her conflict had won the crown of immortality. . . . Finally, on the last of the gladiatorial games, they brought back Blandina again, this time with a boy of fifteen named Ponticus. . . . Ponticus, after being encouraged by his sister in Christ so that even the pagans realized that she was 14 “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” 2–3, 16–17, 18–19. Cf. Chenu, The Book of Christian Martyrs, 37, 42–43.
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urging him on and strengthening him, and after nobly enduring every torment, gave up his spirit. The blessed Blandina was last of all: like a noble mother encouraging her children [cf. 2 Mc 7:20–23], she sent them before her in triumph to the King, and then, duplicating in her own body all her children’s sufferings, she hastened to rejoin them, rejoicing and glorying in her death as though she had been invited to a bridal banquet instead of being a victim of the beasts.15 From a region in which Christians have experienced centuries of suffering, sometimes to the point of martyrdom, comes an early twentieth-century instance of the imitation of Christ: A Turkish officer raided and looted an Armenian home. He killed the aged parents and gave the daughters to the soldiers, keeping the eldest daughter for himself. Some time later she escaped and trained as a nurse. As time passed, she found herself nursing in a ward of Turkish officers. One night, by the light of a lantern, she saw the face of this officer. He was so gravely ill that without exceptional nursing he would die. The days passed, and he recovered. One day, the doctor stood by the bed with her and said to him, “But for her devotion to you, you would be dead.” He looked at her and said, “We have met before, haven’t we?” “Yes,” she said, “we have met before.” “Why didn’t you kill me?,” he asked. She replied, “I am a follower of him who said, ‘Love your enemies.’”16
THE SEED OF THE CHURCH AND THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE KINGDOM By the fourth century at latest, tradition has it that all the original Apostles—those appointed by the Lord himself to witness to the 15 “The Martyrs of Lyons,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. Herbert Musurillo, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 72–75, 78–79. 16 See Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 433–444. The stories of some Orthodox martyrs under the Ottoman Empire—some of them converts from Islam—can be found in Norman Russell, “Neomartyrs of the Greek Calendar,” Sobornost 5, no. 1 (1983): 36–62.
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gospel—were martyred.17 “The more you mow us down, the more we grow and produce,” said Tertullian; “the blood of Christians is a seed.”18 Alluding to Tertullian’s dictum in one of its commoner forms—”sanguis martyrum, semen christianorum”—Pope John Paul II remarked that “the Church of the first millennium was born of the blood of the martyrs. The historical events linked to the figure of Constantine the Great could never have ensured the development of the Church as it occurred during the first millennium if it had not been for the seeds sown by the martyrs and the heritage of sanctity which marked the first Christian generations.”19 In fact, few generations have passed without the numbers of the martyrs increasing. Their primary witness has brought many people to the faith. Stories abound across the centuries of missionaries suffering martyrdom at their entry upon new and hostile territories, while soon thereafter a church springs up and thrives. Under aggressively godless regimes in the twentieth century, martyrdoms have—counterproductively for the persecutors— helped to perpetuate the Christian generations.20 At another level, ancient Irish tradition reckoned as a kind of martyrdom the voluntary exile from the beloved homeland for the sake of spreading the gospel in foreign fields, sometimes at the cost of one’s earthly life.21 To this may be assimilated in modern times those missionaries from northern climes who went in numbers to such places as “the white man’s grave” of West Africa, knowing full well the mortality rate among their kind who succumbed to tropical diseases. At another level again, the witness of the ascetical life, itself sometimes viewed in terms of martyrdom, may also yield fruit among others. Even in times of bloody persecution, Origen knew that there was a witness to be borne “not only in public, but also in secret, so as 17 See Ernst Lucius, Die Anfänge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen Kirche, ed. Gustav Anrich (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1904), 141. 18 Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50 (PL 1:603): “Plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis; semen est sanguis Christianorum.” 19 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (November 10, 1994), 37. 20 For Russia in Soviet times see, for instance, Olivier Clément, “Martyrs and Confessors,” The Ecumenical Review 52, no. 3 (2000): 343–350. 21 See Kallistos Ware, “What is a Martyr?,” Sobornost 5, no. 1 (1983)., here p. 16, interpreting the so-called Cambray Homily from c. 700.
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to be able to declare with the Apostle, ‘For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we have behaved in the world with holiness and godly sincerity.’”22 Concerning the ascetic witness of Origen, Eusebius reports that “by setting such an example of the philosophic life to those who saw him, he naturally kindled a similar enthusiasm in many of his pupils, so that even among pagan unbelievers and those who had been to schools and colleges there were persons of distinction who were won over by his teaching. Thanks to him, men like this with all their heart honestly embraced faith in the word of God, and came into prominence in the persecution that broke out at that time, some of them being arrested and finding fulfillment in martyrdom.”23 In his Life of Antony, Athanasius tells how the monk in his cell was “daily martyred by his conscience, doing battle in the contests of faith” (47), “reflecting on the dwellings in heaven, both longing for these and contemplating the ephemeral life of human beings” (45). When the Eastern emperor Maximin persecuted the Church in the early fourth century, Antony left his cell for the city of Alexandria, in order to support the confessors, “suffering in those ministrations . . . like one who had been bound along with them”: “He seemed like one who grieved because he had not been martyred, but the Lord was protecting him to benefit us and others, so that he might be a teacher to many in the discipline that he had learned from the scriptures. For simply by seeing his conduct, many aspired to become imitators of his way of life” (46).24 At yet a different level, questions arise as to whether those killed in a struggle for “social justice”—the definition of which is often controversial—are properly described as “martyrs.” Such cases come to the fore in the March 1983 issue of the journal Concilium, which was dedicated to “Martyrdom Today.”25 Karl Rahner there recognizes that this would be an “expansion” (Erweiterung) of the classical understanding 22 Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom, 21 (PG 11:589), quoting 2 Corinthians 1:12. 23 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, VI. 3 (PG 20:529). 24 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 65–67. 25 J. B. Metz and E. Schillebeeckx, eds. English language edition, no. 163.
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of martyrdom (German edition, pp. 174–176). Much depends on the criteria employed for the discernment of what Pope John Paul II called “the Redeemer’s presence through the fruits of faith, hope and charity in men and women of many different tongues and races who have followed Christ in the various forms of Christian vocation.”26 The gifts of faith, hope, and charity are the “theological virtues” that are owed to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 12:31–13:13). According to St. Cyprian of Carthage, self-sacrificial Christian witness by way of charitable works will be rewarded by a white crown, while a red crown will be added for testimony to Christ through the shedding of one’s blood under persecution.27 With an echo of 1 Thessalonians 5:8 as well as 1 Corinthians 13:13, Augustine calls martyrs “the princes of faith (by their confession), of hope (by their fortitude), and of charity (by the breadth of their love).”28 Apart from their primary witness to Christ and to the Christian faith and life that functions evangelistically in the spread of the gospel, what other functions fall to the martyrs in the life of the Church, particularly with a view to the final Kingdom of God? Their role as examples has already been treated under the heading of “imitation.” I suggest now that they further figure as prophets, as intercessors, as precursors, and as unifiers.29 Their prophetic character was underlined by the French Reformed historian Marc Lods in his study of “confessors and martyrs” as 26 John Paul II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 37. 27 Cyprian, On Works and Almsgiving, 26: “In pace vincentibus coronam candidam pro operibus dabit, in persecutione purpuream pro passione geminabit” (PL 4:644–646). In his “Exhortation to Martyrdom,” addressed to Fortunatus, Cyprian writes: “In the baptism of water is received remission of sins, in the baptism of blood the crown of virtues”; and he hints that the “garments of Christ” to be worn by the martyrs are “the very wool and the purple from the Lamb [cf. Revelation 7:14]” (PL 4:679–680). 28 Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum LXVII, 36 (PL 36:835; CCSL 39:895). 29 Gerhard Ludwig Müller nicely says that the martyr describes “the basic shape of the Christian saint”: “Martyrdom constitutes the original image of Christian sainthood, the contest with evil its paradigm, the assimilation to Christ in the Holy Spirit its goal, and the Eschaton its perspective”; see Gerhard Ludwig Müller, “Der Märtyrer Christi—Grundfigur des christlichen Heiligen,” in Gemeinschaft und Verehrung der Heiligen: Geschichtlich-systematische Grundlegung der Hagiologie (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1986). Müller cites Cyprian to trinitarian effect: “The martyrs [are] full of the Holy Spirit and already, through their suffering, closest to the face of God and his Christ (martyres sancto spiritu pleni et ad conspectum Dei et Christi eius passione iam proximi)” (Epistle 69, 7 [PG 4:417] = Epistle 66, 7 [CCSL 3/C: 441]).
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“successors of the prophets in the Church of the first three centuries.”30 Noting the dictum of Tertullian that “we can suffer for God only if the Spirit of God is in us,” he characterizes the confessors and martyrs as “hommes de l’Esprit,” “people of the Spirit.”31 At a further stage in the history of God with the world, the martyrs prolong the gift of prophecy beyond both the Old Testament and even the first generations of the New. The Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, young North African women martyrs under Septimius Severus (c. 203), were recorded in order to show the Lord’s promise of a great outpouring of the Spirit being fulfilled in the latter days: “Thus no one of weak or despairing faith may think that divine grace was present only among men of ancient times, either in the grace of martyrdom or of visions, for God always achieves what he promises, as a witness to the nonbeliever and a blessing to the faithful.”32 To their pagan persecutors, says Lods, the martyrs bring both the message of salvation and the threat of judgment. To their fellow Christians they bring the example of a courageous faith and the assurance of divine support. Eschatologically, they announce and prepare the establishment of God’s Kingdom in three ways: their victory as soldiers and athletes over the forces of Satan signals the final victory of God over the Enemy; having themselves withstood both the judgment of the world and (by the merits of Christ) the judgment of God, they now sit with God and with Christ; and in that capacity, as themselves redeemed, they share in the work of final redemption. 30 Marc Lods, “Confesseurs et martyrs: Successeurs des prophètes dans l’Église des trois premiers siècles,” in Cahiers théologiques 41 (Neuchâtel and Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1958). 31 Lods, 28-32. Tertullian: “Nos pati pro Deo non possumus nisi Spiritus Dei sit in nobis” (Adversus Praxean, 39; cf. Scorpiace, 9). 32 See “The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 106–109. The accounts were indeed assembled at the Holy Spirit’s directive: “Since the Holy Spirit has permitted the story of this contest to be written down and by so permitting has willed it, we shall carry out the command” (16, pp. 124–125). The final apostrophe reads thus: “Ah, most valiant and blessed martyrs! Truly are you called and chosen for the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord! And any man who exalts, honors and worships His glory should read for the consolation of the Church these new deeds of heroism which are no less significant than the days of old. For these new manifestations of virtue will bear witness to one and the same Spirit who still operates, and to God the Father almighty, to his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom is splendor and immeasurable power for all the ages. Amen” (21, pp. 130–131).
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The appeal to martyrs as intercessors is documented by graffiti in the catacombs, both verbal inscriptions such as “roga pro nobis” and “in mente nos habete” as well as the depiction of “orante” figures.33 The practice is theologically attested by St. Augustine, who distinguishes their case from that of the rest of the faithful departed: “The Church’s rule, known to the faithful, is that when the names of the martyrs are recited at the altar, it is not that the martyrs themselves are being prayed for. Prayer is indeed offered for others of the departed when they are commemorated there. But it would be an insult to pray for a martyr, when we ought rather to be commending ourselves to his prayers.”34 The Protestant Reformers objected to any practice that might detract from the sole mediation of Christ, but it would seem churlish to allow the fact of death—and especially a death undergone as a martyr—to detract from the principle declared by St. James that “the prayer of a righteous person has great power in its effects” (Jas 5:16). The martyrs may, in fact, be said to “adorn” the Church at prayer. Bishop Kallistos points to the sequence of Pentecost and All Saints but one week apart in the Orthodox calendar: The two feasts are seen as closely connected, All Saints being devoted to the consequences that the descent of the Holy Spirit has had upon the life of the Church. It is significant that the special hymns appointed for All Saints Day . . . refer explicitly to martyrdom: With the blood of thy martyrs, O Christ our God, Thy Church is adorned throughout the world, As with purple and fine linen. . . . The feast of All Saints thus proves to be in fact the feast of All Martyrs. The saint par excellence is the martyr.35 It is, at the least, a happy coincidence that, in the liturgical scheme of the West, red is the color of both Pentecost and the feasts of the martyrs, even if the primary symbolic association is with fire in the 33 See, for instance, Lods, “Confesseurs et martyrs: Successeurs des prophètes dans l’Église des trois premiers siècles,” 63–65. 34 Augustine, Sermo 159, 1: “Ideoque habet ecclesiastica disciplina, quod fideles noverunt, cum martyres eo loco recitantur ad altare Dei, ubi non pro ipsis oretur; pro caeteris autem commemoratis defunctis oratur. Injuria est enim, pro martyre orare, cujus nos debemus orationibus commendari” (PL 38:868). 35 Ware, “What is a Martyr?,” 7.
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former case and with blood in the latter (though, in fact, the two need not be so far apart). The status of martyrs as precursors is pictured in the visions that some early martyrs had of their predecessors as having already “finished the course.” They have gone on ahead to the heavenly feast to which, in fact, all God’s people are invited. Blandina, we remember, “hastened to rejoin them, rejoicing and glorying in her death as though she had been invited to a bridal banquet.” At the martyrdom of Papylus and Carpus, in Pergamum (Asia Minor) during the time of emperor Marcus Aurelius, “a woman named Agathonica was standing by, who also saw the glory of the Lord, as Carpus said he had seen it. Realizing that this was a call from heaven, she raised her voice at once, ‘Here is a meal that has been prepared for me. I must partake and eat of this glorious repast!’ . . . And taking off her cloak, she threw herself joyfully upon the pyre. . . . As soon as she was touched by the fire she shouted aloud three times ‘Lord, Lord, Lord, assist me, for you are my refuge.’ And thus she gave up her spirit and died together with the saints.”36 From Numidia (North Africa) and the persecution under Valerian in 257–258 comes a vision where the notion of following the forerunners is even clearer. Just before his death, James, who was to undergo martyrdom with Marianus, not only catches sight of Agapius and others at the heavenly banquet but is actually summoned to join them by a boy messenger who had himself suffered three days earlier: Around his neck was a garland of roses, and in his right hand he was carrying a bright green palm-branch. He said, “Rejoice and be glad: tomorrow you too will dine with us.”37 The martyrs, in fact, may be seen as blazing the trail for all faithful Christians who will one day reach the heavenly destination. The role of the martyrs as potential unifiers is a fresh perception of the modern Ecumenical Movement. The decree Unitatis Redintegratio 36 “The Martyrdom of Saints Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonica,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), in particular pp. 26–9. 37 “The Martyrdom of Saints Marian and James,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 208–209. Saturus, who was martyred along with Perpetua, was granted a vision of the paradise garden that they would enter, and there they “met Jucundus, Saturninus, and Artaxius, who were burnt alive in the same persecution, together with Quintus who had actually died as a martyr in prison.” The newcomers asked the others where they had been; but the supporting angels said to them, “First come and enter and greet the Lord.” Musurillo, 118–121.
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of the Second Vatican Council declared that “Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments for our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren. It is right and salutary—aequum et salutare—to recognize the riches of Christ and the virtuous deeds in the lives of others who bear witness to Christ, sometimes even to the shedding of their blood. For God is always wonderful in his works and worthy of all praise” (4). Pope Paul VI took up the idea in his homily for the canonization of the Catholic Martyrs of Uganda, explicitly mentioning the Anglican martyrs from the same period.38 The Ugandan Catholics and Anglicans commemorate on the same day—June 3—their martyrs at the court of Buganda in 1885–1887.39 On his visit to Rome in October 1967, Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople spoke in St. Peter’s of the cry of the martyrs common to Catholics and Orthodox alike calling for the reconciliation of the churches as a witness to the truth of the gospel: We hear . . . the cry of the blood of the Apostles Peter and Paul, we hear the voice of the Church of the catacombs and of the martyrs of the Coliseum, . . . calling on us to leave no ways and means untried to complete the holy work that has been begun—that of the perfect recomposition of the divided Church of Christ—so that the will of the Lord may be fulfilled, and the world may see the first mark of the Church according to our Creed, namely her unity, shining forth brilliantly.40
38 Pope Paul VI, “Homily for the Canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs” (October 18, 1964), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 56 (1964), 901–912, in particular 906; cf. Paul VI, Address at the Shrine in Namugongo (2 August 1969), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 61 (1969), 590–591. The former homily of his predecessor was recalled by John Paul II in his apostolic letter of November 10, 1994, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, where he wrote that “the witness to Christ borne even to the shedding of blood has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and Protestants” (37). 39 On the Ugandan martyrs, see Chenu, The Book of Christian Martyrs, 152–160. In The Martyrs of Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea Press, 1994),Theo Aerts chronicles the lives and deaths of 333 missionaries and locals, from seven different churches, who were killed during World War II. 40 Towards the Healing of Schism—The Sees of Rome and Constantinople—Public Statements and Correspondence between the Holy See and the Ecumenical Patriarchate 1958– 1984, trans. E. J. Stormon (New York: Paulist, 1987), 172.
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At the meeting of the Faith and Order Commission in Bangalore in 1978, I helped to write a short text on “Witness unto Death.” Given its place in the larger study on “Sharing in One Hope,” it is not surprising that we picked up some pneumatological themes, for those who “have the first fruits of the Spirit” are said to be “saved in hope” (Romans 8:23–25; cf. 5:5; 15:13). The development is fully trinitarian: Jesus the Messiah, consecrated by God and anointed with the Holy Spirit, is the witness to the Father. He proclaims his Father’s reign in this way: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the Lord’s year of favor” (Luke 4:18–19). When his own testimony, which is definitive, is coming to an end, Christ promises and gives to his disciples the same Holy Spirit with which he himself was anointed, in order that they too may bear witness to him, and therefore to his Father, to the ends of the earth, beginning from the very place where his own witness reached its summit in martyrdom. [T]he Christian eucharist is a perpetual sacrament of Christ’s martyrdom in the time before his final return in glory [cf. 1 Corinthians 11:26]. Already in this interval, the risen Christ makes himself present, in the Holy Spirit and by the sacramental sign, in order to conform us to himself, to make us into witnesses of the same God to whom he bore witness in his life, death and resurrection. Our sacramental configuration to Christ in the Spirit means that we put our deepest hope in God alone, in the One who has raised his chief witness from the dead and will be able to do the same for those who faithfully follow Christ in a testimony of which He himself is the pattern, the inspiration and the strength. Sometimes historical circumstances will demand that the Christian witness to the God of Jesus Christ take the form of a martyria in the strongest sense of the term. In these extreme cases, where Jesus has already passed because of the opposition which his testimony provoked, the Christian is called to persevere even to the point
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of death. The history of the Church affords many examples to show that God’s grace will not fail his elect, even in the extremity of their suffering. Some specific ecumenical consequences are drawn, and some recommendations made: In the martyrs the Church discerns Christ himself, the very heart of its faith, beyond all interpretations and divisions. That is why the martyrs of the early Church and some great witnesses in the later history of the Church are the common property of all Christians. In the tapestry of Christian history, the ever-renewed succession of martyrs is the golden thread. This also explains why, in some countries, the churches are engaged in the process of a mutual recognition of the saints, even if they were killed in the course of interconfessional struggles: beyond the inevitable cultural and ecclesiological limitations of their confession of faith it is possible to recognize the absoluteness of the Christ to whom they desired to bear witness. . . . The reading of the acts of the martyrs and their presence in preaching serve to strengthen the churches in their witness today. It is desirable that an ecumenical anthology of both early and modern accounts of martyrdom should be published for the use of the churches, since the recognition of martyrs already transcends confessional boundaries and brings us all back to the centre of the faith, the source of hope, and the example of love for God and fellow human beings. The use of such a book would also strengthen the solidarity of all Christians in prayer and action with those who are in difficult or dangerous situations.41 At the end of the second millennium and looking forward to the third, Pope John Paul II noted that “in our own century, the martyrs have returned, many of them nameless, ‘unknown soldiers’ as it were of God’s great cause. As far as possible, their witness should not be lost to the Church. . . . [T]he local churches should do everything possible to ensure that the memory of those who have suffered martyrdom 41 Faith and Order, Bangalore 1978: Sharing in One Hope, Faith and Order Paper 92 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1978).
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should be safeguarded, gathering the necessary documentation. This gesture cannot fail to have an ecumenical character and expression. Perhaps the most convincing form of ecumenism is the ecumenism of the saints and of the martyrs. The communio sanctorum speaks louder than the things which divide us.”42 In his encyclical letter “Ut Unum Sint,” the pope returned to the ecumenical scope of the communion of the saints, again with special mention of the martyrs: All Christian communities . . . have martyrs for the Christian faith. Despite the tragedy of our divisions, these brothers and sisters have preserved an attachment to Christ and to the Father so radical and absolute as to lead even to the shedding of blood. . . . In a theocentric vision, we Christians already have a common Martyrology. This also includes the martyrs of our own century, more numerous than one might think, and it shows how, at a profound level, God preserves communion among the baptized in the supreme demand of faith, manifested in the sacrifice of life itself. . . . Albeit in an invisible way, the communion between our Communities, even if still incomplete, is truly and solidly grounded in the full communion of the Saints—those who, at the end of a life faithful to grace, are in communion with Christ in glory. These Saints come from all the Churches and Ecclesial Communities which gave them entrance into the communion of salvation.” (83–84) Pope John Paul II himself presided at an ecumenical celebration of the martyrs in the Roman Coliseum in May 2000. The last time I myself saw Pope John Paul II was in November 2004, on the occasion of a special Vespers at St. Peter’s in celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the conciliar decree “Unitatis Redintegratio.” After his final years of suffering from physical infirmities, his face appeared radiant. Here was “strength perfected in weakness” (cf. 2 Cor 12:8–10). Here was a life that had been informed by the Holy Spirit. The ecumenically dedicated Community of Bose in North Italy has taken up—from Faith and Order at Bangalore in 1978 and from Pope John Paul II’s Letters—the task of composing an ecumenical 42 John Paul II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 37.
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martyriology.43 A delicate question in such an effort concerns the sad fact of killings among Christians of diverse confessions. Lukas Vischer, Swiss Reformed theologian and a former director of Faith and Order at the World Council of Churches, put the matter in very pointed fashion in a paper presented to a consultation at Bose in March 2004. Vischer cited not only the sufferings of Waldensians, Hussites, and Huguenots (the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572) at the hands of “Catholics,” but also the persecutions of Anabaptists and Mennonites by the “Reformed.” Can each side now see the others as “martyrs”? Clearly, political and cultural factors played their part in such “inter-confessional” strife, but articles of faith were also involved, and so any “healing” or “reconciliation” of memories must also face—and if possible resolve—the doctrinal differences between the parties. When the Forty [Catholic] Martyrs of England and Wales—from the time of the Reformation—were canonized in 1970, English Protestants were perforce reminded of the 300 of their own number, including Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who were put to death under “Bloody Mary,” the Catholic queen (1553–1558). In his homily at the canonization, Pope Paul VI said this: [We] extend our respectful and affectionate greeting to all the members of the Anglican Church who have come to take part in this ceremony. We indeed feel very close to them. We would like them to read in our heart the humility, the gratitude, and the hope with which we welcome them. . . . May the blood of these Martyrs be able to heal the great wound inflicted upon God’s Church by reason of the separation of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church. Is it not one—these Martyrs say to us—the Church founded by Christ? Is this not their witness? . . . Perhaps we shall have to go on, waiting and watching in prayer, in order to deserve that blessed day. But already we are strengthened in this hope by the heavenly friendship of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.44 43 Produced under the direction of Riccardo Larini of the Bose Community: Riccardo Larini, “Il libro dei testimoni: martiriologio ecumenico,” (Cinisello Balsamo - Milan: San Paolo, 2002). The notion of “witness” is here understood quite broadly. 44 The Canonization of the Forty English and Welsh Martyrs: A Commemoration Presented by the Postulators of the Cause, (London: [Jesuit] Office of the Vice-Postulation, 1970), 58–64.
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A dozen years later, invoking the mutually inflicted martyrdoms, Rowan Williams—a future Archbishop of Canterbury—could write: [I]f Christian belief expresses itself in communities of gift, there must be the possibility of the martyr’s death becoming a “gift” to the martyr’s murderers, the persecuted group becoming a “gift” to its enemies. And this requires two things: that the martyr’s community celebrate the martyr’s memory in such a way that he or she offers grace and hope to those outside; and that the persecuting body remember the martyr in penitence and thanksgiving.45 It is to be noted that, since its Alternative Services Book of 1980, the Church of King Henry VIII now commemorates, on July 6, “Thomas More, martyr, 1535.” According to the insight of St. Filaret of Moscow (1782–1867), it is unthinkable that the walls of separation should reach up to heaven.
CONCLUSION From the earliest days Christians have taken special care of the bodily remains of their beloved martyrs. In the case of Polycarp, their persecutors suspected that their concern for the body meant that “they may abandon the Crucified and begin to worship this man.” Not so: “We could never abandon Christ, for it was he who suffered for the redemption of those who were saved in the entire world, the innocent one dying on behalf of sinners. Nor could we worship anyone else. For him we reverence as the Son of God, whereas we love the martyrs as the disciples and imitators of the Lord, and rightly so because of their unsurpassed loyalty toward their king and master.”46 Despite the medieval abuses castigated by the sixteenth-century Reformers, and in face also perhaps of the thaumaturgical qualities that have been attributed to authentic items, it is possible to interpret the veneration of relics positively as respect for the bodies that have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and for persons who, having “crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts,” have shown in their lives 45 Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984), 56–57. 46 “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” 14–17.
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the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22–25). Such may be a pointer to the awaited work of the Spirit in the transformation of bodies when Christ comes for the general resurrection.47 We know that the Spirit can make dry bones live (Ezek 37:1–14). The general resurrection will bear a trinitarian stamp. Returning where we began, to the Apostle Paul, we recall his declaration: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit which dwells in you” (Rom 8:11). According to 1 Cor 15:22, the Apostle is confident that “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” The “last Adam has become a lifegiving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). In expounding the “mystery” of the general resurrection, Paul adopts the notion of a “spiritual body” (v. 44), the product of a transformation from the perishable to the imperishable, from the mortal to the immortal (vv. 51–57).48 Meanwhile, from beneath the heavenly altar, the “souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and the witness they had borne” cry out, “O Lord, how long?” (Rv 6:9–11). “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come!’” (Rv 22:17). “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rv 22:20).
47 The Council of Trent spoke of “the holy bodies of the martyrs and other saints now living with Christ, which were once living members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, and which will one day be raised and glorified by him for eternal life [quae viva membra fuerunt Christi et templum Spiritus Sancti, ab ipso ad aeternam vitam suscitanda et glorificanda]” (Denzinger-Hünermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1822). 48 For the coming of the final Kingdom of God as the completion of the continuing Pentecost, see Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 358.
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Whose Sins You Shall Forgive . . . The Holy Spirit and the Forgiveness of Sin(s) in the Fourth Gospel Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM
When I was invited to give this lecture, I was asked to speak about the Holy Spirit in relation to my own research interests. I am currently working on the Resurrection Narrative in the Gospel of John in relation to what I consider the most pressing issue in our world today, namely, violence. My overarching question is the following: What are Christians called to be and do in the face of the escalating violence in our world? In this lecture I am focusing on John 20:19–23, the scene in which Jesus appears to his disciples on Easter evening and commissions them to carry on his reconciling work in the world. I will focus on the second half of the pericope, vv. 21–23: Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; any you hold fast are held fast (my translation).1 1 The translation of the Greek text of John 20:19–23 throughout the paper is my own, which is often identical to that of the NRSV. The translation of other texts of the Old and New Testaments is that of the NRSV unless otherwise noted. The NRSV, as well as most others, translates John 20:23b: “if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” I will argue later that this translation is not well grounded in the Greek text and is theologically problematic. At times I will elide texts, supplying only what is necessary for the clarity of the argument, but all such elisions are indicated.
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Some Catholic readers think that this text recounts the institution of the sacrament of Penance in which ordained ministers exercise a power to grant or refuse forgiveness of sins confessed by penitents. As we will see shortly, this text is not about the sacrament of Penance.2 There is nothing in the Greek text about “retaining sins.” And the commission is not given to some specialized group among the baptized. Rather, this text is about the human conundrum of sin and the resources Christians have received, through the paschal mystery of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, for addressing it. I will be suggesting that the conundrum of sin is deeply rooted in violence. So my question is the following: According to the fourth Gospel, what is our mission as Jesus’s disciples and what has the Holy Spirit to do with that mission? The text, prima facie, says that whatever our mission is, it is a continuation of Jesus’s mission from God (“as the Father has sent me, so I send you”). This mission has to do with handling the problem of sin (“if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them”). And carrying out this mission requires the gift of the Holy Spirit (he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”). I will attempt to answer this question by making three interrelated moves in relation to the text. In Part One I will raise two exegetical questions necessary for us to understand John 20:21–23 in its own context in the fourth Gospel, namely: Who are the disciples whom Jesus commissions; and who or what is the Holy Spirit who will empower them to fulfill that commission? In Part Two I will make what might appear at first sight to be a detour through the thought of the French 2 John 20:23 is one of the very few texts in the New Testament that have been the object of a conciliar definition. Council of Trent, (1551) in Session 14, Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. XIV Denziger and Schönmetzer, 1703 and 1710, respectively, defined the ordained as minister of the sacrament of Penance and John 20:23 as the institution of that sacrament. These definitions arose in the polemical context of Trent in its reaction to Reformation positions on the sacraments and there is much reason today, not only theological but also historical, and especially exegetical to apply to these decrees the hermeneutical principle that texts must be read in terms of their intention in their own context and not as if words have some absolute meaning which remains identical through time. Their purpose at the time was to insist, against the Reformers, that there is a sacrament (besides Baptism) through which sins are forgiven and that the Roman Church’s penitential discipline at the time was binding. Trying to root these positions in an institution text from the New Testament was an understandable move at the time but highly questionable today. For a balanced Catholic position on this matter as it touches John 20:23 see Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (xiii-xxi), The Anchor Bible 29A (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 1044–1045.
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philosopher and anthropologist, René Girard. His work on violence and religion will provide a lens or a filter through which to read John’s theology of Jesus’s salvific work in which we are called to share and for which we are empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Part Three I will establish an inclusio relationship3 between John 20:21–23, the Easter evening commissioning scene, and John 1:29–34, the inaugural scene in which Jesus himself is commissioned by God. By this I hope to clarify the meaning of Jesus’s mission and how his mission is both unique to him and foundational for our mission. This will lead to an interpretation of the final verse, “Whose sins you shall forgive . . .” in a way that is historically and exegetically plausible, theologically sound, and, I hope, spiritually challenging in regard to the issue of violence in our world.
MEANING OF “DISCIPLES” AND OF THE “HOLY SPIRIT” Our first two questions, then, are the following: According to the Gospel of John, whom did Jesus commission on Easter evening; and who or what is the Holy Spirit by which Jesus empowers those he commissions?
The Disciples The first verse of our text, John 20:19, says: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, the doors being closed where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” This is the same group to whom Jesus, in the immediately preceding scene, had sent Mary Magdalene to announce the Easter kerygma. Jesus told her to “Go to my brothers and sisters. . . .”4 The next verse 3 Inclusio is a literary device in which a “bookend” structure is created by the use of similar material at the beginning and end of a literary unit often suggesting the meaning of the intervening text. In this case, the intervening text is the public life of Jesus as a whole. 4 The Greek text has πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφούς μου which is usually translated “go to my brothers.” However, Greek, like English, uses the masculine plural both for a group of male siblings and for a mixed gender group of siblings. In other words, ἀδελφούς, like the English
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says that “Mary Magdalene went . . . to the disciples . . .” (see Jn 20:17–18), thus equating the two designations. In the fourth Gospel, “disciple” is a category that includes both women and men, is more extensive than “the twelve,” and is not equivalent to “apostles.” As Raymond Brown points out, “disciple” is the fourth Gospel’s primary category for followers of Jesus.5 Apostles are never mentioned at all in this Gospel. And, although the fourth Evangelist knew of the group of “the twelve” (see Jn 6:67, 70–71) there is no account of a calling of “the twelve” in John and no list of them. Jesus called five disciples at the beginning of his public ministry (Jn 1:35–51). One of them, Andrew’s companion, remains anonymous, and one of them, Nathanael, is not in any list of the twelve anywhere in the New Testament. The term “the twelve” is used in only two texts in John (Jn 6:69–71 and 20:24) and in both instances the term is used to emphasize the greater gravity of sins committed by those disciples. It is never used to suggest that they enjoy special prerogatives or status among the disciples.6 The group to whom Jesus appeared on Easter evening, “the disciples,” certainly included at least some whom we know were among the twelve, e.g., Simon Peter, as well as people prominent among the disciples in John whom we know were not among the twelve, such as “brethren,” can mean either “brothers” or “brothers and sisters.” The argument for translating the term “brothers and sisters” here is not linguistic inclusivity but the fact that Mary Magdalene understands herself as sent to “the disciples,” a group that in John clearly includes women as well as men. 5 See Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979), 191–192 on women as well as men being identified as “Jesus’s own” and as “beloved” disciples. 6 After the multiplication of the loaves in chapter 6, many of Jesus’s disciples turned away and ceased to follow him. When Jesus asked “the twelve” if they also wished to go away and Simon Peter replied, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,” Jesus responded: “‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’ He was speaking of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him” (Jn 6:70–71). The other text occurs right after the commission to forgive sins in chapter 20. The next pericope, 20:24–29, begins: “But Thomas . . . one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came” on Easter evening. So, one reference to “the twelve” is to Judas, a devil, whose betrayal is all the worse because he is one of the twelve, and the other is to Thomas who, contrary to our tendency to regard him as one caught in understandable doubt, the fourth Evangelist presents as categorically refusing to believe the community’s witness to the Resurrection which is the post-Easter equivalent of Peter’s denial of Jesus before the passion. Jesus has to reintegrate Thomas into the group of the disciples in John 20:29 as he has to rehabilitate Peter in 21:15–17. In other words, “the twelve” seems to designate a responsibility which, when not met, makes the offense particularly serious.
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the Beloved Disciple, Nathanael, Martha and Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene and others. Significantly, one of the twelve, Thomas, we know was missing when Jesus commissioned the disciples to forgive sins, and he receives no special commission after his rehabilitation in the following scene. If the commission were intended specifically for the twelve and involved some exclusive power bestowed on them, Thomas would have to have received the commission he missed. Nor can we reason backward that, since this scene was the institution of a sacrament whose administration today is limited to ordained ministers, the Easter evening community consisted of their forebears. The sacrament of Penance in our sense did not exist until about nine centuries later,7 and there is no indication in the Gospels that Jesus “ordained” anyone. Our passage, in short, is about the commissioning of the ecclesial community, the community of Jesus’s disciples. This is important for our purposes because we, the baptized, are that community of disciples, and Jesus’s commission to his disciples in this scene describes our mission today. In Part III we will take up the question of what exactly the ecclesial community, which will eventually be called the Church, is commissioned to do.
The Holy Spirit Our second exegetical question is who or what is the Holy Spirit that Jesus breathes upon his disciples in the commissioning scene, John 20:21–23? John uses a number of terms for this mysterious reality that are equivalent in what they denote but diverse in theological connotation. The Evangelist speaks of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, the παράκλητος (transliterated as Paraclete and variously 7 The earliest provision for any ritual of individual reconciliation, which was not universal or even widespread in the early Church, is referred to in the writings of Hermas around 140. But that extremely severe ritual existed only for the three capital sins (publicly known adultery, apostasy, and murder), and could only be received once after baptism. In fact, many churches during this period maintained that these sins, if committed after baptism, could not be forgiven at all. Sacramental theologian Kenan Osborne summarizes his treatment of the history of the sacrament of Penance during the first nine centuries by saying, “Most Christians spent their entire life without ever receiving the sacrament of reconciliation.” Kenan B. Osborne, Reconciliation and Justification: The Sacrament and Its Theology (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2001), originally published by Paulist, 1990, 82.
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translated as Advocate, Counselor, Helper, Comforter), and each term has particular nuances. Furthermore, the spirit language moves in a complex and highly symbolic semantic field of Old Testament evocations and technical Johannine theological vocabulary. Spirit is associated symbolically with wind and water, with breath and breathing, with creation and re-creation, with the original covenant with Israel and the New Covenant with the New Israel. Given our space constraints, much of this rich spirit material will have to be passed over. Our purpose here is simply to grasp why the Spirit is so important in Jesus’s commissioning of his disciples and in our understanding of what we, as the community of Jesus’s disciples, are commissioned to do. First, “Spirit” is a way of talking about Jesus’s special relationship with God which, by the time this Gospel was written, was understood as divine filiation. When Jesus begins his ministry in the fourth Gospel we are not told that he is baptized by John or tempted by the devil. Rather, John testified that: The one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God (Jn 1:33–34). Later, in 3:34, as John’s ministry is drawing to a close, the fourth Evangelist says that Jesus is the one who speaks the words of God because God has given Jesus the “Spirit without measure.”8 So the Spirit is, first of all, a way of speaking about Jesus as Son of God, the repository of the Spirit in all its fullness, who therefore speaks the words of God and is able to give the Holy Spirit to his disciples making the community his presence in the world. Second, there is a series of spirit texts in John 2, 7, and 19 that establishes a close connection between Jesus, the Jerusalem temple and its bloody sacrifices, the bloody sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. This connection is central to our concern. 8 This is my interpretation of this notoriously difficult text. Grammatically, it could mean that God gives Jesus the Spirit without measure or that Jesus gives the Spirit without measure. I have opted for the first under the influence of my reading of the context but this could be a case of deliberate Johannine ambiguity because the very purpose of Jesus’s plenary possession of the Spirit is his gift of the Spirit to those who believe in him.
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In chapter 2:13–22, at the outset of his public life, Jesus performed a powerful prophetic sign in the temple in Jerusalem during the feast of Passover. He drove out the large animals used for sacrifice and spilled out the Jewish coins that worshipers needed in exchange for their Roman coinage in order to perform legitimately their sacrificial obligations in the temple. Unlike the Synoptics who place this scene at the very end of Jesus’s public life where it functions as a “last straw” in the provocation of the authorities to arrest Jesus, John places this scene at the very beginning of Jesus’s public life as a kind of interpretive dramatization of what he has come to do. John does not present Jesus as “cleansing the temple,” that is, correcting abuses in order to restore the temple to its proper function. In John, Jesus is declaring the end of temple worship through blood sacrifice.9 He is announcing prophetically that all substitutionary sacrifice, all killing to give glory to God, all trafficking in blood to obtain God’s favor or forgiveness would be ended with his death and resurrection. This is clear from the dialogue that follows the action. When the temple authorities demanded a sign legitimating this stunning action Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it” (Jn 2:18). They thought he was predicting the destruction of the physical temple, but the Evangelist intervenes with the explanation that the reader will need to understand Jesus’s death and resurrection as the end of bloody sacrifice: “But [Jesus] was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this” (Jn 2:21–22). The risen Jesus will be a New Temple, as he explains to the Samaritan Woman in chapter 4 when she inquires where true worship is to take place, in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim. In both places God was worshiped by sacrifice. But Jesus tells her that this dispensation is over. In neither place will true worshipers worship the true God who is Spirit. Rather, Jesus will be the “place” where people will worship God, not by sacrificial slaughter as in the temple, but in Spirit and in Truth (see Jn 4:19–24).
9 See Mary Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2001), especially chapter 4, “The Temple of His Body: John 2:13–25.”
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In chapter 7 Jesus again goes to Jerusalem, this time for the Feast of Tabernacles in which water as a source of life plays a major symbolic role:10 On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘From within him shall flow rivers of living water.’“ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified (Jn 7:37–39).11 Jesus here evokes the vision in Ezek 47:1–12 in which the prophet saw an ever more abundant river of living water pouring forth out of the side of the eschatological temple, the New Temple of the New Covenant, giving life to all the world. The Evangelist, again, breaks in to interpret what Jesus is saying through the symbol of water: “Now [Jesus] said this about the Spirit.” Jesus is the New Temple from whose open side will flow living water, that is, the Spirit, but only after Jesus is glorified, which is John’s term for Jesus’s death on the cross. In chapter 19, at the moment of Jesus’s death, we have a symbolic fulfillment of this prophecy. According to John, Jesus’s last words are, “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). And having said this Jesus “handed over his Spirit.” “It is finished” evokes the creation story in Genesis 2:1–2 when God finished the work he was doing, namely the creation of the world including humanity, and rested on the seventh day. But God’s work, begun in creation, was not finally finished until humanity was reunited with God through the sacrifice of Jesus who then rested
10 For a fuller description of the Feast of Tabernacles, the role of water symbolism, and its relation to the Johannine presentation of Jesus as the source of living water, see Craig R. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community, 2nd ed., (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 187–200. In this section Koester shows the relationship between this Johannine text and a number of other Old Testament passages. See also Larry Paul Jones, The Symbol of Water in the Gospel of John, JSNT Supp. Series 145 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), esp. 148–61. 11 For a fuller exegesis of this text and a discussion of the difficult question of whether the one from whom living water will flow is Jesus (my position) or the believer, see Sandra M. Schneiders, “The Raising of the New Temple: John 20:19–23 and Johannine Ecclesiology,” New Testament Studies 52, no. 3 (July 2006): 337–55.
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in the tomb on the seventh day, the Great Sabbath.12 Only then can Jesus, through his glorification, “hand over” his Spirit. The expression “handed over (παρέδωκεν) his Spirit” is not a euphemism for “die.” Jesus, according to John, is not simply expiring. He is literally giving, bestowing his Spirit which, until now, only he possessed in all its fullness. And immediately a soldier pierced Jesus’s side and, out of the body that the evangelist had told us will arise in three days as the New Temple, flows the water and blood (Jn 19:34) that will give life to all the world as did the water which flowed from the side of the temple in Ezekiel’s vision. So, when Jesus on Easter evening “rises up” in the midst of his disciples it is as the New Temple in the midst of the New Israel to inaugurate the New Covenant. He shows them his hands, the sign of his saving death, and his side from which the life-giving water and blood flowed, and bestows on them the Spirit. We were told in chapter 2 that it was not until Jesus was risen from the dead that the disciples were able to understand what he had said about raising the temple in three days. In chapter 7 we were told about the water of the Spirit which would flow from within that living temple once Jesus is glorified in death. Now, the disciples (and the readers) are able to connect the dots and understand that, through the bloody death and bodily resurrection of Jesus, a whole new order of reality, a New Creation, is coming into being. The community is being constituted as a New People of God in whose midst is the New Temple, the risen Jesus. Third, chapters 13–17 of John’s Gospel comprise a series of discourses13 by Jesus in which he prepares his disciples for his “going away.” Soon, they will see him physically no longer but “[i]n that day 12 In John 5 when Jesus is challenged by the authorities because he healed a paralyzed man on the Sabbath, he defends his action by saying, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” In other words, God’s work, of which the Jews saw the Sabbath rest as signifying the end, was, in fact, not finished and would not be until Jesus rests from the work of recreation after his death. That his questioners understood the significance of what Jesus was saying is attested by the next verse: “For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God” (Jn 5:17–18). 13 Most scholars, though not all, believe that there is more than one discourse in this fivechapter section: i.e. an introduction, two discourses to the disciples, and the long prayer of Jesus to his Father in chapter 17. This question of composition is not significant for our purposes here.
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you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:20 [NAS translation]). This mutual indwelling of Jesus and his disciples is effected by the gift Jesus will give them from the Father, or the Father will give them in Jesus’s name, which Jesus calls “the Paraclete” or the “spirit of truth.” The Paraclete, as Raymond Brown beautifully wrote, is the Holy Spirit in a special role, namely, as the presence of Jesus after Jesus has gone to the Father.14 The Paraclete has a number of functions among the disciples, but the one that is most important for our purposes has to do with understanding Jesus’s violent death at the hands of his persecutors. Jesus predicts that his disciples will share his fate. They will be hated and violently persecuted by the world as he was (see Jn 15:18–19). Jesus warns that “an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God” (Jn 16:2) just as those who kill Jesus think they are honoring God. This mistaken connection between bloody sacrificial violence and the worship of God is precisely what Jesus will bring to an end by his own death and resurrection. When the Paraclete comes, Jesus says, he will act as the defense attorney for the persecuted. The Paraclete will do for the disciples what he does in relation to Jesus’s death and resurrection, namely, reveal the truth about what is really going on under the mythical disguise of sacred violence, of giving glory to God by the murder of a scapegoat. The Paraclete will prove the world wrong about sin, about justice, and about judgment (Jn 16:7–11), that is, about the whole sacrificial system of judging and killing sinners in order to restore unity and peace in society and between society and God. The Paraclete will reveal that killing Jesus was not a religious sacrifice that gave glory to God and saved the Jewish nation, but was a vicious lynching carried out under the prompting of Satan, the false “prince of this world.” Executing Jesus, the quintessential expression of rejecting the revelation of the God of love in Jesus, is not only not pleasing to God; it is the real sin. Indeed, as we will see, it is “the sin of world” that Jesus came to take away. Furthermore, murdering Jesus was not a restoration of
14 See Brown, The Gospel According to John (xiii-xxi), Anchor Bible 29A, 1141. This remark occurs in Brown’s Appendix V on “The Paraclete,” 1135–1144, which retains its value even four decades after its composition.
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justice by expiating sin through the death of the sinner. The real justice was precisely God’s vindication of Jesus through resurrection. Finally, the judgment they thought they had rightly rendered against Jesus the blasphemer will be revealed as false judgment. The true judgment falls on Satan, the “original liar,” who is revealed as the “murderer from the beginning,” the one orchestrating this and all sacralized killing (see Jn 8:44). This role of the Paraclete/Spirit in unmasking the evil and futility of the sacrificial system for reconciling humans with God and with each other will be key to understanding the alternative to sacrifice which Jesus will inaugurate on Easter night by the gift of the Spirit and the commission to forgive sins. A fourth and final clue to the meaning of the Holy Spirit in our passage comes from the Old Testament resonances we hear in the Easter evening pericope. The Greek word in this text for Jesus’s action of “breathing on” his disciples as a way of gifting them with the Holy Spirit is ἐνεφύσησεν (ἐμφυσάω), a New Testament hapax legomenon, that is, a word that occurs nowhere else but here in the whole New Testament. It occurs only twice, once in Genesis and once in Ezekiel, in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament.15 Because it is such a rare word in the Old Testament it would immediately evoke the right associations for John’s community reading or hearing this narrative. “Breathed on” occurs for the first time in the Old Testament in Gn 2:7 where God breathed into the face of the human creature, the ἄνθρωπος created from lifeless clay, the breath of life and the ἄνθρωπος became “a living being” (Gn 2:7). The second occurrence is in Ezekiel 37, the famous dry bones passage. God shows the prophet a vast valley of dead bones, the decimated house of Israel whose unfaithfulness to the Covenant has brought them to total ruin. At God’s command Ezekiel prophesies to the bones and they begin to come together to form skeletons which are then covered with flesh 15 Actually it occurs also in Wisdom 15:11 (ἐμπνεύσαντα) in a reference to the Genesis event and in I Kings 17:21 (ἐνεφύσησεν) where it is probably a (deliberate?) mistranslation of the Hebrew which means “stretched” but carries, in this narrative, the same sense of “giving life.” So substantively, there are only two uses: creation of humanity and recreation of the house of Israel.
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and skin. But they are zombies, the walking dead, because there is no breath in them. Then God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath or the wind or the spirit (breath, wind, and spirit are the same word in Greek: πνεῦμα) and the spirit breathes into the dead house of Israel and they come to life; they rise up as a new people (v. 10). With this recreated Israel God will make a New Covenant: I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary [or temple] among them forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations shall know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary [or temple] is among them forevermore (Ezek 37:26–28).16 The scene on Easter evening picks up every element of this promise of the New Covenant to a New Israel. Jesus rises up in their midst as the new temple predicted in John 2 and greets them with “Peace to you.” He gives them his Spirit predicted in John 7 and handed over in John 19 by means of which he will dwell with them always, being their God as the community will be his people. The New Covenant promised repeatedly in the Old Testament is realized when the Risen Jesus returns to his own to establish them as his ongoing presence among the nations forevermore. In summary, then, the Holy Spirit in John is the Spirit of Jesus, the principle of his divine sonship which he came into the world to share with all who would believe in him (see Jn 1:12–13). His public life unfolds as a progressive revelation of what the Spirit, who will be poured forth from the New Temple of Jesus’s body when he is glorified on the cross, will be and do for his community. The Spirit will be a stream of life-giving water, a defender when they are being sacrificed as Jesus was, and a revealer of where true justice lies and why human violence can never bring it about. The Spirit will make them a New 16 The LXX has τὰ ἅγιά μου which is translated “sanctuary” but is equally well translated by “temple.” But particularly important for the connection between this passage and the Gospel of John is the use in the LXX of the Ezekiel passage of ἡ κατασκήνωσίς μου for “my dwelling place.” In the Prologue (1:14) ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν describes the Word made flesh taking up his “dwelling” among humans.
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People of God, a place where the presence of Jesus will be encountered as the presence of God once was in the Temple of Jerusalem. The Spirit that Jesus gives them will enable them to find another way to create justice and peace in this world, a non-violent way of reconciliation that will consist in extending to all people, through forgiveness of sins, the peace Jesus brings to them and breathes into them.
RENÉ GIRARD AND FOLLOWERS ON RELIGION AND VIOLENCE We turn now to the theory of René Girard and his biblical and theological colleagues which will provide a lens through which to interpret John’s presentation of Jesus’s saving work which he commissions his disciples to continue and make effective throughout time and space. René Girard is a French scholar, born in 1923, who began his academic career in medieval cultural studies. He has become best known for his interdisciplinary studies in literature, cultural anthropology, and religion. Girard discovered in literature, especially in the Greek tragedies and the works of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, an anthropological pattern that he, and those who have followed him, believe is virtually universal, namely, the intimate connection by means of violence between religion and culture. It is a theory about the use of scapegoating sacrifice, that is, of violent religious ritual, to keep cultures from self-destructing. Good (i.e., sacred) violence, the killing of the scapegoat for the glory of God, is the means of keeping bad (i.e., social) violence under control. Biblical scholars concerned with the issue of violence in both Old and New Testaments, and theologians concerned with the violence in the substitutionary atonement theory of redemption17 saw the significance of Girard’s thought for their fields.18 It is important to realize that Girard’s theory, like other major 17 For an excellent study of the relationship of Girard’s theory to a theology of the cross, see S. Mark Heim, Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006), 64–104 and throughout the book on violence in Scripture, and pp. 297–329 on Anselm’s penal substitutionary theology of atonement which has held sway in traditional soteriology since the Middle Ages. 18 Some of the major figures in the biblical and theological academy who explicitly use Girardian theory in their work are James Alison, Gil Bailie, Robert Hamerton-Kelly, S. Mark Heim, Raymund Schwager, and more recently Rowan Williams.
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theories in fields like psychology or sociology, is not really “his”— something he invented. It is something he discovered in the material he was studying. What we owe theorists like Jung, Weber, or Girard, is not the truth of the theory (which has to be determined by its explanatory power) but its discovery and explication. How we use such theory depends on our own ability to see connections between the theory and our own fields of inquiry. In my case, I have found Girard’s theory extremely helpful in dealing with the question of how Jesus’s violent death, which can only be seen as evil, can be understood as saving the world and how we, his followers, can participate in that saving work in a non-violent way. I will first synthesize Girard’s very complex thought19 and then exploit the synthesis in relationship to a single problem, albeit a very central one, namely the “paradox of the Cross.”20 Feminists, liberation theologians, post-colonial thinkers, as well as students of such unspeakable human tragedies of violence as slavery and the Holocaust have charged, in ever more convincing and disturbing ways in recent decades, that the Christian teaching that we are saved by the violent death of Jesus has contributed to the justification of violence in society and to the effort by oppressors to render victimized people passive in the face of their suffering.21 The paradox of the Cross is that immeasurable good, namely, the salvation of the world, was brought about by something that was unqualifiedly bad, namely, the murder of Jesus. How is it possible that a totally evil cause produced an infinitely good effect? And how do we explain the fact that a good God either decreed Jesus’s death, which was evil, or at least approved of it? The notion that God was somehow pleased, or pacified, or rendered benevolent toward sinful humanity by an act of sheer evil, namely, the murder of God’s own Son carried out by God’s permission, is increasingly experienced as a 19 For a more detailed summary of Girard’s thought see Michael Kirwan, Discovering Girard (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley, 2005) or James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998), chapter 1 “René Girard’s Mimetic Theory.” 20 I will be particularly dependent in this section on the work of Heim, Saved from Sacrifice. See especially chapter 4, “The Paradox of the Passion: Saved by What Shouldn’t Happen” on this subject. 21 See Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 20–33 on the liberationist challenge and critique of mainstream theologies of the Cross.
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theological brick wall. More descriptively perhaps, it is a theological/ spiritual Gordian Knot, a problem that cannot be solved on its own terms. Every intellectual move toward a solution seems to make the problem worse. Incomprehension before this contradiction is exacerbated by the fact that the Passion of Jesus is often presented as motivation for innocent victims to bear their sufferings in mute imitation of the victimized Jesus. The understanding of two interconnected dynamics is at the heart of Girard’s thesis. The first dynamic is mimetic or imitative desire which causes social and cultural breakdown, and the second is scapegoating sacrifice which provides the religiously sanctioned remedy for the social breakdown. Social reconciliation is achieved through the exile, punishment, or death of the victim. Put very simply, we find in literature of all ages and cultures and in our own experience at every level that we humans do not simply desire things because we see them as good. Rather, we learn to see something as desirable because someone else has or desires that object. The mother evinces infinite delight as she tastes the spoonful of orange mush and the baby opens wide its mouth to share in the delicacy of mashed carrots. The child in the playpen drops the toy with which he was contentedly playing when he sees his companion enjoying her toy, which he must now have. The teenager must have a particular brand of sneakers only because that is what the coolest kid in the class wears. The same dynamic drives adults’ competition over houses, cars, jobs, and salaries. The fuel of the advertising business is mimetic desire which stimulates the compulsion to acquire what the model possesses. Envious greed leads to rivalry, competition, and eventually conflict. Business and military conflicts evince the same dynamic of envy leading to rivalry which escalates into violence, overt or covert, in the effort of each to obtain what some other has. But winning only incites retaliation against the victor which keeps the cycle of violence going. Imitative desire and the resulting acquisitive rivalry in a society leads inevitably toward the war of all against all as everyone struggles to be at the top of the mimetic pile-up. As violence escalates, social chaos threatens the survival of the group. Enter the second dynamic in Girard’s theory, the remedy for contagious violence, namely,
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scapegoating sacrifice. Something must be done to divert everyone from mutual destructiveness and channel their violent energy into a common and unifying effort. The age-old and universal remedy for social chaos, for the disunity of “all against all,” is the unification of “all against one.” Nothing unites like a common enemy. The scapegoat is simply the designated enemy. The scapegoat ritual has a simple structure and dynamism. What is vitally important is that it really does work. It is effective. In the group convulsed by mimetically inspired social chaos someone, by the mere fact of being somehow different from the majority, is identified as responsible in some way for the social disunity. The coming together to expunge that foreign element restores peace. Almost any kind of difference will do: skin color, sexual orientation, a speech defect, poor grooming, “uncool” clothes, a foreign-sounding name, “nerdy” glasses, living in the wrong part of town, even just being “new” in the neighborhood or school yard. The point is that someone must be responsible for all the trouble in the group and it cannot be anyone like “us” because that would suggest that “we” might be the source of our problem, that “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”22 As antagonism toward the scapegoat spreads through the crowd it becomes a mob, a single collectivity moved by motives for which no one is responsible—at least until the next morning when some individuals begin to wonder how they ever could have participated in “what happened” (not “what we did”) last night. But the renewed peace that miraculously descends on the group now that the victim is gone proves that the destruction of the scapegoat was something that “needed to happen.” Everything is back to normal. The scapegoat principle is vindicated: “it was expedient that one person die to keep the whole group from perishing” (cf. Jn 11:50). Historically, and still in many societies, the scapegoat mechanism is orchestrated within the context of religious sacrifice. The victim is offered to the god or gods whom the people have somehow offended, and the deity, pacified by the offering, responds by restoring peace
22 This remarkable line was written by cartoonist Walt Kelly (1948–1975) for an antipollution poster published in 1970. It may be one of the most subversive lines in western literature.
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and unity to the community. Once the sacrificial murder has united the people, they are able to disguise the violence and injustice of the victimization by creating a myth or sacred story which retold the event not as murder, but as sacrificial service of the divine necessary for the survival of the people. They then create a ritual or sacred drama which allows the sacrifice to be re-enacted, through either bloody or unbloody repetition, whenever social chaos, infertility, crop failure, plague, or war makes renewal necessary. The function of sacrificial myth was to render the scapegoat’s victimization invisible either through vilification of the scapegoat as one who deserved to die, or through posthumous exaltation of the victim as the selfless savior of the people who willingly went to death for them. In some cases the myth began as vilification and was later transmuted into divinization. Jesus enraged his opponents by pointing out to them how often they had killed the messengers God sent to them and buried them in unmarked graves, thus bringing together the group which had been fractured by the prophet’s troublesome proclamation that God was not pleased with sacrifices but demanded justice. Later the vilified and murdered prophet was acclaimed as a voice crying in the wilderness even as the descendants of the murderers claimed that they would never have done what their ancestors did. Jesus, of course, was warning them that they were already plotting to do to him precisely the same thing they had done to the prophets before him (see Mt 23:29–39 and Lk 11:47–51). Scapegoating is always a temporary fix. It has to be renewed again and again because the cure is identical with the disease. Violence is used against violence begetting more violence. It is well known, for example, that jurisdictions in which capital punishment is used against murderers have higher murder rates than those in which capital punishment is not used. Wherever one might be on the political spectrum, or how one feels about the Bush-Cheney presidency, it is easy to discern this mimetic desire and scapegoating mechanism in the cultural upheaval in the United States following the 9/11/01 terrorist attack in New York City. Society was thrown into chaos by the attack on the Twin Towers. We were all glued to the television, feeding our terror on endless re-runs of the hijacked planes crashing into the towers, and the feverish speculation of pundits about who was responsible. In such a case of social
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destabilization someone must be responsible or the whole society remains vulnerable to forces totally beyond its control. The scapegoat was quickly identified, a man who was different from us religiously, racially, culturally, linguistically. We were told that he hated us because he did not share our love of freedom and our respect for human rights, that he was insanely jealous of our high standard of living and civic virtue. He was a madman possessed of weapons of mass destruction which, unlike us (the only nation that, in fact, has ever used weapons of mass destruction on a civilian population), he was prepared to use. The traumatized society, feeling ultimately vulnerable, united quickly in a single-minded march to war to hunt him down regardless of the human “collateral damage” incurred in the process. It was expedient that one man die rather than that the whole nation perish. His capture unleashed the socially unifying euphoria of “mission accomplished,” ecstatic cheers as his statue was toppled presaging his imminent personal destruction for guilt already established beyond a shadow of a doubt on the basis of evidence we were assured existed even though it could not be, and never was, found. And in the surge of social unity expressed in flying flags and yellow ribbons it was essential to suppress any trace of dissent, to silence any “unpatriotic” voice that might suggest that beneath it all could be mimetic desire for oil, or that our own cultural imperialism might have provoked a desire for revenge. The newly unified society did not address the truth or falsity of such suggestions. They were simply rejected out of hand, not as untrue but as “unpatriotic,” as taking the side of the scapegoat and thus weakening the newfound unity of all against one. Of course, and this is quite instructive, this particular instance of scapegoating fizzled because someone got to the scapegoat before we did. The sacrificial ritual could not be carried to completion. This left us in a state of widespread indecisiveness and mounting disunity as some people called for re-evaluation of the whole project while others called for “staying the course” because, they assured us, there was an even worse scapegoat on the loose. A major obstacle to socially effective scapegoating today, for reasons I hope will become clear, is that for Christians the whole dynamic has lost its legitimating basis in religion precisely because of the execution of Jesus, the innocent scapegoat.23
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No great stretch of imagination is necessary to see how this Girardian analysis applies to the passion and death of Jesus. Both the civil and the ecclesiastical establishments in Jerusalem were in chaos on the eve of Passover that year. Pilate was the representative of the Roman Empire in a fractious Jewish province that was prone, especially at religious holidays, to riot.24 Caiaphas was the Jewish high priest, basically kept in power by that Roman governor. Jesus was a provincial preacher whose teaching challenged both the political and religious power structures and thereby stirred up the Jewish people. If the people got out of order, for any reason, Pilate would turn against the Jewish leadership whose job was to keep the people pacified. As Jews from all over, domestic and foreign, poured into the Holy City for Passover, both Empire and Temple were sitting on a social powder keg.25 Jesus was “different” enough to make him an ideal scapegoat. He was from the Galilean “boonies,” despised by the Jerusalem religious pure bloods. He was very possibly illegitimate. He was in his thirties and not married, which could have several unsavory explanations. Someone had heard him say something threatening about the temple, although they could not remember exactly what, and his claiming to be God’s Son was certainly blasphemous. Who needed a trial? Obviously, the riot simmering in the streets was due to this “odd man out,” this messianic pretender. Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent, and in John’s Gospel announces it three times.26 So did Caiaphas, who declared to his colleagues the real reason Jesus had to be stopped: If he was allowed to go on the whole world would follow him and the Romans would wipe out the Jewish nation (see Jn 11:48). The scapegoat principle was clearly enunciated by Caiaphas, “It is expedient that one man die rather than that the whole nation perish” (see Jn 11:50 and 18:14). 23 Perhaps the best analysis of how the Cross of Jesus illuminates and makes ever less compelling the argument for sacrificial victimization in our time is Gil Bailie’s Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroad, 2004), originally published in 1999. 24 Pontius Pilate was prefect or governor of the Roman Province of Judea from 26–36 C.E. 25 For an illuminating exposition of this situation as it engulfed Jesus in his passion, see Warren Carter, Pontius Pilate: Portraits of A Roman Governor (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003). 26 John 18:38; 19:4; 19:6.
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Pilate and the Jewish elders play off each other in the scenes in John 18–19. They whip the Passover crowd into a mindless mob screaming for the death of someone against whom most have not even heard charges, and for the release of Barabbas, already convicted of the very crimes of which Jesus stands accused. The scapegoat is offered to them, dressed as a fool, so brutalized that he in no way resembles their respectable religious selves (see John 19:5). The path to civil and religious peace clearly lay in the unification of all against one. A few hours later, after the lynching on Calvary, calm descends over the land. In all three Synoptic Gospels one of the executioners acknowledges that their victim was innocent, a Son of God (Mt 27:54; Mk 15:39; Lk 23:47). Luke says the crowd dispersed beating their breasts (Lk 23:48). Pilate is relieved to get Jesus’s body out of sight before people come to their senses and realize what they have done. The religious go “off to church,” home for the solemn celebration of Passover, while the Roman soldiers wash their hands of another gruesome tour of duty, just following orders. The important thing is to relish the restored order, the closure, that the scapegoating sacrifice has accomplished and try not to think too much about the details.
THE MEANING OF JESUS’S COMMISSION OF HIS DISCIPLES In this third part we will read the paschal mystery of Jesus through the lens of Girardian mimetic theory in order to understand how his violent death and resurrection brought about the salvation of the world, and how his disciples’ mission to forgive sins is a non-violent continuation of that saving mystery. The scene at the end of the Gospel in which Jesus sends his disciples as his Father had sent him forms an inclusio with the scene at the very beginning of the Gospel in which Jesus is commissioned by God.27 In John 1:29–34 emissaries from Jerusalem were sent to ask John the Baptizer, who was attracting a crowd, who he was, what he was doing, and by what authority. John emphatically denied being Elijah, the Mosaic prophet, or the messiah. He was merely a voice crying in the wilderness, one sent to bear witness to someone coming after him whose status far surpassed his own.
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The next day [John] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! . . . [T]he one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God” (Jn 1:29–34). John’s witness to Jesus at this inaugural moment, seen in light of the commissioning of his disciples in John 20:19–23, shows the continuity between his vocation and theirs: here the Spirit descends and remains on Jesus, empowering him for his mission to “take away the sin (singular) of the world.” When he has accomplished this great work through his life, death, and resurrection Jesus will “baptize,” that is empower, his followers with the Holy Spirit for their mission to “forgive sins (plural).” So we need to ask three questions: 1) What is the “sin of the world”? 2) How does Jesus take away the sin of the world? 3) How does the empowerment of the disciples to forgive sins continue Jesus’s salvific work? Central to answering these questions is the identification of Jesus by John as the “Lamb of God” (ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ), a mysterious title that appears nowhere else in the New Testament.28 Scholars recognize three Old Testament passages as possible background for this title:29 the “sacrifice of Isaac” in Genesis 22:1–20 in which God provides the lamb for Abraham’s holocaust; the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:7–8 who is silent like a lamb led to slaughter;30 the Paschal Lamb 27 See note 2 above on the literary device of inclusio. 28 Jesus is associated with the Paschal Lamb in 1 Cor 5:7 which refers to Christ as τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν (our Passover [lamb or meal or feast]), and in 1 Pt 1:19 which says that we were ransomed τιμίω αἵματι ὡς ἀμνοῦ ἀμώμου καὶ ἀσπίλου Χριστοῦ (with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish), which is a clear evocation of the Paschal lamb. There is no reference to the “lamb of God.” 29 C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 176–177 gives most of the relevant exegetical data. For a more developed interpretation of the symbol of the “Lamb of God,” see C. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 216–24. 30 The “Songs of the Suffering Servant” are poems describing the scapegoat death of an innocent victim. The four songs are Is 42:1–7; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; and 52:13–53:12. The Servant, like other “suffering just ones” in the Old Testament such as Jonah, Susannah, and
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whose blood saves the Hebrews in Egypt and whose flesh becomes their Passover meal (Ex 12:1–14). This Old Testament typology and symbolism will illuminate our investigation of Jesus’s mission.
The “Sin of the World” First, what is the “sin of the world” that Jesus came not just to forgive, but to definitively take away? Jesus, in the Last Supper discourses, says that the Paraclete will convict the world of sin (in the singular), that is, will reveal the true nature of sin. Jesus says that the world, meaning those under the influence of Satan, is wrong about sin because it thinks that Jesus is the sinner, a blasphemer whose elimination will give glory to God. But the real sin, which the Spirit of Truth will reveal, is that “they (the world) do not believe in me” (John 16:9), that is, in Jesus. In his great final prayer to God Jesus says, “[T]his is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). So “eternal life,” or salvation, is to believe in God who is revealed in Jesus, and its opposite, “the sin,” is to refuse to believe in Jesus and thus reject God. What Jesus reveals is not some abstract theological proposition to which people are obliged to give intellectual assent, but that Jesus and the Father are one, something readily visible in the signs Jesus had been doing which are clearly beyond human power (see Jn 10:37–38): opening the eyes of a man blind from birth, healing a man lame for 38 years, feeding a huge crowd of hungry people with five loaves and two fish, raising someone long dead. The person who sees Jesus sees the Father, that is, sees God at work in the world (see Jn 12:45 and 14:9). In other words, Jesus is the manifestation of God precisely as love: “God so loved the world as to give the only Son” (Jn 3:16). Jesus says to the Samaritan woman about himself, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who is speaking to you . . .” (Jn 4:10). God is love expressed in the Gift who is Jesus. Jesus manifests God’s identity as love by doing the loving works of God in their midst (see Jn 10:37–38; 14:11). The “sin the Wisdom Hero, suffers unjustly and, in the case of the Servant, is killed, but ultimately vindicated by God, and his suffering plays some mysterious role in the salvation of his people, Israel.
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of the world” is not to accept that Gift, not to believe that God is love. Humans refuse that gift, quite simply, when they refuse to love, when they choose other paths to “life” and security, such as rivalry and violence. “The world” includes everyone involved in the Good Friday murder: Pilate the Gentile, the leaders of the Jews, the disciples of Jesus who betray, deny, and abandon him, the Jewish mob screaming for his blood, the Roman soldiers who execute him. When the world seizes the Gift of God and crucifies him, they manifest the true nature of the “sin of the world,” that is, the rejection of the God who is love. The story of the binding of Isaac (Gn 22:1–20) probes this perversity of humanity in the face of God’s gift of gratuitous love. In the Old Testament, the holocaust or whole burnt offering was the symbol of wholehearted love of God. God must wrench humanity free from the conviction that true holocaust requires destruction of that which is offered, that equates love with violence. You will recall that God told Abraham to take his only beloved son Isaac, the gift of God through whom the covenant would be extended to all people, to a mountain God would show him, and there offer Isaac as a holocaust. Abraham understands that to respond with his whole heart to God’s whole-hearted love he must destroy God’s gift. Abraham places the wood for the sacrifice on Isaac, the intended victim, and ascends the mountain. On the way, Isaac says to his father, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the holocaust?” Abraham replies, “God himself will provide the lamb for the holocaust, my son” (Gn 22:7–8). As Abraham raises the knife to slay Isaac, God stops him and provides a sheep caught in the thicket to replace Isaac as the symbol of Abraham’s self-gift. A major point of this story— which at this point loses all interest in the sheep or the slaughter and turns to the relation between God and Abraham—is that God does not desire human sacrifice. God prizes the total self-gift, the holocaust of the heart expressed in Abraham’s willingness to offer even his son, that responds to God’s total self-gift to humanity expressed eventually in the gift of God’s son. But gratuitous slaughter of what is precious, of God’s gift, is not the appropriate way to give glory to God. Like Isaac, Jesus appears as the beloved Son of his Father, the gift of God, the holocaust of God’s heart, the Lamb of God provided by God to take away the sin of the world. John alone among the Gospels
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tells us that Jesus carried by himself to the mount of sacrifice the wood upon which he would die (Jn 19:17). The difference, of course, is that no substitute victim can be provided for Jesus because he is the victim, not of an agonizing father who thinks he is doing God’s will, but of scapegoating human violence. He will go to his death as the innocent Suffering Servant, not because God wills his death, but because we do. Jesus’s murder has to be read in light of the meaning of the Isaac story, namely, God does not desire human sacrifice. God did not send Jesus into the world to be murdered. Rather, God gave the only Son to the world, as God gave Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, that everyone might have eternal life through him (see John 3:16). By giving the only Son, God has indeed supplied the Lamb, as the father of the Prodigal Son provided the inheritance that would be squandered. It is human malice, not God’s will, that turns God’s gift into the bloody execution of an innocent victim. As God was pleased with Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only Son, so God is pleased with Jesus’s willingness to carry God’s love for the world into the very heart of human evil. But God wills neither the death of Isaac nor that of Jesus.
Jesus’s Death to “Take Away the Sin of the World” How, then, does Jesus’s death “take away the sin of the world,” humanity’s refusal to accept that God is love revealed in God’s gift of the only Son? Mark Heim in his remarkable book, Saved from Sacrifice, says that two features of Jesus’s death make it possible for him to confront and defeat, once and for all, the sacrificial dynamic, the scapegoating mechanism of reconciliation through violence by the collective murder of an innocent victim. Jesus had to be simultaneously a victim like all other scapegoats and completely unique. His death had to be real, part of the endless series of murders he came to stop, not some magical escape that was sui generis in relation to the deaths of other innocent victims. And it had to be the once and for all sacrifice, so that reconciling violence need not and must not be used ever again. It had to end the need for ceaseless repetition that is built into the scapegoat ritual. Jesus was one more victim like all the others in the line that stretches back to Abel, the innocent victim of Cain’s mimetic rivalry. If Jesus
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were not like other scapegoated victims, framed and lynched, helpless to prevent his murder for crimes of which he was innocent, his death would not be relevant to theirs. Jesus really went through what all such victims go through and he truly died. And while he freely accepted what happened to him, as do many of the bravest and noblest of humanity’s victims, it could only have been prevented by a miracle, something which is not accessible to other victims. He prayed as many victims do, to be spared his suffering, but prayer in such circumstances often cannot save the victim from resolute human evil. Jesus’s prayer, like that of all the others, did not save him. But at the same time Jesus was not like other victims in two important respects. First, Jesus was absolutely, rather than relatively, innocent. All scapegoated victims are, like all of us, guilty of something, even many things. But they are innocent of that for which they are really being persecuted, namely, being the cause of the social disorder to which only sacrifice can bring closure. Scapegoating involves imputing to the victim something of which the persecutors are convinced they are not guilty. The capital crime is something that makes the victim totally different from the executioners and justifies the “all against one” strategy. The purpose of the guilt imputed to the scapegoat is to disguise simultaneously the innocence of the victim (by imputing to him or her such enormous guilt that only death can eradicate it) and the guilt of the persecutors (who think their murder of the victim gives glory to God, who can only be pacified by such violence). The absolute difference between them establishes that the victim deserves to die and that the murderers are licensed to kill. The “rightness” of this transaction, this sacrifice, reestablishes social order. The execution of the victim brings “closure.” But, alone among humans, Jesus was actually not guilty of anything. This difference between the person justly accused of a finite offense for which they might actually be justly punished by the state and the innocent victim who is being scapegoated was clearly expressed by the “good thief” on the cross to his partner in crime, “We indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong” (Lk 23:41). Jesus as scapegoat is unique in his total innocence. As totally innocent victim he reveals the innocence of all such victims and the
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guilt of all those who sacrifice them. He exposes the inner mechanism of the scapegoating process which can only function as long as it is hidden from the eyes of those who are carrying it out. Once it becomes clear, once we “know what we are doing,” namely, murdering the powerless in order to unify the fractured society, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain that there is some real difference between the “good violence” of the executioners and the “bad violence” they are supposedly stopping. Secondly, Jesus is unique as victim because he does not stay sacrificed. He truly died; but he rose from the dead. In the resurrection God gave back to us the Gift we had rejected. Jesus returned with forgiveness on his lips to his disciples who had been complicit in his unjust death by their betrayal, denial, and abandonment. “Peace be to you,” he greets them, and they “rejoiced at seeing the Lord.” He comes not to retaliate, to accuse, to extract a confession, to demand contrition, to impose penance, or to set conditions for rehabilitation.31 He comes only to forgive, and by forgiving to give them, as he had promised at the Last Supper (see John 14:24), the peace the world cannot give. This is the peace that conquers the “sin of the world,” something only Jesus can do. No amount of human violence can truly reconcile, really establish the lasting peace for which the human family longs and which cannot be taken away. The grace Jesus imparts outstrips the sin in which they have participated and removes all the sins they have committed (cf. Rom 5:20). By the time Jesus commissions his disciples to forgive sins, they have experienced what it means to be forgiven, not just for some particular sins—although they are all guilty of something—and not just to the extent that they have earned forgiveness by repentance or reparation because there is, in fact, no way to make reparation for their participation in the sin of the world. They now know by experience the connection between “sins” and “the sin of the world.” God’s reversal of Jesus’s sacrificial death did not annul or cancel that death. He returns to them bearing the marks of the crucifixion. But his death is integrated into his gloriously alive body-person. No other sacrificial 31 For an excellent extended treatment of this point, see James Alison, Knowing Jesus (London: SPCK, 1998) originally published in 1993, chapter 1, “The Resurrection.”
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victim of scapegoating violence has ever reversed the mob’s violence in a victory not only over personal fate but over death itself. Jesus has put death to death by his Resurrection (see Rom 6:9; 1 Cor 15:26, 54–55). This is where the mysterious predictions of the ultimate victory of the Suffering Servant, the silent and unprotesting Lamb led to the slaughter, are concretely realized, and where the promise of the salvific benefit from the Servant’s death as healing for his persecutors is fulfilled. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? . . . [but] through him the will of the Lord shall prosper (Is 53:7–8,10). The Suffering Servant is not killed by God or according to God’s will, but by “a perversion of justice,” by human malice. God enters the scene to make this atrocity work for the salvation of those who perpetrated it, just as Jesus’s return to his own will make their participation in the sin of the world the raw material of forgiveness and peace which they will now be empowered to extend to others. God’s will to save can work even through and despite the evil will of humans.
The Empowerment of the Disciples to Forgive Sins Immediately after reestablishing his relationship with his disciples, Jesus says again, “Peace be with you.” This peace, which is first that of forgiveness, now becomes the solid foundation for the challenging mission he is about to commit to them, namely, to make effective in the world Jesus’s overcoming of the sin of the world. At the Last Supper he had spoken to them of his death and their defection “so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (Jn 16:33). Now he draws them into that work. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And as the Father had poured forth the fullness of the Spirit on Jesus to empower him to take away the sin of the world, so Jesus now breathes into his
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disciples that same Holy Spirit to re-create them as the new Israel, the community of reconciliation which requires no scapegoating sacrifice to create or maintain it. Here the third Old Testament reference to the Lamb, namely, the Paschal Lamb, becomes revelatory. The death and resurrection of Jesus will remain salvifically effective in his community in the Eucharistic celebration, whose prefiguration they saw in Israel’s Passover meal. On the night before God rescued the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, each Hebrew household was to take an unblemished lamb, slaughter it, and share it in a communion meal that would prepare them for the Exodus journey to the promised land. With a branch of hyssop they sprinkled the blood of the slain lamb on the door frames of their houses so that the angel of death who passed through the land that night to slay the first-born would pass over the houses of the Hebrews. Thus were they saved from death through the blood of the lamb and united as one liberated community through the sharing in its flesh (see Ex 12:1–14). John’s Gospel makes several clear connections between Jesus and the Paschal Lamb. In John’s Gospel, unlike the Synoptics, Jesus died on Calvary not on the feast of Passover but on the preparation day, just as the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem temple. The sour wine that is put to Jesus’s lips, the symbol of the bitter cup of suffering he had freely chosen to drink (see Jn18:11 in light of 12:27–28), is offered to him on a sponge affixed to a hyssop branch (Jn 19:29). When the executioners come to break the legs of the three crucified in order to hasten their deaths, they saw that Jesus was already dead and did not break his legs. The evangelist says that this was to fulfill the prescription (see Ex 12:46; Num 9:12) that no bone of the Paschal Lamb was to be broken (Jn 19:32–36). Jesus, in John’s Gospel, is the Paschal Lamb. The Paschal Lamb symbolism in Jesus’s death must be read in light of John 6:26–66, the Bread of Life discourse that Jesus gave after multiplying the loaves for the crowd. Jesus performed this sign in John at Passover time. The Passover meal was not an expiatory rite but a communion sacrifice. The point was not the killing of the lamb but the sharing in the meal. In John 6 Jesus says his flesh and blood, that is, his living self, would become the food and drink of the community.
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But it is as bread that he gives himself, not as meat as some of his shocked hearers (then and now!) thought. He says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51). “Flesh” here, as commonly in Semitic languages, refers to Jesus as mortal. Because he is mortal Jesus can be killed and thereby become the spiritual or living food that gives life to the world. Jesus, like the Paschal Lamb, must die to become the communion meal of the community; but the point is not his death, and he is not received as dead. He is willing to die as God was willing to give him to the world which would murder him. But his desire, like God’s, is not his death but that he might save the world by becoming its living sustenance. Like the manna in the desert that came down from heaven to sustain the Hebrews, so the living bread that comes down from heaven, Jesus dead and risen, is the food for the New Israel. By symbolically eating him, i.e., by receiving him in the communion meal of the community, they will live by him as he lives by the Father (see Jn 6:57), that is, as children of God (see Jn 1:12). The culmination of the lamb symbolism passes through and beyond the intended bloody sacrifice of Abraham and the murder of the Suffering Servant into a communion meal in which all partake of the Risen One who dies no more. The Eucharist is not an unbloody reproduction, like ancient sacrificial rituals, of a bloody sacrifice carried out in the past, but a sharing in the life of Jesus by a community that has repudiated all sacrifice, all trafficking in blood, all sacralized scapegoating. We eat the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection and we live by that which we eat; we become what we consume. This brings us to the formulation of the commission: “Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven to them . . .” and then what? The second member of vs. 23 (23b) is usually translated “Whose sins you shall retain they are retained [to them, understood].” But there are multiple problems with that translation. In fact, I will argue that that is not what the text says. The text reads:
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20:23a
ἄν τινων If of anyone
ἀφέωνται αὐτοῖς, they are forgiven to them (subjective genitive)
20:23b
ἄν τινων κρατῆτε Any you hold fast (objective genitive)
ἀφῆτε you forgive
τὰς ἁμαρτίας the sins
κεκράτηνται. are held fast
To begin with, in v. 23b there is no direct object (sins) and no indirect object (to them) in the Greek text. Furthermore, the verb, κρατέω, does not mean “retain” in the sense of keeping the person’s sins unforgiven. No one, as far as I can ascertain, has found an instance in sacred or secular Greek where this verb means “retain” in that sense. Translators supply the missing words, “sins” and “of those” and (mis) translate the verb κρατέω in order to make v. 23b a juridical opposite of 23a. The underlying presupposition for this interpretive move is the mistaken presumption that this Johannine text is a version of Mt 16:19: “whatever you forbid (bind) on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you annul (loose) on earth will be annulled in heaven.” In Mt 16:18 Jesus is speaking to Peter. In the Johannine text there is no question of correspondence between earthly and heavenly dispensations. Furthermore, the Matthean text refers to human (specifically ecclesiastical) interpretation of laws by religious authorities, not to the forgiveness of sins; and the two members in the Matthean text, “forbidding” and “annulling,” are in the reverse order from the Johannine “forgive” and “hold.” Finally, there is the theological problem of what “retaining” someone else’s sins could possibly mean. If a person is sorry for their sins, God forgives the sins. No human words, positive or negative, affect God’s handling of sin. What, then, does John 20:23b say? The verb κρατέω (which is not the word in Matthew for “forbid,” namely, δέω) means “hold fast” or “embrace.” Kρατέω is the word used in Mt 28:9 of the women leaving the empty tomb who encountered the risen Jesus on the road, fell down, “and took hold of (or embraced) his feet” Translated literally, v. 23b says: “Those whom you embrace (or hold fast) are held fast.”
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Deliberate ambiguity is often intrinsic to the text in John. Such, I suspect, is the case here. The sentence could be read at the communitarian level and also at the personal level. The communitarian reading would be, “Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven to them and those (meaning the people whose sins have been forgiven) whom you embrace are held fast.” In this case the verse would refer to admission to the Christian community by baptismal forgiveness of all the “sins” (in the plural) which have been the expression in the catechumen’s life of the “sin of the world.” The second member of the verse would refer to the Church’s task of “holding fast” in ecclesial communion all those who have been baptized into Christ. As Jesus said of his own ministry: “[T]his is the will of the One who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me” (Jn 6:39) or “they [my sheep] follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one” (Jn 10:27–30). In summing up the accomplishment of the mission he had received from God, Jesus said, “Of those whom you [Father] have given me I lost not one” (Jn 17:12 and 18:9). Maintaining in union with himself all those whom the Father gives him is of the very essence of Jesus’s mission to the world.32 It makes sense to interpret this text, in which Jesus commissions his disciples to carry on his work, to mean that the mission of his disciples has the same structure as his own. Embracing the people whom God calls into the ecclesial community and preserving them in fidelity is the Church’s continuation of Jesus’s work. Another interpretation of John 20:23 could refer more directly to the way in which believers personally make Jesus’s work of reconciliation effective in the world or, conversely, fail to do so. The text, in this case, would read: “If you forgive anyone their offenses (against you) those offenses are forgiven or released. If you hang on to them, cling to them (i.e., the offenses) they remain held (i.e., in you, against the person).” This is not a matter of manipulating God, obliging God to refuse forgiveness of what we refuse to forgive. We have no influence on the 32 All of these “union” texts express the same twofold character of Jesus’s mission, to bring people into union with himself and hold them fast: 6:37; 6:39; 10:27–29; 17:12; 18:9.
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person’s status vis-à-vis God. This forgiveness has to do with how we handle the offenses of others against us. By refusing to forgive another we embrace the person’s sin and reject the person. We keep that person out of our life, keep the community fractured. Our refusal says nothing about how God sees the person. But it does mean that we have lost faith in God’s capacity and willingness to rehabilitate the sinner; we have fallen back on the human mechanisms of retaliation and vengeance which are at the heart of the scapegoating mechanism that Jesus’s death overcame. We have taken up again “the sin of the world,” the refusal to believe that God is love and has no need of our violence against each other to keep order in human society or the Church. This profound failure of faith, this conviction that we honor God by punishing our brothers and sisters, is probably most evident in the infliction of the death penalty or the punitive use of ecclesiastical excommunication because we think only our human violence can bring the sinner to repentance, can right the wrong and bring real “closure.”
CONCLUSION Whichever way we read this text, on the communal level or on the personal level, it ceases to be about ecclesiastical officers being empowered to execute divine judgment on their fellow human beings, and becomes Jesus’s commitment of responsibility for the divine work of reconciliation to his disciples as a community. Jesus, by becoming the “last scapegoat,” has taken away the foundational sin of the world: the refusal to believe that God is unconditional love. He has made it possible and right for all expressions of that fundamental sin, all “sins” no matter how serious, to be freely forgiven through the loving action of his disciples who, individually and corporately, renounce all recourse to reconciliation by violence. The Church of Jesus should be the one place every sinner can feel absolutely safe because there is no condemnation in this community.33 33 This was the insight that led to the understanding of early Christian churches as zones of asylum for criminals or those accused of crimes or soldiers under siege, as well as the declaration in the twentieth century of certain cities, university campuses, and other places as “sanctuary” against deportation for people fleeing the violent civil wars in their own countries. The churches continue even today to provide sanctuary for the undocumented.
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The one who freely forgave his own murderers because they did not know what they were doing (see Lk 23:34), now empowers his disciples to drop their stones. Our solidarity in sin, to which we were once blind and which we now recognize through our experience of being forgiven, must become grateful solidarity in forgiveness and reconciliation. Jesus says that unless we forgive, we cannot be forgiven (see Mt 18:35), not because God mimics our hardness of heart, but because only by forgiving can we continue to believe in, and accept, being forgiven. Jesus said to the woman he had rescued from stoning: “Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more” (Jn 8:10–11). The challenge to “sin no more” can only be met in the context of the experience of being freely forgiven. The mission of Jesus’s disciples, that is, of us, is not judgment of our fellow sinners or restoring order to society or Church by vengeance and retaliation. It is to make effective in the world Jesus’s work of reconciliation through the forgiveness of sins so that the community of the forgiven can gather around the table of the Lamb who has taken away the sin of the world. For this challenging mission we have the gift of Jesus’s Spirit: “Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven.”
PART TWO
Historical Perspectives
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The Holy Spirit in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Kallistos Ware, Metropolitan of Diokleia
NEARNESS YET OTHERNESS
1
At the start of the second millennium, the greatest mystical writer of the Middle Byzantine era, St. Symeon New Theologian (949–1022), wrote an invocation to the Holy Spirit that possesses a startling relevance for us who stand on the threshold of the third millennium. Let us listen to a few of the phrases in this prayer: Come, true light. Come, life eternal. Come, hidden mystery. Come, treasure without name. Come, reality beyond all words. Come, person beyond all understanding. . . . Come, unfailing expectation of all who are being saved. . . . Come, invisible whom none may touch and handle. . . .
1 I wish to express my gratitude to Duquesne University for inviting me to deliver the Third Annual Holy Spirit Lecture. I have happy memories of the generous hospitality that was extended to me, and in particular my thanks are due to Professor W. Thompson-Uberuaga for all his kindness and support. I am indebted also to the members of the colloquium that was held on the day following the lecture, and I have included a number of their ideas in the revised text of my lecture.
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Come, for your name fills our hearts with longing and is ever on our lips; yet who you are and what your nature is, we cannot say or know. . . . Come, Alone to the alone. . . . Come, for you are yourself the desire that is within me. . . . Come, my breath and my life. . . . Come, my joy, my glory, my endless delight . . . .2 Here St. Symeon emphasizes three things that are surely familiar to each one of us in our personal experience. First, he stresses the gladness and rejoicing with which the Spirit fills our hearts: He is light, joy, glory, endless delight. Of course he is also, although Symeon does not speak of this more particularly, the Spirit of judgment as well as joy, “the Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:17), who “searches everything” (1 Cor 2:10), and who “convicts” and “reproves” the world (Jn 16:8). Second, the Paraclete is for Symeon an eschatological Spirit, our “unfailing expectation,” who bears witness to the future hope, declaring “the things that are to come” (Jn 16:13), and making the Parousia present to us here and now. Third, Symeon insists in antinomic terms upon the paradoxical character of the Spirit’s action, upon his nearness yet otherness. He is uniquely close to each of us, “the desire that is within me . . . my breath and my life”; yet at the same time he is an apophatic Spirit, anonymous and elusive, “hidden mystery . . . treasure without name.” He is a person, not merely a force or energy, yet the depths of his personhood remain “beyond all words” and “beyond all understanding.” He is in other words a kenotic Spirit, who hides himself in revealing himself. Ever present, he yet effaces himself; working within us, he adapts himself to us, and so remains concealed. With total immediacy we feel his presence and we know his power; yet we do not see his face, for he shows us always the face of Christ (cf. Jn 15:26; 16:13–15). He is a free Spirit, constantly crossing boundaries, not to be controlled and 2 Syméon le Nouveau Théologien, “Mystical Prayer,” in Hymnes 1–15, ed. Johannes Koder, Sources Chrétiennes 156 (Paris: Cerf, 1969), 150–4; ET [English translation] by Kallistos Ware, Eastern Churches Review 5, no. 2 (1973), 113–114; also by George A. Maloney, Hymns of Divine Love by St. Symeon the New Theologian (Denville, N.J.: Dimension Books, no date [c.1975]), 9–10.
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classified, baffling our card indexes and confusing our computers. The wind of the Spirit, as Jesus affirms, “blows where it wishes; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going” (Jn 3:8). When exploring the nature and the diakonia of the Spirit, then, where shall we begin and where shall we conclude?3 St. Basil the Great (c. 330–79) was aware of this difficulty when he came to write his classic work On the Holy Spirit, refuting the “Pneumatomachoi” or “Spirit-fighters” who denied the full divinity of the Third Person of the Trinity. He recognized that the New Testament is not entirely explicit in what it says about the Paraclete. He therefore supplemented the written testimony of Scripture by appealing to “unwritten tradition,” by which he meant primarily the worshipping practice of the Church. He based his argument especially upon the two versions of the doxology that had come into widespread use during his own time, “Glory to the Father with the Son together with the Holy Spirit,” and “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.” These two liturgical formulae, which he considered to be identical in meaning and implications, prove in his opinion that the Spirit is fully equal to the Father and the Son, to be worshipped and glorified with them and not below them.4 The standpoint and language of Basil was
3 In this lecture I do not discuss the vexed question of the Procession of the Holy Spirit and the addition of the Filioque to the Western text of the Creed. I do not myself consider that this dispute makes any significant difference to our understanding of the role of the Spirit in the Eucharist. A clear distinction needs to be drawn, in this connection, between the Eternal Procession of the Holy Spirit and his Temporal Mission. As regards the Eternal Procession, East and West disagree: The East believes that the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, or more exactly from the Father through the Son; the West believes that he proceeds from the Father and the Son (although it qualifies this by stating that he proceeds principally from the Father). As regards the Temporal Mission, however, both East and West are fully agreed that the Spirit is sent by the Risen Christ, alike at Pentecost and thereafter in every aspect of the Church’s life, and more especially at the celebration of the Eucharist. Since throughout the present lecture my concern is with the Temporal Mission of the Holy Spirit and not with his Eternal Procession—in other words, with his activity within the Economy and not with his place in the immanent life of the Trinity—I have not felt it necessary to refer to the Filioque controversy. See further my treatment of this topic in Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, revised edition (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 210–218. 4 Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 1 (§3), 25 (§§ 58–59), 27 (§§66–68); ET by David Anderson, St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 17–18, 89–92, 98–103. Basil considered it legitimate to employ also the form of Doxology that is in general use today, “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”: On the Holy Spirit 25 (§ 60); Anderson, 92.
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duly endorsed by the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, attributed— in all likelihood, correctly—to the 381 Council of Constantinople. In my own approach to the “hidden mystery” of the Holy Spirit during this present lecture, I shall follow St. Basil’s example and appeal, as he does, to the liturgical praxis of the Church. Within the Christian East, it is a deeply held conviction that dogma and spirituality, theology and mystical prayer, constitute one single and undivided whole. In the words of Evagrius of Pontus (345/6–399), disciple of the Cappadocians and of the Desert Fathers, “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly; and if you pray truly, you are a theologian.”5 As the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958) affirms, “There is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism. . . . Mysticism is . . . the perfecting and crown of all theology: [it is] theology par excellence.”6 Developing the same point, another Russian theologian, the liturgist Fr. Cyprian Kern (1899–1960), used to say, “The choir of the church is a chair of theology.”7 We are all familiar with the aphorism Lex orandi lex credendi, “The rule of prayer is the rule of faith.”8 “Prayer” in this dictum signifies not primarily private devotion but the public prayer of the Christian koinonia, of the gathered People of God, and above all eucharistic prayer. For, as Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) and John Zizioulas (born 1931) have rightly insisted—the one from the Roman Catholic and the other from the Orthodox side—it is the Eucharist that makes the Church, just as the Church makes the Eucharist.9 5 On Prayer 60 [61] (PG 79: 1180B); ET G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 1 (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1979), 62. Here Evagrius is using the word “theology” in a special sense, to denote the vision of God; but his words have a wider application. 6 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke, 1957), 9. 7 Quoted in Constantin Andronikoff, Le sens des fêtes, vol. 1. Le cycle fixe (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 7. 8 Cf. St. Prosper of Aquitaine (c.390–c.463), On the Grace of God and Free Will (PL 51: 209C): “ . . . that the rule of prayer may determine the rule of faith” (ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi). 9 See Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993; 2nd edition, Fairfax, Va.: Eastern Christian Publications, 2006).
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If what Evagrius, Lossky and Kern are saying about the link between doctrine and prayer applies in general to all aspects of theology, at the same time it applies more particularly, as St. Basil recognized, to the theology of the Holy Spirit. How, then, is the presence and work of the Third Person of the Trinity understood in the eucharistic lex orandi of Eastern Christendom? Let us take as our basis here the communion service most commonly used in the present-day Orthodox Church, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.10 Parts of this may well date back to the time of St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) himself, but for the most part it reflects developments in subsequent centuries. By the eleventh century, however, the Liturgy was being celebrated more or less in the same words as it is today, with the exception of the Prothesis or preliminary Office of Preparation, which continued to evolve for some time subsequently.
The Two Hands of God It is a fundamental axiom of the Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian Fathers that, in all their actions within the created order, the 10 For a critical edition of the Greek text of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, based on manuscripts in Athens, see Panagiotis N. Trembelas, Αί τρείς Λειτουργίαι κατὰ τοὺς εν Ατήναις κώδικας (Athens: Patriarchal Commission for the Revision and Publication of the Liturgical Books, 1935), 1–160 (with valuable notes). Consult also C. A. Swainson, The Greek Liturgies Chiefly from Original Authorities (Cambridge: University Press, 1884), 88–94 (from the Barberini Codex 336 [mid-eighth century]), and 101–144 (two versions, from the 11th and 16th centuries); F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 309–344 (Barberini Codex 336), 353–399 (present use). For a carefully revised Greek text, prepared by the eminent liturgist Ioannis Phoundoulis, see `Ιερατικόν, vol. 1 (Hagion Oros: Monastery of Simonas Petras, 1992). English translations abound: One of the best, in “traditional” English, is The Divine Liturgy of Our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom (Oxford: Diocese of Sourozh/St. Stephen’s Press, 1999; reprinted with revisions, 2001, 2003, 2004). For a version in dignified “modern” English, edited by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, with a parallel Greek text, see The Divine Liturgy of Our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom (Oxford: University Press/ Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, 1995). On the role of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist, see Boris Bobrinskoy, “Le Saint-Esprit dans la Liturgie,” Studia Liturgica I, 1 (1962): 47–60; Robert F. Taft, “‘Communion in the Holy Spirit’ in the Byzantine Eucharist,” in Orientale Lumen IV Conference Proceedings 2000, June 19–23, 2000, at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. (Fairfax, Eastern Christian Publications, 2001), 17–46; Taft, “‘To Drink of the One Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:12): The Theology of Ecclesial Communion in the Byzantine Divine Liturgy,” in Orientale Lumen EuroEast I Conference Proceedings 2004, May 10–13, 2004, at Istanbul, Turkey (Constantinople) (Fairfax, Eastern Christian Publications, 2004), 87–105. To these three articles I am much indebted.
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three Persons of the Godhead invariably work together. Every divine operation ad extra is shared in common by Father, Son and Spirit. There cannot be an action of Christ in which the Spirit is not present, along with the Father; nor can there be an action of the Spirit that does not also involve Christ and the Father. “We should never think of the Father without the Son,” writes St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330 -395), “nor of the Son without the Holy Spirit.”11 There can be no balanced Christology that is not pneumatological, and no balanced pneumatology that is not christological. Faithful to the teaching of the Cappadocians, St. John Chrysostom forcefully reiterates this point. “It is not possible,” he writes, “that, where the Spirit is to be found, Christ should not be found as well. For, where one hypostasis of the Trinity is present, the whole Trinity is present.”12 As he states elsewhere, “One is the gift and the power of Father, Son and Spirit.”13 St. Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–c. 200) speaks in this context of the Son and Spirit as the two “hands” of God the Father.14 There is a Zen riddle: What is the sound of one hand clapping? I do not know the answer, nor (I imagine) do you; perhaps there is no answer, and that doubtless is the point of the riddle. So far, at any rate, as God the Father is concerned, he is always clapping with both his hands at once. This basic principle concerning the co-activity of Son and Spirit is to be consistently employed in all sacramental theology. It is applicable, for example, to the sacrament of Christian initiation, that is to say, to Baptism and Chrismation (Confirmation), which in the liturgical practice of the Christian East constitute one single mystery. Here the Second and the Third Persons of the divine Triad are equally active. Baptism is to be seen in Christological terms, as a “putting on” of Christ, a “being clothed” with him (Gal 3:27), and as death, burial, and resurrection with the Savior (Rom 6:3–5); but it is equally Baptism in
11 On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians: ed. W Jaeger and F. Mueller, Gregorii Nysseni Opera III, 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 98. 12 Homilies on Romans 13,8 (PG 60:519). This and the following passage are cited by “‘Taft, Communion in the Holy Spirit,’” 24. 13 Homilies on John 86 (87), 3 (PG 59:471). 14 Against the Heresies IV, xx, 1.
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or with the Holy Spirit (cf. Mk 1:8). Our Baptism is modeled upon that of Jesus: Just as the Spirit descended upon him as he came up from the waters of the Jordan (Mk 1:10), so also he descends on us as we come up from the waters of the font. The role of the Spirit in Baptism, along with that of Christ, is plainly underlined during the prayer of blessing over the waters of the font. After recalling Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, the celebrant continues with an invocation or epiclesis of the Spirit: “Therefore, O King who love mankind, be present now also, through the descent of your Holy Spirit, and sanctify this water.” This baptismal epiclesis over the water corresponds closely to the eucharistic epiclesis over the bread and wine, to which we shall shortly refer. “Be present now also”: just as every Eucharist is identical with the Last Supper,15 so every Baptism re-enacts the primordial baptism of Christ in the Jordan. In both cases, the link between what happened in Christ’s life and what is happening to us at the present moment is effected precisely by the Holy Spirit. It is he who transforms clock time into sacred time, turning past event into present reality, uniting the then of the River Jordan or the Upper Room with the now of our ecclesial celebration. Nor is this all. Just as the Spirit unites past with present, so equally he unites present with future. As an eschatological Spirit, the Spirit of the age to come, he makes our immersion in the baptismal font an anticipation of our final resurrection on the last day. Likewise in the Eucharist he transforms the Divine Liturgy not only into a reenactment of the Last Supper, but also into the Feast of the Kingdom, into the Messianic Banquet of the Eighth Day. It is noteworthy that, in the eucharistic anamnesis or “calling to mind” that comes in the consecratory prayer between the narrative of the Last Supper and the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit, we “remember” not only the Cross, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, but also his “Second and Glorious Coming again.” The Holy Spirit enables us to remember the future.
15 This point is made with great emphasis by Fr. Georges Florovsky (1893–1979): see his essay “The Worshipping Church,” in The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), 21–37, especially 29–30, citing Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 82 (83), 5 (PG 58:744): “The table is the same as that and has nothing less.”
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This eschatological “parousiac” aspect of the Liturgy is eloquently expounded by Fr. Alexander Schmemann (1921–1985).16 Returning to the rite of baptismal initiation, we find that the interaction between Christ and the Spirit is further emphasized in the Anointing or Chrismation that follows shortly after the immersion of the candidate in the font. The newly baptized is marked with the Holy Chrism, as the celebrant says, “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Compare 1 Jn 2:20: “You have an anointing (chrisma) from the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge” [or, according to a variant reading in the manuscripts, “you know all things”].) For each of the newly-baptized, this represents a personal Pentecost. Just as the risen Christ at Pentecost sent down the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles visibly in the form of fiery tongues, so now in the rite of Chrismation he sends down the same Spirit upon the newly baptized invisibly, but with no less reality and force. So the baptismal initiation is both Christic and Pentecostal. Buried and raised with Christ through immersion in the waters, we are then sealed by the Paraclete. St. Paul clearly indicates this synergy between the Second and the Third Persons when he writes: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Cor 6:11). Significantly these very words are used at the end of the baptismal service. Washed, then, through Baptism in Christ, we are also sanctified by anointing with the Spirit; and these are not two separate events, but two aspects of a single and undivided mystery. It would be interesting to examine the other sacramental actions of the church—Confession, Anointing of the Sick, Ordination, Marriage, monastic profession, the funeral rites—and to consider how far they likewise exemplify the co-operation between the two “hands” of God. But, on this occasion, let us limit ourselves to what St. Symeon of Thessalonica (d.1429) terms “the mystery of mysteries . . . the holies of holies,”17 the Eucharist.
16 See Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (London: Faith Press, 1966); The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988). 17 On the Sacred Liturgy (PG 155: 253C).
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It is natural, and indeed correct, to see the Eucharist first and foremost in Christological terms. It is precisely the action of Christ in our midst. This is made abundantly clear in words that come at the very beginning of the Divine Liturgy, immediately before the initial blessing, when the deacon says to the priest, “It is time for the Lord to act” (a citation from Ps 119:126).18 The Eucharist, that is to say, is not primarily words, but an action; and in the deep and true sense it is not our action, but the action of the Lord Christ. It is he who is the unique High Priest of the New Covenant, present before the altar invisibly but with full immediacy and power. He is the celebrant; we, clergy and people, are no more than concelebrants with him. This same point is re-emphasized in the prayer addressed by the priest to Christ before the Great Entrance, during the singing of the Hymn of the Cherubim: “You are the one who offers and is offered, who receives and is distributed, Christ our God.” 19 Christ, as St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) affirms, is both priest and victim, both offerer and offering: tu sacerdos, tu victima, tu oblator, tu oblatio.20 The 18 This is how the phrase is translated in the Sourozh version (see note 10), as also in The Leiturgikon, edited by Archimandrite Basil (Essey) (now Bishop of Wichita and MidAmerica), authorized for use in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of America (2nd edition, New York: Antakya Press, 1994), 257. Other versions understand the phrase as meaning that it is time for us to do something for the Lord. So we find the renderings “It is time to Perform to the Lord” (John Glen King, 1772), or “It is time to Sacrifice to the Lord” (John Mason Neale, 1859, and anonymous translation of 1866): see Stephen G. Hatherly, Office of the Credence and the Divine Liturgy of Our Father among the Saints, John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople (London: Church Printing Company, no date [c. 1895]), 18–19. Isabel Florence Hapgood understands the phrase in the same way: “It is time to sacrifice unto the Lord” (Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic (Greco-Russian) Church [Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906], 77). A similar version is given in the translation approved by the Orthodox Church in America (OCA): “It is time to begin the service to the Lord” (The Divine Liturgy According to St. John Chrysostom with Appendices [New York: Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America, 1967], 23). Certainly it is grammatically possible to construe the Greek text in this way. But the alternative rendering that I have adopted, “It is time for the Lord to act,” is far richer in theological meaning; and the Hebrew text of Ps 119:126 is in fact understood in this way by most translations of the Bible (e.g., AV, RV, RSV, New RSV, Jerusalem Bible, NEB, Revised NEB, NIV). 19 On the history of this phrase, see Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200 (Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1975), 119–148. The phrase occurs in a sermon delivered by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in 400 (included among the works of his nephew St. Cyril of Alexandria): Homily 10, On the Mystical Supper (PG 77: 1029B). 20 On Psalm 64, §6 (Corpus Christianorum 39, 828). Cf. Augustine, On the City of God X, 20 (Corpus Christianorum 14: 1, 204): Sacerdos est, ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio.
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presence and participation of Christ, the true celebrant at the Liturgy, is again underlined before the recitation of the Creed, at the exchange of the Kiss of Peace between the clergy. The senior priest says “Christ is in our midst,” to which the junior answers, “He is and will be.” This Christological dimension of the Liturgy continues to be central throughout the second half of the Liturgy, during the Anaphora and the communion. Yet, while the eucharistic offering is rightly regarded as the action of Christ, and while he is indeed the one true celebrant who offers the oblation, at the same time we must be on our guard against a onesided “christomonism.” God claps with both his hands, not just with one. The Eucharist is the making-present of two Upper Rooms: not only the Upper Room of the Last Supper, but equally that of Pentecost. At the Eucharist there are two forms of “real presence”: not only the “real presence” of Christ, but equally the presence of the Holy Spirit, no less real although different; for the Spirit did not become incarnate, and so he has no body and blood. At the Eucharist, moreover, there are simultaneously two forms of communion: communicating in Christ, at the same time we receive communion in the Spirit. Full value needs to be given to the eucharistic overtones of the Pauline phrase κοινωνία τοῦ Άγίου Πνεύματος, “communion of [or in] the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor 13:14; cf. Phil 2:1). This has not only general reference, embracing the totality of our life in the Spirit (cf. Rom 8:1–30), but it has also a more particular application, referring as it does to the act of Holy Communion in the Eucharist. Having spoken of the Divine Liturgy as an event that is both Christological and Pentecostal, we need to add that it is by the same token a Trinitarian action. All three persons of the Trinity are at work together at every moment of our eucharistic worship. If we are never to think of the Son without the Spirit, or of the Spirit without the Son, then equally we are never to think of the two “hands” without thinking of God the Father, whose “hands” they are. Stressing this co-activity of the three persons, St. John Chrysostom insists: “The things of the Trinity are undivided. Where there is communion in the Spirit, there is found to be also communion in the Son; and where there is the grace of the Son, there is also that of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. . . . I say all this, not confusing the persons (God forbid!), but recognizing
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both the individuality and distinctiveness of the persons, and the unity of the substance.”21 “It is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who dispense everything,” Chrysostom writes elsewhere; “the priest does no more than lend his tongue and provide his hand.”22 The Trinitarian character of the Divine Liturgy is clearly indicated in the opening benediction: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Each of the litanies in the service ends with a prayer (usually said in a low voice) to God the Father, followed by an exclamation (said aloud) to the Trinity. Certain prayers in the Liturgy, it is true, are addressed specifically to Christ (for example, the prayer before the Gospel or the prayer before the Great Entrance), but these are exceptions. Immediately before the Creed, with great emphasis, we proclaim our faith in the Holy Trinity: “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinity one in essence and undivided.” At the beginning of the Anaphora, there is a Trinitarian blessing of the people: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14, slightly expanded). The consecratory epiclesis over the Holy Gifts is explicitly Trinitarian: the celebrant prays to the Father, to send down the Spirit upon the gifts of bread and wine, so that they may become the Body and Blood of Christ. After receiving communion, the people sing: “We worship the undivided Trinity: for the Trinity has saved us.” “The Church is full of the Holy Trinity,” said Origen (c. 185–c.254);23 and, if this is true of the Church in general, it is true more particularly of the eucharistic action that creates the Church: The Divine Liturgy is indeed full of the Holy Trinity. The united presence of the Son and the Spirit, together with the Father, is never for one moment forgotten in our eucharistic prayer. Let us look now in more detail at the way in which the action of the Holy Spirit is expressed in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
21 Homilies on 2 Corinthians 30, 2 (PG 61: 608). Cf. Taft, “‘Communion in the Holy Spirit,’ ” 26–27. 22 Homilies on John 86 (87), 4 (PG 59:472). 23 Fragment on Ps. 23:1 (PG 12: 1265B).
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THE EUCHARISTIC PENTECOST There are at least eleven moments in the Divine Liturgy that directly refer to the participation of the Third Person of the Trinity in the eucharistic celebration. 1. Prior to the commencement of the service, before entering the sanctuary to put on his vestments, the celebrant stands before the icon screen and says the preliminary prayers. After the initial blessing, with his hands raised to heaven, he invokes the Holy Spirit: Heavenly King, Paraclete, Spirit of Truth, everywhere present and filling all things, Treasury of blessings and Giver of Life, come and abide in us; cleanse us from every stain and, O Good One, save our souls. This is not an expressly eucharistic prayer, for it occurs at the beginning of almost all services in the Byzantine rite. None the less, its use at this point has particular significance. At the very outset, the entire celebration of the Eucharist is placed under the seal and protection of the Holy Spirit. 2. Toward the end of the Prothesis or Office of Preparation, the priest blesses incense, with the words: We offer unto you incense, Christ our God, for a savour of spiritual fragrance; accepting it at your Altar above the heavens, send down upon us in return the grace of your All-Holy Spirit. Here, then, the offering of incense is explicitly linked with the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. As the smoke of the incense ascends to heaven, so the gift of the Spirit descends on the people of God. The reference to the “Altar above the heavens” should be noted, for this concept of the heavenly altar plays a central role in the Orthodox understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice.24 3. Immediately before the opening benediction, “Blessed is the Kingdom . . . ,” that marks the start of the public part of the Liturgy 24 See Kallistos Ware, “The Eucharistic Sacrifice: Who Offers What to Whom?,” in Orientale Lumen IV Conference Proceedings 2000, 47–60, June 19–23, 2000, at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. (Fairfax, Va.: Eastern Christian Publications, 2001), especially 58–60.
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(the Synaxis or Liturgy of the Catechumens), the celebrant once more repeats the prayer to the Holy Spirit, “Heavenly King. . . .” All that follows is placed beneath his Pentecostal patronage. 4. As the worshippers embark upon the second and specifically eucharistic part of the service (the Liturgy of the Faithful), in the first of the two Prayers of the Faithful that follow the Litany of the Catechumens, the celebrant again invokes the Spirit: Enable us, whom you have appointed to this your ministry, by the power of your Holy Spirit to call upon you at every time and place without blame and without condemnation, with the witness of a pure conscience. 5. After the Great Entrance (the Entrance with the Holy Gifts), during the singing of the second half of the Hymn of the Cherubim, there is a somewhat surprising dialogue between the priest and the deacon: Priest: Remember me, brother and fellow celebrant. Deacon: May the Lord God remember your priesthood in his Kingdom, always, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen. Pray for me, holy master. Priest: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. Deacon: The Spirit himself will concelebrate with us (συλλειτουργήσει ἠμίν) all the days of our life.
Here is a remarkable image to express the Pentecostal dimension of the Liturgy: Just as Christ is the High Priest who offers the gifts (ο προσφέρων), so the Spirit is the concelebrant (συλλειτουργός) who ministers together with us. Moreover the deacon, as he officiates, is overshadowed by the Spirit, just as the Virgin Mary was overshadowed by the Spirit at the Annunciation (Luke 1:35). 6. The “Litany of the Precious Gifts” that comes after the Great Entrance concludes with a ‘Prayer of Offering’ (Εύχὴ της Προσκομιδῆ or τῆς Προθέσεως). This takes up the idea of the overshadowing of the Spirit, and at the same time anticipates the action of the Anaphora that is shortly to follow. The celebrant prays here for the grace to perform what he is about to do:
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Lord God almighty, who alone are holy and who accept the sacrifice of praise from those who call upon you with their whole heart, accept the prayer also of us sinners and bring it to your holy altar; and enable us to offer you gifts and spiritual sacrifices for our sins and for the things done in ignorance by the people. Count us worthy to find grace in your sight, that our sacrifice may be well-pleasing to you and that the good Spirit of your grace may rest on us and on these gifts here set forth, and on all your people. The concluding part of this prayer has the same structure as the consecratory epiclesis in the Anaphora. In both cases there is a double invocation of the Spirit, “on us”—that is to say, on the worshipping community present in the church—and on “these gifts here set forth,” that is, on the bread and wine that have been placed on the Holy Table. The Spirit descends simultaneously upon the people of God and upon the eucharistic elements. 7. The presence and participation of the Spirit are underlined in the Pre-Anaphoral Blessing that has already been quoted (taken from 1 Cor 13:14): “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Communion in the Body and Blood of Christ necessarily means also communion in the Holy Spirit. 8. The supreme point in the “concelebration” of the Spirit, in his συλλειτουργία, comes at the end of the Anaphora or consecratory prayer, with the epiclesis or invocation on the bread and wine.25 In the Anaphora itself there are three chief sections, of unequal length: First, there is the thanksgiving for the gifts of our creation and redemption, and for the gift of the Divine Liturgy itself that we are celebrating. The priest gives thanks for the Savior’s incarnate economy in 25 On the history of the epiclesis, see E.G. Cuthbert F. Atchley, On the Epiclesis of the Eucharistic Liturgy and in the Consecration of the Font, Alcuin Club Collections 31 (London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1935); John H. McKenna, Eucharist and Holy Spirit: The Eucharistic Epiclesis in Twentieth Century Theology (1900–1966), Alcuin Club Collections 57 (Great Wakering: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1975); Richard F. Buxton, Eucharist and Institution Narrative: A Study in the Roman and Anglican Traditions of the Consecration of the Eucharist from the Eighth to the Twentieth Centuries, Alcuin Club Collections 58 (Great Wakering, UK: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1976). For Orthodox views on the subject, see Timothy Ware, Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 121–133.
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its entirety, and in particular for the institution of the Holy Eucharist; and here he repeats—not as a consecratory formula, but as part of the narrative of the Last Supper—Christ’s words, “Take, eat; this is my Body” and “Drink from this, all of you; this is my Blood.” Secondly, there comes the anamnesis or “calling to mind.” This involves an act of oblation or offering, when the deacon elevates the paten and chalice, as the priest exclaims, “Offering to you your own from your own, in all things and for all things. . . .”26 Thirdly, there follows the epiclesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit: Priest: Also, we offer you this reasonable (λογικὴν) worship without shedding of blood, and we ask, pray and implore you: send down your Holy Spirit upon us, and upon these gifts here set forth: Deacon: Master, bless the holy bread. Priest:
And make this bread the precious Body of your Christ:
Deacon: Amen. Master, bless the holy cup. Priest: And what is in this cup, the precious Blood of your Christ: Deacon: Amen. Master, bless both the holy things. Priest:
Changing [them] by your Holy Spirit.27
Deacon: Amen, Amen, Amen. At this point, priest and deacon make a profound bow or else a prostration to the ground. Then follows a prayer for the communicants:
26 Most Greek editions of the Liturgy, in place of the participle “Offering” (πρσφέροντες), give the main verb “We offer” (πρσφέρομεν). But as Trembelas indicates (Αί τρείς Λειτουργίαι, 110), the reading πρσφέροντες has much stronger support in the manuscripts, as well as making better sense. The latest official edition of the `Ιερατικόν, issued by the Church of Greece (Athens: Apostoliki Diakonia, 2004), notes that πρσφέροντες is the more correct reading, even though it still retains in its text the customary reading πρσφέρομεν (132, n.58, and 343, §5). The Sourozh and Thyateira translations (see note 10) both use the participle “Offering”; the Antiochian Leitourgikon (see note 18) also notes that this is more correct (287, n. 19). 27 I have placed the preposition “them” in brackets because it does not occur in the Greek, which provides no direct object for the verb “change.” For this reason, some translators use the periphrasis “making the change”: see, for example, the OCA version (note 18), 60.
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Priest: So that for those who partake they [the eucharistic gifts] may be for vigilance of soul, forgiveness of sins, communion of [in] your Holy Spirit, fullness of the Kingdom of heaven, freedom to speak in your presence, and not for judgement or condemnation. In the past, it was customary in the Orthodox East to regard the epiclesis, and more particularly the phrase “Changing [them] by your Holy Spirit,” as constituting the “moment of consecration,” just as in the Roman Catholic West it was customary to regard the Words of Institution, “This is my Body . . . This is my Blood,” as constituting the “moment of consecration.” Today, in both East and West, liturgists on the whole avoid singling out one section of the Anaphora, and more particularly one specific phrase, as comprising the “moment of consecration” in a restrictive sense, and they prefer to regard the Anaphora in its totality as effecting the consecration. In that case, even though the epiclesis of the Spirit is not to be isolated as the exclusive “moment of consecration,” yet from the Orthodox point of view the consecratory act is not complete until the epiclesis has been said. We have already drawn attention to the Trinitarian character of the eucharistic epiclesis: it is addressed to the Father, that he may send the Spirit, to effect the presence of the Son. There are six other points to be noted here. (i) In the phrase “Changing [them] by your Holy Spirit,” the Greek verb used here for “to change” is the normal and neutral term μεταβάλλειν, not the more complex terms μεταμορφοῦν (“to transfigure”) or μεταστοιχοῦν (“to transelement”), which are both sometimes used by the Greek Fathers to describe the eucharistic consecration. Equally, it is noteworthy that neither here nor anywhere else in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is the verb μετουσιοῦν (“to transubstantiate”) employed, nor the equivalent noun μετουσίωσις (“transubstantiation”), which are not in fact applied to the eucharistic consecration by Greek Orthodox authors prior to the fifteenth century, and not with any frequency until the seventeenth century.28 28 On the Orthodox use of the term “transubstantiation,” see N. E. Tzirakis, Η περὶ μετουσιώσεως [Transsubstantiatio] εύχαρθστιακὴ ἔρἰ (Athens, 1977); Ware, Eustratios Argenti, 9–15, 109–12.
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Thus, while in the text of the Liturgy the reality of the change is clearly indicated, no particular theory is implied concerning the manner of the change. (ii) The epiclesis over the eucharistic gifts, as we have seen, is parallel to the epiclesis over the water in the font at the sacrament of Baptism. In both cases, the Spirit is invoked, so as to render Christ present: In the case of Baptism, to render him present as he was in Jordan; in the case of the Eucharist, to render him present as he was at the Last Supper (and as he is now in the glory of heaven). Yet there is an all-important difference. At the baptismal epiclesis, the celebrant prays that the water may be sanctified, but not that it may be changed; it still remains water. When the service is over, the water in the font is poured away on clean earth. At the eucharistic epiclesis, on the other hand, we pray that the bread and wine may be indeed changed into the true and actual Body and Blood of Christ. As the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II (787), insisted, after consecration the eucharistic gifts are not merely an “icon” of Christ’s Body and Blood, but in full reality his “very Body” and his “very Blood.”29 Moreover, after the end of the Liturgy, the consecrated elements are most carefully consumed in their totality (unless some part of them is reserved for communion of the sick or for use at the Liturgy of the Presanctified); they are never under any circumstances thrown away or otherwise disposed of, but they are always eaten. Not a single crumb from the Holy Bread, and not a single drop from the Chalice, is ever to be lost. (iii) It is striking that throughout the epiclesis the celebrant speaks always in the plural: “we offer . . . we ask, pray and implore . . . send down your Holy Spirit upon us.” Nowhere does he use the first person singular “I.” In the epiclesis, that is to say, the celebrant does not speak as if he were himself representing Christ to the congregation, but he identifies himself with the congregation, speaking in their name and representing them to God.30 During the eucharistic consecration, he 29 Nicaea II, Sixth Session (Mansi, Concilia 13: 265B): in Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm (Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 95. 30 See Ware, Eustratios Argenti, 124–5. For the relevance of this matter to the ordination of women to the priesthood, see Kallistos Ware, “Man, Woman and the Priesthood of Christ,”
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acts not in persona Christi but solely and exclusively in persona populi. In the understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, from the Middle Ages until recent times—and still today in many places—when the celebrant recites the words “This is my Body . . . This is my Blood,” he speaks them as if he were himself taking the place of Christ; or rather, at this moment Christ himself is understood to be speaking these words through the priest. Thus these particular words have consecratory power. The Orthodox perception of the eucharistic Anaphora is different. The words “This is my Body . . . This is my Blood” are not spoken by the celebrant in persona Christi, but they form part of the narrative of thanksgiving for creation and redemption. So while the so-called “Words of Institution” form an integral part of the total Anaphora—and it is the Anaphora in its totality that effects the consecration—these words are not to be singled out as possessing a specific and distinctive consecratory force. On the contrary, as already emphasized, the consecration cannot be considered complete before the threefold “Amen” at the end of the epiclesis. For this reason, during the Anaphora in the Orthodox Liturgy, the celebrant does not adopt the westward position, facing the people, as if he were representing Christ at the Last Supper and speaking in his name; but he adopts the eastward position, facing in the same direction as the people, for he is praying with them and in their name to God the Father. The divergence here is not to be exaggerated, but it is nonetheless significant. From this it follows that it is incorrect to speak of the priest as consecrating the Holy Gifts. The consecration is performed by God the Father, acting through the Holy Spirit. In the words of the author of the best-known Byzantine liturgical commentary, St. Nicolas Cabasilas (c. 1322–c. 1397), “It is the Spirit who, through the hand and the tongue of the priests, consummates the mysteries.”31 This is likewise the case with the other sacraments of the Orthodox Church: In none of them, according to the traditional Orthodox practice, does the priest use the in Women and the Priesthood, Thomas Hopko, ed. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999), 47–48. 31 “Commentary on the Divine Liturgy” 28,2, in Explication de la Divine Liturgie, ed. Sévérien Salaville et al., Sources chrétiennes 4 bis (Paris: Cerf, 1967), 178; English Translation J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty (London: SPCK, 1960), 71.
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pronoun “I.” He does not say, for example, “I baptize you,” but “The servant of God N. is baptized.” At the absolution in the sacrament of Confession, he does not say “I absolve you,” but “May God forgive you.”32 This reminds me of the experience of an Anglican friend of mine, who before his ordination sent out to his friends, according to the usual custom, a card asking for their prayers: “Please pray for N., who on Trinity Sunday will be ordained priest by the Lord Bishop of Oxford.” A Greek recipient wrote back: “I shall indeed be praying for you on Trinity Sunday; but unfortunately your card contains a heresy. It is not the Lord Bishop of Oxford who will be ordaining you to the priesthood; it is the Holy Spirit.” As the eucharistic epiclesis clearly indicates, in all our sacramental worship the appropriate liturgical pronoun is not “I” but “We.” When we stand before God, we are not to be like Walter de la Mare’s Napoleon: What is the world, O soldiers? It is I: I, this incessant snow, This northern sky; Soldiers, this solitude Through which we go Is I.33 In contrast, in the words that Christ gave us as a model for all our worship, the Lord’s Prayer, the pronoun “us” occurs five times, “our” three times, and “we” once, but nowhere are there to be found the pronouns “me,” “mine,” or “I” (Matt. 6:9–13). (iv) The fundamental purpose of the eucharistic epiclesis is abundantly clear: We invoke the Spirit so that he may make Christ present to us and among us. In this way, the epiclesis expresses exactly the ministry of the Spirit as set forth in the farewell discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper (John 14–16). “The Paraclete,” Christ affirms, “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you 32 It is true that, since the seventeenth century, under Roman Catholic influence the Slavonic books have included the Latin form of absolution, “I, an unworthy priest, through the power given to me by him [Christ], forgive you . . . “; but this is to be seen as a regrettable deviation from the true Orthodox liturgical praxis. See Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 49–54. 33 Walter de la Mare, Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1942), 57.
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everything, and will remind you of all that I have said to you. . . . He will bear witness to me. . . . He will not speak as from himself, but will speak whatever he hears. . . . He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and will declare it to you” (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13–14). Such, then, is the specific ministry of the Third Person of the Trinity: he does not speak “from himself” but testifies always to the Lord Jesus, showing us not his own face but that of Christ. He brings no separate message of his own, but declares to us “whatever he hears” from Christ. Always he makes Christ present. In this light, we can readily appreciate the pattern of interpersonal relationships that exist within the Trinity. In the words of St. John of Damascus (c. 655–c. 750), “The Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit is the image of the Son.”34 Christ points to the Father, and the Spirit points to Christ; it is through the Spirit that we come to Christ, and through Christ that we come to the Father (John 14:6). Here, precisely, is the reason for the anonymous and elusive character of the Spirit that we noted earlier. He is elusive because he is transparent, in the sense that he bears witness to Christ and not to himself. What Gerald Manley Hopkins said about the Blessed Virgin Mary can be said also about the Spirit: He may be compared to the air that we breathe; he is our atmosphere.35 When the atmosphere is clear and unclouded, we do not see the air as such, in and by itself, but the air is the medium that enables us to see and hear what is around us. So it is with the Spirit: He enables us to see and hear Christ. If this is true of the ministry of the Spirit in its totality, it is true more especially of his role within the Eucharist, and supremely so at the moment of the epiclesis. Here, as always, it is his purpose to make Christ present to us. “The Bread and Wine are changed into the Body and Blood of God,” says John of Damascus. “And if you ask
34 Johannes Kotter, ed., “On the Orthodox Faith” 13 (I, 13), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. ii, Patristische Texte und Studien 16 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), 40. 35 See the poem of Hopkins, “The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe”: Be thou then, O thou dear Mother, my atmosphere . . . Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges and W. H. Gardner, 3rd edition (London/ New York/Toronto: Geoffrey Cumberlege/Oxford University Press, 1948), 103.
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how this comes to pass, it is enough for you to be told: through the Holy Spirit.”36 Thus we may say that the presence of Christ in the Holy Gifts is a spiritual presence, provided that we understand the adjective “spiritual” not in a weak but in a strong sense: It is a presence effected in and through the Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth, life-giving and allpowerful; and so it is, in every way, a real presence. (v) In the eucharistic epiclesis there is, as already noted, a double invocation, “upon us, and upon these gifts here set forth.” The Spirit is called down not only upon the bread and wine but also upon the worshipers, so that both may become the Body of Christ. The Holy Gifts are not consecrated apart from the holy people, but the Spirit of God blesses both of them simultaneously. (vi) The implications of this are evident in what follows immediately after the threefold “Amen” of the eucharistic epiclesis. Having asked that the bread and wine may be changed by the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body and Blood, the celebrant goes on at once (as we have noted) to pray for the communicants: “So that for those who partake they [the eucharistic gifts] may be for vigilance of soul, forgiveness of sins, communion in your Holy Spirit, fullness of the Kingdom of heaven. . . .” The consecration of the eucharistic gifts is, in this manner, directly linked with the consecration of the eucharistic persons who are to receive those gifts. What is more, the consecration of these persons is expressly related to the action of the Spirit; for, after mentioning vigilance and forgiveness as fruits of the reception of the sacrament, the prayer speaks of “communion in your Holy Spirit.” While the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom speaks at this point only in general terms about “communion in your Holy Spirit,” the equivalent prayer in the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great37 indicates more precisely what this communion signifies. The fruit of communion in the Spirit is above all unity: “Unite us all, as many as are partakers of the one Bread and Cup, one with another in the communion of the one Holy 36 On the Orthodox Faith 86 (IV, 13), ed. Kotter, 194–195. 37 Since the eleventh century, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom has been the normal Liturgy used in the Orthodox Church on Sundays and weekdays; that of St. Basil is used only ten times a year. Much of the Liturgy of St. Basil is identical with that of St. John Chrysostom, but in the second part of the service many of the priest’s prayers are different, and in particular the Anaphora is considerably longer.
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Spirit.” Union with Christ in his eucharistic Body and Blood signifies at the same time union with the Spirit; and union with Christ and the Spirit brings about our union with one another. Eucharistic unity, pneumatological unity, and ecclesial unity constitute one single and indivisible reality. And that threefold yet single unity means exactly the “fullness of [or fulfilment in] the Kingdom of heaven,” for which we then go on to pray in the text of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Because it is both christological and Pentecostal, the Eucharist as the feast of the Kingdom is pre-eminently the sacrament of unity. (9) The action of the Holy Spirit continues to be emphasized in the remaining part of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. In the Precommunion Litany, preceding the Lord’s Prayer, the deacon prays for “the precious gifts here set forth and sanctified,” and he continues: That our God, who loves mankind, having accepted them on his holy and noetic Altar above the heavens, as a savour of spiritual fragrance, may send down upon us in return his divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, let us pray. Here again, as at the blessing of the incense (§2 above), we note an allusion to the “Altar above the heavens,” providing a vital clue to the nature of the eucharistic sacrifice.38 More important, however, for our present purpose is the petition for the “gift of the Holy Spirit,” recalling the double invocation in the eucharistic epiclesis for the descent of the Paraclete “upon us, and upon these gifts.” The Precommunion Litany ends with a further prayer for communion in the Spirit: Having asked for unity of faith, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, let us entrust ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God. These two references to the Spirit in the Precommunion Litany are then taken up in the Precommunion Collect: To you, Master, who love mankind, we entrust our whole life and our hope, and we entreat, pray and implore you: count us worthy to partake of your heavenly awesome Mysteries
38 See above, note 24.
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at this sacred and spiritual table with a pure conscience, for forgiveness of sins, for pardon of offences, for communion in the Holy Spirit, for an inheritance in the Kingdom of heaven, for freedom to speak in your presence, and not for judgement or condemnation. This corresponds closely to the prayer for the communicants, cited above (§8 [vi]), that follows immediately after the eucharistic epiclesis. Here, then, once again it is made clear that communion in the Mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood is at the same time communion in the Holy Spirit. (10) The involvement of the Spirit in the eucharistic action is further underlined in the “manual acts” of that precede the communion of clergy and people. After the Fraction of the Lamb (i.e., the breaking of the consecrated Bread), the deacon says to the priest “Master, fill the holy Cup.” The priest takes the portion of the Lamb marked with the letters IS (standing for Ίησοῦς, Jesus), and he places it in the chalice, saying “The fullness of the Holy Spirit.”39 Then, in a ceremony that has puzzled many Western observers, the deacon takes a jug or cup containing hot water, known as the zeon, and pours this into the chalice, with the words, “The fervour of the Holy Spirit.”40 Thus it is made plain through these two “manual acts” that the sacramental elements, shortly to be received in communion, are vivified and animated by the power of the Spirit. The physical warmth of the zeon—the steam that rises visibly from the chalice—symbolizes the immaterial fire of the Spirit with which the Eucharist is filled.41 In the words of St. Ephrem (c. 306–373), the greatest of the Syriac Fathers
39 The precise form of words at this point varies considerably in the manuscripts; the version given here in my text is the best supported. Recent Greek printed editions give the form “The fullness of the Cup, of faith, of the Holy Spirit,” but this seems to date only from the eighteenth century. See Trembelas, Αί τρείς Λειτουργίαι, 135–136; Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. v, The Pre-Communion Rites, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 261 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2000), 384–398. 40 Once more there are many variants, the most common being, “The fervour of faith, full of the Holy Spirit.” See Trembelas, Αί τρείς Λειτουργίαι, 136–137; Taft, The Pre-Communion Rites, 441–502. 41 Fire, with which the Holy Spirit is specially associated (see Mt 3:11; Lk 3:16; Acts 2:3–4), is also used as a symbol for the Eucharist. Thus in the Office of Preparation before Holy Communion, it is said (Canon, Canticle 8, Theotokion):
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(and the Syrian tradition is rich in references to the Pentecostal dimension of the Eucharist):42 In your Bread is hidden a Spirit not to be eaten, In your Wine dwells a Fire not to be drunk. Spirit in your Bread, Fire in your Wine, A wonder set apart, [yet] received by our lips. . . . See, Fire and Spirit in the womb that bore you! See, Fire and Spirit in the river where you were baptized!
I shudder as I receive the fire. May I not be burned up Like wax, like grass. O fearful Mystery! O divine compassion! How can I, who am clay, Partake of your divine Body and Blood And be made incorruptible? The same idea recurs shortly afterward (Canon, Canticle 9, troparion 3): May your Body And most precious Blood Be to me as fire and light, My Saviour, Consuming the matter of my sins And burning up the thorns of passions And enlightening me wholly, That I may worship your Godhead. Later in the Office of Preparation, the same idea occurs: When you are going to eat the Master’s Body, Draw near with fear, lest you be burned: it is fire. In the prayers that follow, there come the words, “Let the burning coal of your all-holy Body and precious Blood bring me sanctification and illumination” (cf. Is. 6:6). And again: I partake Of fire, with joy and yet with trembling, For I am grass, but—wonder strange— I am refreshed with dew ineffably Just as the bush of old that was burning Yet unconsumed. The image of fire recurs in the Prayers of Thanksgiving after Communion: You who willingly give me your flesh for food, Who are a fire consuming the unworthy, Do not burn me up, my Maker. (See An Orthodox Prayer Book, Ephrem Lash, ed. [Milton under Wychwood: Nigel Lynn, 2007], 37, 42, 46, 51, 59). Many other examples could be given from Patristic sources to illustrate the words of St. Ephrem (quoted in my text), “In the Bread and Cup, Fire and Holy Spirit!” 42 See Taft, “‘Communion in the Holy Spirit,’ ” 32–34.
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Fire and Spirit in our Baptism; In the Bread and Cup, Fire and Holy Spirit!43 More specifically, St. Nicolas Cabasilas interprets the pouring of the zeon into the chalice to signify the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church: The zeon or hot water, being water and participating in fire, is to be understood as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, which was manifested as fire (Acts 2:3–4), and which is described as water (Is 44:3; Jn 7:38–39). This hot water is added after the precious gifts have been perfected and consecrated, and it signifies the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Church, which occurred originally after Christ had been slain, had risen from the dead, and had fulfilled all the economy of salvation. From that time onwards it takes place after the sacrifice has been performed; for the Holy Spirit descends on those who communicate worthily. . . . The hot water is poured over the Holy Gifts, not because the Holy Spirit descends on the Holy Gifts at that precise moment, for they have already received divine grace at the consecration [i.e., at the epiclesis], but so as to signify the manner whereby the Church participated and always participates in the Holy Spirit; for it participates through the Mediator, Christ our Saviour.44 In this way Cabasilas envisages two stages: first, the epiclesis during the Anaphora, when the Spirit descends on the bread and wine to make them the Body and Blood of Christ; second, the pouring of zeon into the chalice before the Communion, when the Spirit descends upon the faithful—who are shortly to receive the Holy Gifts—to make them likewise the Body of Christ. But, of course, this second stage has been anticipated in the first stage, for already in the epiclesis during the Anaphora the Spirit is invoked “upon us,” as well as “upon these gifts here set forth.” 43 “A Hymn of St Ephrem to Christ on the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, and the Sacraments,” trans. Robert Murray, Eastern Churches Review 3, no.2 (1970): stanzas 8 and 17; pp. 143, 144. 44 “Commentary on the Divine Liturgy” 37:3, in Explication de la Divine Liturgie, ed. Salaville et al., Sources chrétiennes 4 bis, 228; ET Hussey and McNulty, 90.
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(11) The Pentecostal significance of the Eucharist, as “communion in the Holy Spirit,” is summed up finally in the hymn of thanksgiving that follows the communion of the people: We have seen the true light, We have received the heavenly Spirit, We have found the true faith, As we worship the undivided Trinity: For the Trinity has saved us.45 To receive communion in the Body and Blood of Christ is at the same time to “drink from the one Spirit” (1 Cor 12:13),46 for the two hands of God are inseparable. This truth was underlined in an interesting but little-known controversy that occurred in the last days of the Byzantine Empire, around the year 1440. Certain priests at Constantinople, when giving communion to the laity, used the normal words spoken to each communicant, “The servant of God N. receives the precious and all-holy Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins and life eternal”; but they then immediately added the phrase, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” They were criticized for this on the grounds that in communion the believer receives Christ, not the Holy spirit. When St. Mark Evgenikos (c. 1394–c.1445), Archbishop of Ephesus, was consulted about the matter, he replied that the addition was in fact theologically defensible: “The Body and Blood of Christ are invisibly united to his Godhead on account of the supreme and hypostatic union of the Divine Word; therefore, in partaking of the holy Body and precious Blood of the Lord, we also participate in the Holy Spirit.”47 On all these different occasions, then, throughout the course of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the presence and action of the Holy Spirit are plainly and unambiguously proclaimed. The Eucharist, 45 This is in fact a verse sung at the Feast of Pentecost (Little Vespers, aposticha 1; Great Vespers, “Lord, I have cried,” sticheron 4; also used at Vespers on Tuesday or Wednesday in the week of Pentecost). 46 The immediate context here is Baptism, but the phrase can also be interpreted in eucharistic terms. 47 The controversy is discussed in the work of Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem (1641–1707), Ἐγχειρίδιον ελέγχον τὴν Καλβινικήν Φρενοβλάβειαν (Bucharest, 1690), 56–57.
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no less than Baptism, has both a christological and a pneumatological dimension. By virtue of the single essence uniting the three persons of the Trinity, and because of the ceaseless perichoresis prevailing between them, it is impossible that we should receive Christ without the Spirit or the Spirit without Christ. Participants at every Eucharist with the Apostles in the Upper Room of the Last Supper, we are also participants with them in the Upper Room of Pentecost; it could not be otherwise. The ministry of the Spirit, as the Johannine discourse at the Farewell Supper indicates, is not to speak “from himself” but to “bear witness” to Christ. In the Divine Liturgy, as at every moment in the life of the Christian, it is his role to render Christ present. If we neglect the Pentecostal orientation of the Eucharist, regarding it exclusively in Christological terms, then our understanding of the Sacrament will be not only incomplete but sadly unbalanced. Here, as in all things, let us be rigorously Trinitarian. The Trinitarian character of the eucharistic mystery, and more especially the place of the Third Hypostasis within that mystery, is strikingly evident in the words of Severian, Bishop of Gabala (fl. c. 400): Holy is the Father, whose will it was that [the Son] should be sacrificed. . . . Holy is the Son, a willing Victim, ever sacrificed and ever living. Holy is the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit who consecrates the sacrifice.48
GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR There are two fundamental characteristics of the Holy Spirit about which we have not so far spoken. First, he is not only a kenotic Spirit, who hides himself in order to show us the face of Christ, but he is also a compassionate Spirit, a Spirit of liberation, who is present especially among the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized. “In so far as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40): It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to recognize Christ in 48 On the Prodigal Son (PG 59:520) (included among the spuria of Chrysostom).
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the person of all that suffer, who makes us aware that Christ himself is looking at us through the eyes of the hungry and the homeless, the sick and the prisoner. At the inauguration of his public preaching, Christ emphasized this aspect of the Spirit’s diakonia when he read the Book of Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth (Lk 4:18–19, quoting Is 61:1–2): The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. If, then, the Eucharist is indeed the work of the Holy Spirit, it necessarily requires and empowers us to share in the Spirit’s liberating ministry. It commits us to serving others in a practical and sacrificial way. The Divine Liturgy is to be seen as the life-giving fountain from which all the Church’s social and political action proceeds. In the words of a pioneer ecumenist, the Russian Orthodox Nicholas Zernov (1898–1980): The Eucharist is, therefore, the source which inspires all the social activity of the Christians, all their endeavours to fight against poverty, injustice, disease and death, and it confirms their hope in the ultimate victory of good over evil.49 How far, then, is this social aspect of the Spirit’s work—which at times may take a subversive and revolutionary form—evident in the actual text of the Divine Liturgy? In the second place, the Holy Spirit is a missionary Spirit, a Spirit of apostolic evangelism, who sends us out to preach the risen Christ to the uttermost ends of the earth. If, then, the Eucharist is truly the work of the Spirit, this missionary orientation should also be evident in the text of the Liturgy. The Blood of Jesus was shed, not only for a restricted circle of his chosen disciples, but “for many” (Mt 26:28; 49 Nicholas Zernov, St. Sergius – Builder of Russia (London: SPCK, no date. [c.1939]), 105.
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Mk 14:24), that is to say, for humankind in its entirety. The Church, in other words, celebrates the Eucharist not merely for the sake of herself but “for the life of the world,” as it is clearly stated in the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Properly understood, the Eucharist is never introverted, but always outward-looking. How far, then, is this second aspect of the Spirit’s work stressed in the eucharistic service of the Orthodox Church? It has to be admitted that these two dimensions of the Spirit’s work—its social dynamic and its missionary purpose—are not explicitly mentioned at the specific moments in the Liturgy when the participation of the Paraclete is invoked. But if account is taken not merely of these specific moments, but of the Liturgy in its totality, then it turns out that both of these dimensions are definitely present. At the start of the service, in the Great Litany or Litany of Peace, we pray first in a comprehensive way for “the peace of the whole world.” Only afterward do we go on to pray, more particularly, for “the welfare of the holy Churches of God”; the “whole world” comes first. Later in the Great Litany we also remember “the sick, the suffering, the prisoners.” So the Divine Liturgy commences with an act of intercession that is allinclusive in its scope. In the words of “A Monk of the Eastern Church” (the pseudonym of Fr. Lev Gillet [1893–1980]): We pray for the peace of the universe, not only for humankind, but for every creature, for animals and plants, for the stars, for whole of nature. Thereby we enter into a cosmic piety, we express our tenderness for everything that God has called into being. We pray for every disciple of Christ, so that through each one God may be worshipped “in spirit and in truth.” We pray for an end to warfare and to conflicts between races, nations and social classes. We pray that all human beings may be united in a common love.50 In this way, from its very beginning the Divine Liturgy expresses the universal compassion of the Holy Spirit. Faithful to the inspiration of the Paraclete, “everywhere present and filling all things,” we look far beyond the visible limits of the Church, and we enfold the entire 50 Serve the Lord with Gladness: Basic Reflections on the Eucharist and the Priesthood, ET John Breck (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 16 (translation modified).
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universe in our prayer. Our vision extends, indeed, beyond the realm of created nature and includes the heavenly realms in its purview. Throughout the service we are reminded of the unity between the eucharistic offering here below and the celebration of the heavenly Liturgy on high. For example, at the Little Entrance (the Entry with the Book of Gospels), the priest prays: “Grant that, with our entry, there may be an entry of your holy angels, concelebrating with us, and with us glorifying your goodness.” At the Great Entrance (the Entry with the Gifts of Bread and Wine), we sing in the Cherubic Hymn, “We who in this Mystery are icons of the cherubim. . . .” As we offer the Eucharist, we are always taken up into an action far greater than ourselves. Invisible worshippers surround us. The angels are our concelebrants, along with the archangels, the seraphim and cherubim, the saints and the Mother of God. The universality of the Divine Liturgy is again underscored at the Elevation of the Holy Gifts, immediately before the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit. Lifting up the paten and chalice, the priest says: “Offering to you your own from your own, in all things and for all things. . . .” The eucharistic oblation is made, not only for the members of the Church, not only for humankind, but “for all things,” for the created world as a whole. Nothing is left out. Following the epiclesis, the Anaphora in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom continues with a wide-ranging act of intercession. As in the Great Litany, we pray first for “the whole inhabited earth,” and only in the second place for the Church: We offer you this reasonable worship for the whole inhabited earth, for the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. . . . Remember those whom each one of us has in mind, and all men and women51. . . . Remember, Lord, those who travel by sea or land, the sick, the suffering, the prisoners. . . . In the Liturgy of St. Basil, petitions at this point are considerably more detailed: 51 Various different translations have been suggested for this last phrase.
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Remember, Lord, your Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, that is from one end of the inhabited earth to the other. . . . Remember, Lord, those who have offered these gifts to you, and those for whom, through whom and on whose behalf they have offered them. . . . Remember, Lord, those who bring offerings, and who care for the beauty of your holy Churches, and who remember the poor. . . . Remember, Lord, the people here present, and those absent for a good reason. Have mercy on them and on us in the abundance of your mercy. Fill their treasuries with every blessing; preserve their marriages in peace and harmony; raise the infants; instruct the young; support the aged; comfort the faint-hearted; gather together the scattered; bring back those in error and unite them to your Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church; set free those troubled by unclean spirits; sail with those who sail; journey with the travelers; defend the widows; protect the orphans; liberate the captives; heal the sick. Those under trial or condemned to the mines or to exile and hard labour, and those in any kind of affliction, constraint or distress, remember, O God, together with all who are in need of your great lovingkindness: those who love us and those who hate us, and those who have asked us to pray for them, unworthy though we be. And remember all your people, Lord our God, and upon them all pour out your rich mercy, granting to all those petitions that are for their salvation. And those whom we have not remembered through ignorance or forgetfulness or the great number of names, do you yourself, Lord our God, remember: for you know the age and name of each, even from their mother’s womb. For you, Lord, are the help of the helpless, the hope of the hopeless, the Saviour of the storm-tossed, the haven of the voyager, the physician of the sick. . . . Even if many of these petitions envisage primarily members of the ecclesial community—for they were written in the context of the Christian Empire of Byzantium—yet they are not narrowly restricted
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to this circle. We pray for all. This is again made clear in the concluding prayer of thanksgiving, “The Prayer behind the Ambo,” when the celebrant prays, in words with which we are already familiar, “Give peace to your world, to your churches. . . .” The world comes first, then the Church. There are, then, strong reasons to claim that the Holy Spirit who is invoked in the Orthodox Liturgy is indeed understood as a compassionate Spirit, the Spirit of the poor and the deprived. But is he also understood in the Liturgy as a missionary Spirit? Here also we may answer in the affirmative, albeit more tentatively. The eucharistic rites of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil both contain a Litany for the Catechumens, that is to say, for those under instruction for Baptism, although regrettably in practice this is often omitted. The Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, celebrated on weekdays in Lent, contains in addition a special Litany “for those preparing for Holy Illumination” (for Baptism at the forthcoming Feast of Easter), used from the middle of the fourth week of the Fast. Shortly before this, during the Presanctified Liturgy, there is a special ceremony at the which the celebrant blesses the people with a lighted candle, saying the words, “The light of Christ shines upon all,” as the people make a deep bow or kneel with their faces to the ground. This solemn moment proclaims the missionary responsibility of every member of the Church. It is our duty and privilege to share the light of Christ with all those who have not yet opened their hearts to receive it. Most important of all, in this context of mission, are the words said by the celebrant shortly before the final blessing: “Let us depart in peace.” All too often, unfortunately, we do not give full value to this decisive phrase. It does not mean, “The Liturgy is over; go off and have some coffee.” On the contrary, its true meaning is, “The Liturgy is over; the Liturgy after the Liturgy is about to begin.” So far from being merely a comforting epilogue, a signal of release, these words are rather a command and a challenge: “Go out into the world, and impart to all around you the eucharistic life and hope with which you yourselves have been filled. You have received the Holy Gifts: Gifts are intended to be shared with others.” Doxology must now become evangelization. The Eucharist makes us apostles. In our missionary
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witness, we shall not necessarily be speaking about the Liturgy, but all that we say will be from the Liturgy. The Eucharist is an end-point, but it is also a starting-point. Such, then, are some of the ways in which we are to see the Divine Liturgy as the extension and re-living of Pentecost. All that I have sought to affirm concerning the presence of the Spirit, alike in the Eucharist, in the other sacraments, and in every aspect of the Christian life, is summed up in some moving words by the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatios IV:52 Without the Spirit, God is far away, Christ belongs to the past, The Gospel is a dead letter, The Church is a mere organization, Authority takes the form of domination, Mission is turned into propaganda, Worship is reduced to bare recollection, Christian action becomes the morality of a slave. But in the Spirit, God is near, The risen Christ is present with us here and now, The Gospel is the power of life, The Church signifies Trinitarian communion, Authority means liberating service, Mission is an expression of Pentecost, The Liturgy is a making-present of both past and future, Human action is divinized.
52 These words are taken (with some adaptation) from the address given by the then Metropolitan Ignatios Hazim of Latakia (later on Patriarch of Antioch) at Uppsala in 1968, “The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church”: see The Uppsala Report 1968: Official Report of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches Uppsala July 4–20, 1968, Norman Goodall, ed. (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968), 298.
5
The Unexpected God
How Christian Faith Discovers the Holy Spirit Brian E. Daley, SJ
In the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke tells us of Paul’s second arrival in the great city of Ephesus, on the west coast of Asia Minor, probably shortly after the year 50. Other early disciples, including Paul, had been there briefly before, and had entered into discussions with local synagogue members about whether Jesus was the Messiah, the fulfillment of Israel’s age-old hopes. Apollos, a well-educated Alexandrian Jew who had himself come to believe Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s saving plan, apparently had spent some time in Ephesus before Paul, and had argued impressively that Jesus was truly the Messiah Israel had been waiting for. He seems to have found some receptive listeners. But Apollos was, in some ways, a self-taught Christian, and although a deeply committed one, had some odd ideas and religious practices; for example, Luke tells us, “he knew only the baptism of John”—that expression of conversion and moral readiness for the Kingdom of God that Jesus himself had received at the Baptist’s hands. So Paul, on his second arrival in the city, got in touch again with the small community of followers of Jesus there—converts of Apollos, perhaps, numbering some twelve in all— and asked them, in the course of their discussion, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” Their answer was marked by disarming directness: “No, we have not even heard that there is
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a Holy Spirit.”1 Paul had work to do, and we read that he began by re-baptizing them “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” and laying hands on them so that they would receive the Holy Spirit as well. The result was a charismatic outpouring of spiritual gifts that became a familiar feature of the early Christian experience of faith.2 Despite the fact that Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit with some frequency in the Gospel of John, and that Paul, in his letters, speaks of the Spirit as the one who enables the believer to call Jesus “Lord” and to cry out to God, “Abba, Father!”3—as the giver of the spiritual gifts that bind the community together as Christ’s living body4—many Christians through the ages might in all honesty, echo what the Ephesians said. It has often been remarked, for instance, that Western theology since the high Middle Ages has shown an underdeveloped awareness of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. While this is not universally true, surely it does seem right to say that the devotion and theological understanding of most ordinary Catholic and Protestant lay people, as well as those of most catechists and Sunday preachers, have been focused far more on the person of Jesus than on the Spirit he gives us.5 In a powerful piece published in a German Catholic newspaper at Pentecost in 1970, Karl Rahner suggested that this tendency to ignore the Holy Spirit in the Church’s daily life may be due not simply to ignorance or inattention, but also to a pervasive, if largely unarticulated fear: We in the Church would be able to discover and experience the Spirit of the Lord more easily and more powerfully if we were not afraid of him. He is in fact the Spirit of life, of freedom, of confidence, of hope and joy, of unity, and thus of peace. We might suppose that humans long 1 Acts 19:2. 2 Acts 19:5–6. 3 1 Cor 12:3; Rom 8:15. 4 1 Cor 12:4–13; 14:1–2; etc. 5 For a discussion of the traditional Orthodox critique of “Christomonism” among Latin Catholics, see Yves Congar, “Pneumatologie ou ‘Christomonisme’ dans la tradition latine?” in Ecclesia a Spiritu sancto edocta (Gembloux: Duculot, 1970), 41–63. See also Walter Kasper, “Die Kirche als Sakrament des Geistes,” in Kirche—Ort des Geistes, ed. W. Kasper and G. Sauter (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 14–55, esp. 14–25.
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for the Holy Spirit more than anything else. But this is the Spirit who constantly breaks through all frontiers in order to give us these gifts, who seeks to deliver up everything to the incomprehensibility which we call God. . . . It is not surprising that we are afraid of him. For we always want to know what we are involved in, we want to have the entries in our life’s account-book clearly before us and to be able to add them up to a figure that we can clearly grasp. We are frightened of experiments whose outcome cannot be foreseen. . . . We are afraid of the Spirit. In a word, he is too incalculable for us.6 Rahner surely has a point, not only in indicating the psychological unease experienced by Church leaders before the unpredictable impulses and insights that Christian faith, since Paul, has seen as works of the Spirit—what we might call the “charismatic” or unstructured side of Christian experience. He also seems right in suggesting that this dynamic dimension of our life of faith, this mighty divine “wind, that blows where it will”7 and that rushed on the disciples at Pentecost, is all the more mysterious, and thus all the more fearful for us, because it is rooted in God’s own fundamental incomprehensibility: in what the Truth at the heart of things really is. In a famous article first published in 1948, “The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine,”8 Vladimir Lossky argues that the divergent understandings of the personal origin of the Holy Spirit within the Mystery of God, which have developed in classical Orthodox and Catholic theology since the time of St. Photius and the Carolingians—the dispute over the word Filioque in the Latin version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan, and the differing theological assumptions behind it—are “the sole dogmatic grounds for the separation of East and West.”9 Although, to most readers, Lossky’s 6 Karl Rahner, “Fear of the Spirit: Thoughts for Pentecost,” in Opportunities for Faith: Elements of a Modern Spirituality, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Seabury, 1974), 41–42. 7 Jn 3:8. 8 Original French pamphlet: La Procession du Saint-Esprit dans la doctrine trinitaire Orthodoxe (Paris: Setor, 1948). English translation by George Every, The Eastern Churches Quarterly 7 (1948): 31–53; reprinted in Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 71–96. 9 Lossky, 71.
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understanding of the Western doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit “from the Father and the Son” seems excessively slanted today, because it is so dependent on the Western treatments of the Trinity in post-Reformation scholastic handbooks and on the characterization of Eastern and Western Trinitarian theology popularized by Théodore de Regnon at the end of the nineteenth century,10 Lossky’s underlying critique of much Western pneumatology seems, in one respect, at least, well-taken: In attempting to express how the unknowable God of Israel, and Jesus the Lord, and the Spirit sent forth by Jesus on the Church, are all a single divine substance, differentiated by geometrically conceived “relations of opposition” that alone allow them to define each other in reciprocal terms, Latin scholastic theology ran the risk of transforming our awareness of the holy Trinity into a logical conundrum about unity and multiplicity, “the God of the philosophers and savants.”11 The Spirit, for many Western Christians, has been unintentionally distanced from the experience of the faith that “seeks understanding.” And if it is true that theology, like the wider life of faith, wants to “know what it is involved in,” to get a handle on its accounts,12 then the Holy Spirit, the one who personally realizes the inconceivable presence of God in each and in all of us, constantly reminds us that such control of the infinite lies beyond our grasp. That itself may be the Spirit’s greatest gift to his Church. My argument here is simply that our consciousness of the Spirit’s immediacy to us as graced creatures—our sense of his differentiated, supremely “personal” relationship both to us and to the unknowable God, along with our inability to fit the Spirit into either historical or philosophical categories—is really what most distinguishes this “person” of the Trinity within our feeble, struggling attempts to make sense of the Mystery of God. In the Spirit, we come face to face with 10 Théodore de Regnon, Études de théologie positive sur la sainte Trinité (Paris: Retaux, 1898); in criticism, see Michel R. Barnes, “De Régnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies 26 (1995): 51–79. For a careful summary and critique of Lossky and other twentieth-century Orthodox approaches to the question, see Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith, vol. 3 (New York: Seabury, 1983), 72–78; 208–212. See also André de Halleux, “Orthodoxie et Catholicism: du personnalisme en pneumatologie,” Revue théologique de Louvain 6 (1975): 3–30. 11 Lossky, 88; see also Lossky, 85, 89. 12 See Rahner, “Fear of the Spirit,” 41-42.
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God as uncontrollable reality. And this very closeness and elusiveness, I suggest, presents us with the Spirit’s crucial importance for our faith as Christians. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Patristic age’s greatest promoter of a conception of God who is at once both a single, transcendent reality—the source and ground of all that is—and the three distinct, timelessly related personal forces whom we call Father and Son and Holy Spirit,13 confessed his own embarrassment at being unable to specify the personal characteristics and the mode of origin of the Spirit as clearly and unambiguously as that of the Son. The relationship of Father to Son, after all, is presented to us first of all in the description of Jesus in the Gospels: Jesus prays to the God of Israel as “Father,” and urges his followers to pray in the same way;14 he claims to have received from his Father, the “Lord of heaven and earth,” unique personal knowledge and a unique role as revealer of God’s identity.15 In the Fourth Gospel, he speaks of himself as dwelling in the Father and having the Father dwelling in himself,16 and also as being in the world in order to reveal the Father and demonstrate the Father’s love for the disciples;17 he brings about perfect unity between his disciples and 13 See, for example, such classic summaries of the Church’s emerging conception of God as Trinity as Or. 20.5–11; Or. 29.2; Or. 42.24. Attempts to express the notion of God as radically three and yet inseparably one, three hypostases or concrete individuals in distinctive relationships with each other that in themselves form our ability to recognize them, are a constant theme repeated by Gregory in a variety of elegant, subtle, yet theologically profound ways. An example appears in his Oration 20, “On Theology, and the Appointment of Bishops,” which sketches out Gregory’s understanding of the notion of God that is implied by the Nicene Creed—for him a touchstone of the orthodox faith that ought to be professed by all in positions of Church leadership: “So we adore the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, dividing their individualities (hypostases) but uniting their godhead; and we neither blend the three into one thing, lest we be sick with Sabellius’ disease, nor do we divide them into three alien and unrelated things, lest we share Arius’ madness. . . . In this way, according to my argument, the unity of God would be preserved, and Son and Spirit would be referred back to one original cause, but not compounded or blended with each other; their unity would be based on the single, self-identical movement and will of the divine being, if I may put it that way, and on identity of substance. But the three hypostases would also be preserved, with no amalgamation or reduction or confusion conceived in our thought” (Or. 20. 5, 7). 14 See Mt 6:9; Luke 11:2. 15 Mt 11:25–27. 16 Jn 14:10. 17 Jn 16:25–28.
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his Father, modeled on his own unity with him as Son.18 By contrast, God’s Spirit—whom Gregory clearly identifies as the Holy Spirit of the Trinity—is presented in the Scriptures in much less concrete terms: a breath of God moving over the primeval waters,19 the energy enabling skilled craftsmen to carry out God’s design for the Tabernacle,20 the inner force that comes suddenly on human beings to enable them to move and speak, ecstatically, as God wills.21 So Gregory begins his longest treatment of the Spirit—his Fifth Theological Oration—with what he suggests is the criticism of the opponents of the Nicene, and so (for him) the Trinitarian, conception of God: “What would you tell us, they say, about the Holy Spirit? From what source do you thrust on us a strange and unscriptural God (xenon theon kai agraphon)?”22 The Gospels do not offer us the same sort of concrete images that it provides to help us understand how Jesus, the prophet and wonderworker, might be related to Israel’s God as Son to Father. The Spirit, in the Gospels, is mainly a promise for the future, a comforter for the disciples when Jesus is no longer with them,23 a counselor sent from the Father who will bear witness to what Jesus has taught,24 a continuing guide who will glorify Jesus in his absence by taking up the divine truth Jesus has received from his Father and “declaring it” to them.25 But who and what is this comforter and guide? How shall we imagine him? In comparison with the familiar, human figure of the Savior in Scripture, the Spirit appears to many, Gregory concedes, as “a strange and interpolated (parenggrapton) God,” a force whose divine status and personal identity, conceived by him and his contemporaries as somehow on a par with Father and Son, has in fact simply been read into the sources of revelation by a seemingly expansionist piety.
18 Jn 17:20–23. 1 9 Gn 1:2. 20 Ex 31:3. 21 1 Sm 10:10; 19:20. 22 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 31.1 (SC 250.276). 23 Jn 14:26. 24 Jn 15:26. 25 Jn 16:13–15.
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It is important to keep in mind that Gregory’s oration on the Holy Spirit is the fifth and final part of a series aimed at affirming the conception of God affirmed by the Council of Nicaea in 325, and hotly contested over the fifty years that followed. This Nicene faith affirmed that Jesus, the Lord, was not simply God’s unique representative, the divine agent of creation and savior of the universe (which Arians of every stripe would have conceded); in addition, it made it clear that Jesus, as Son of the Father, is God in the same sense that the Father is: “from the substance of the Father,” “of the same substance with the Father;” the same thing that the only God of Israel is! Jesus is “God with us.” In these discourses on the Trinity, Gregory, too, clearly affirms the Nicene understanding of Christ the Son: He seems to me, after all, to be called Son because he is the same thing in essence (tauton . . . kat’ ousian) as the Father is. And not only this, but because he is from him. He is an “only Son,” not because he is the only one from the only One, and only that, but because he is this in a unique way, and not as bodies [are from bodies]. And he is “Word,” because he is related to the Father in the way a word is related to a mind: not just because of the passionless character of his generation, but also because he is continuous with him, and proclaims him.26 Gregory then provides a quick summary of all the biblical titles applied to Jesus, in his role as revealer of God and Savior of fallen humanity, much as Origen had done at the start of his Commentary on John. In response, he urges his readers to enter into the process of contemplating these titles, for the sake of their own salvation: “Walk through them,” he says, “through those that are lofty, in a divine way; through those that have a bodily ring, with human compassion; or rather, walk through all of them in a divine way, that you may become god, ascending on high from here below, through him who has come down from on high for our sakes.”27 Asserting the full divinity of Christ 26 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 30.20 (SC 250.266). 27 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 21 (SC 250.274).
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the Son, in other words, depends on meditating, with the guidance of the Church’s confessions, on what the Scriptures tell us about Jesus— taking a leisurely stroll through their images and puzzling formulations, learning from them his true identity through careful and reverent personal reflection. So at the start of his next and final piece in the series—the Fifth Theological Oration—Gregory turns with undoubted daring to apply this same method of contemplative argument to the third agent named in the baptismal formula: the third “member” of the triune God, whose unity and distinction and reciprocal balance has come, for him, to constitute the final summation of apostolic faith in the saving divine Mystery. He writes: We are so confident in the divinity of the Spirit—the one whom we honor—that we even begin our account of the divinity from there, applying the same terms to the Trinity, even if this may seem bold to some. The Father “was the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into the world.”28 The Son “was the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into the world.” The “other Advocate” was “the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into the world.”29 “Was” and “was” and “was”—but it was one thing! Light and light and light: but one light, and one God! This is what David imagined long ago, when he said, “In your light we shall see light.”30 Now we have seen and proclaim: from the light of the Father we grasp the Son as light, in the light of the Spirit—a concise and simple account of what God is as Trinity (tēs Triados theologian).31 After fourteen centuries of confessing God as Trinity in the Churches of East and West—of taking the baptismal formula attested in the last chapter of Matthew’s Gospel as a conceptual model for understanding the ultimate reality of God at the heart of all things—all of this 28 Jn 1:9. 29 Jn 14:16. 30 Ps 35:10 (LXX). 31 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 31.3 (SC 250.278–280).
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surely will sound familiar, even formulaic, to most of us. It was anything but this at the end of the fourth century, however. Gregory’s acknowledged genius as an interpreter of theological traditions and a shaper of theological phrases rests, above all, on his success at bringing together for the Church this staggeringly simple summary of what biblical faith is really about. This is why he is called “Gregory the Theologian” —Gregory, who teaches us how to talk about God! To see his achievement in perspective, and to grasp how, in the process, he engages the very vagueness of what Scripture has to say about the third hypostasis in our confession, the mysterious “Spirit of God,” we must take a quick look backward at the discussions that led up to his original attempt to formulate a distinctively Christian theologia.
BEFORE NICAEA Since the time of Matthew’s Gospel, at least, Christians baptized new members of the community “into (eis) the name [meaning power, presence, mysterious reality] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” teaching them to observe all Jesus’s commands (Mt 28:19–20) within the community of faith. Faith in Jesus seems from the beginning to have affirmed, in a real and profound sense, that Jesus was and is the divine Savior of humanity, and that he has sent on his church the life-giving, prophetic Spirit who personally enables the faithful to call Jesus “Lord,” and to address God as “Father.” Yet, as John Henry Newman observes in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine in 1845, it would be a serious misreading of early Christian authors to assume that they had, before the last quarter of the fourth century at the earliest, the same unifying, formally cohesive sense of how these divine agents interact that we find articulated by Gregory in his Orations.32 32 Newman writes, “Let us allow that the whole circle of doctrines, of which our Lord is the subject, was consistently and uniformly confessed by the Primitive Church, though not ratified formally in Council. But it surely is otherwise with the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. I do not see in what sense it can be said that there is a consensus of primitive divines in its favour. . . . Of course the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity itself partly implies and partly recommends the doctrine of the Trinity; but implication and suggestion belong to another class of arguments which has not yet come into consideration. . . . The Creeds of that early day make no mention in their letter of the Catholic doctrine at all. They make mention
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In the first or second decade of the third century, for instance, Tertullian of Carthage—the first major Latin-speaking theologian—wrote an entire treatise against someone he calls “Praxeas” (suggesting, perhaps, “trickster” in Greek), who apparently was promoting a radically unitary conception of the God who has created and redeemed us. Using all his rhetorical and lexically creative skills, Tertullian insists that although there is certainly only one God, and one oikonomia or divine “plan of management” within human history, still Christians believe that this one, only God has also a Son, his Word, who proceeded from himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her, being both Man and God . . .; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to his own promise, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. . . . [The Church’s rule of faith holds] that all are of One, namely by unity of substance; while the mystery of the economy is still guarded which distributes the unity into a trinity, setting forth Father and Son and Spirit as three: three, however, not in quality but in sequence, not in substance but in aspect, not in power but in manifestation, yet of one substance and one quality and one power, seeing it is one God.33 Tertullian’s language here anticipates, in many ways, what will later become main features of the orthodox understanding of God in both East and West. Yet his main purpose—which is to argue that the causal unity, or monarchia, of God is not contradicted by the Church’s affirmation that the Father is distinct from the Son, the Son other than the indeed of a Three; but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that the Three are One, that They are coequal, coeternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated and never could be gathered from them. Of course we believe that they imply it, or rather intend it. God forbid we should do otherwise! But nothing in the mere letter of those documents leads to that belief. To give a deeper meaning to their letter, we must interpret them by the times which came after.” From “An Essay on the Development of Doctrine,” in Conscience, Consensus, and the Development of Doctrine, ed. James Gaffney (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 55–56. 33 Against Praxeas, 2, trans. E. Evans (London: SPCK, 1948), 132 (altered).
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Spirit—is achieved according to the material model of a living organism, or of the distribution of fluid. The position of the Son within the flow of existence, as receiving his “substance” from the Father, is precisely what enables him to pass that substance on to the Holy Spirit, and to maintain both their unity and their distinct order. For the Spirit is third with God and his Son, as the fruit out of the shoot is third from the root, and the irrigation canal out of the river third from the spring, and the illumination point out of the beam [of light] third from the sun: yet in no respect is he alienated from that origin from which he derives his proper attributes. In this way the three (trinitas), proceeding by intermingled and connected degrees from the Father, in no respect challenges the monarchy, while it conserves the quality of the economy.34 A Greek-speaking contemporary of Tertullian, whose identity and works have long been shrouded in uncertainty, was a certain Hippolytus, probably a native of Asia Minor who came as a presbyter to Rome at the end of the second century.35 His little treatise Against Noetus, perhaps written between 210 and 215, seems to be taking issue with the same radically unitary understanding of God’s agency in history that Tertullian had rejected, although that theology was clearly fashionable in Roman circles at the time. Hippolytus’ work is intended to affirm that the singleness of God, grounded in biblical faith, is not incompatible with God’s being in some sense manifold, as well. For God was not Word-less nor Wisdom-less nor Powerless nor Mind-less. But everything was in him, and he was himself the All. . . . For everything that has come into being he contrives through Word and wisdom—creating by Word and setting in due order by Wisdom. So it is that he made [things] in accordance with his will. . . . This Word, which 34 Against Praxeas, 8 (Evans, 140). Evans translates trinitas here simply as “Trinity,” but this may be suggesting a conceptualization of Father, Son, and Spirit as a single God that is more ontologically advanced than Tertullian was ready to affirm. 35 On the complex problem of the date and origin of the various treatises from the third century attributed to Hippolytus, see most recently J. A. Cerrato, Hippolytus between East and West: The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
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he has in himself and is invisible to the world that is being created, he makes visible. In uttering what was formerly a sound, and in bringing forth light out of light, he sent forth in the creation, as its Lord, his own Mind, which previously was visible to himself alone. . . . And so it is that another took his stand beside him. Now when I say “other,” I am not saying there are two gods. But it is like light out of light, or like water out of a spring, or like a sunbeam out of the sun. For there is a single Power that comes out of the All. But the All is the Father, and the Power that comes out of him is the Word.36 For Hippolytus, the relation of Son or Word to God is described here in mental, anthropological terms, as well as in the images of material flow that Tertullian uses; nothing is said explicitly here about the Holy Spirit. A few paragraphs further on, however, Hippolytus cautiously tries to include the Spirit in his description of this same divine “management” or “economy” by which God forms history. He does this now in clearly personal terms: While I will not say that there are two gods—but rather one (he insists) —I will say there are two “persons” (prosōpa); and that a third economy is the grace of the Holy Spirit. For though the Father is one, there are two persons—because there is the Son as well; and there is a third thing, too—Holy Spirit. . . . For the one who commands is the Father, the one who obeys is the Son, and the one who promotes mutual understandings is the Holy Spirit. He who is Father is over all things, and the Son is through all things, and the Holy Spirit is in all things.37 Basing his argument on Jesus’s language in the Gospels, Hippolytus seems to have no difficulty in speaking of Father and Son as two individuals in relationship with each other: two “persons,” like two characters in an ancient play. But the Holy Spirit is not so clearly profiled in Scripture, and Hippolytus prefers to speak of the Spirit simply in 36 Hippolytus of Rome, Contra Noetum 10.1–11.1, trans. Robert Butterworth (London: Heythrop Monographs, 1977), 68–70. 37 Contra Noetum, 14 (Butterworth, 74) (altered).
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terms of what this unifying force of God achieves in the world after Christ, as “a third economy” which we experience simply in the grace God gives us.
THE NICENE CONTROVERSY Most of the fierce debates that occupied the Church’s attention in the middle of the fourth century centered on the status of the Son, whom Christians recognize as incarnate in Jesus, and on the character of the Son’s unity with the God of Israel, whom he called “Father.” The familiar creed formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325—doubtless an expanded form of an earlier baptismal creed used in Antioch and Palestine—is mainly focused on giving a more precise definition of how the Son is related to the Father, without being simply identical with him. In the context of the debates between Arius and the bishops who opposed him, it seemed sufficient simply to add at the end, without further explanation, “and [I believe] in the Holy Spirit.” By the late 350s, however, as consensus gradually formed around the appropriateness of confessing the Son to be substantially one with the Father, attention turned again to the Spirit. What “substantial” status, what ontological role, could orthodox faith understand the Spirit to have? Does the Spirit operate in history as a distinct agent—a character in the drama of salvation, a persona? Or is the Spirit better conceived as Hippolytus seems to have conceived of him (or it): as grace, as God’s sanctifying operation, as an initiative or “economy” that need not be thought of as having personal status? The first hint we have of a new reflection on the Spirit as an active and distinct aspect of the divine reality emerges in Athanasius’ correspondence with bishop Sarapion of Thmuis, an Egyptian friend and supporter, who is also an important source for our knowledge of early Christian liturgical prayer. Athanasius, during his third exile from his see (356–361), received a letter from Sarapion, probably in 359 or early 360, telling him of a group in the Egyptian Church who were promulgating the notion that “the Spirit of God,” spoken of in the Bible, is simply a way of talking about God’s gracious activity, or perhaps even about a noble creature, differing only in degree from other spirits or angels; in any case, the Spirit must be thought of as completely unlike
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the Son, who is the Savior—an agent of God’s work in the world. Language in the Scriptures referring to the Spirit as accomplishing the works of God on his own initiative is to be taken, the group seems to have taught, as simple “figures of speech” —tropoi; hence the condescending label Athanasius uses for them, the Tropici. Athanasius’ response to Sarapion has come down in the form of four letters,38 in which he argues from the Scriptures, and from the traditional Christian understanding of the Spirit’s role in baptism and in the life of the Church, that the Spirit clearly plays a distinctive role in the salvation of believers, which is coordinate with that of the Father and the Son, as a full and active collaborator in the continuing drama of human divinization. Athanasius’ line of argument is similar to what he employs to establish the full Godhead of the Son in his pro-Nicene writings: If the Spirit is a creature, or a simple force or instrument of Father or Son, how can he be presented in so many parts of Scripture as a distinct agent, as one who plays an active role in uniting believers to the Son, and through the Son to the Father? Paul and John suggest, for instance (Rom 8:9–11; Jn 17:21), that it is the Spirit who makes the Son present in us, just as the Son makes present the Father; similarly, the Spirit is said to “glorify” the Son (Jn 16:14), as the Son “glorifies” the Father (Jn 17:4).39 Just as the Son definitively reveals “what he has heard from the Father” to the world (Jn 8:26), the Spirit will “take from what belongs to the Son” and declare it to his disciples after Jesus’s glorification (Jn 16:14).40 Athanasius even suggests that the Spirit is the “image” of the Son, just as the Son is the “image” of the Father. As a result, the Son is “in” the Spirit in the same way that the Father is “in” him: as an original or archetype is “in” what represents it.41 So Jesus’s statement that the Spirit of Truth “proceeds from the Father” 38 SC 15. For an English translation of these letters, with introduction and commentary, see C. R. B. Shapland, The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951). Shapland dates the letters to sometime between 356 and 362, and suggests that letters 2 and 3 probably originally formed a single letter. Letter 4 seems to be a brief summary of the earlier three. Letter 1, in any case, is clearly the most substantial. For the dating and circumstances of the letters, see Shapland, 16–18; for a summary of their theology of the Spirit, see 34–43. 39 Athanasius, To Sarapion 1.20 (Shapland, 113). 40 To Sarapion 1.20 (Shapland, 113). 41 To Sarapion 1.21 (Shapland, 119).
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(Jn 15:26) is only true “because it is from the Word, who is confessed to be from the Father, that [the Spirit] shines forth and is sent and is given.”42 Athanasius’ point here is not so much to offer a way to think about the Spirit’s origin as something mediated by the Son, as to insist that the Spirit is, in some way, a personal agent in the work of salvation— just as the Son is—and that the Spirit must therefore be “proper (idion) to the Son and not alien (xenon) to God.”43 The analogy Athanasius draws is really centered on his conviction that the Son, and therefore the Spirit the Son sends, must both truly be divine agents if they are to work human enlightenment and renewal. He writes: If, in regard to order (taxis) and nature (physis), the Spirit bears the same relation to the Son as the Son does to the Father, will not he who calls the Spirit a creature necessarily hold the same to be true also of the Son? For if the Spirit is a creature of the Son, it will be consistent for them to say that the Son is a creature of the Father.44 Given the sayings of the New Testament about the Spirit and his relation to Jesus, Athanasius considers it imperative that Christian faith regards the Spirit, too, as an uncreated agent who collaborates in the saving work of God. The situation in Asia Minor in the mid-370s, when the great Cappadocian Fathers were developing their own way of understanding the Spirit and his work, seems to have been somewhat different from what Athanasius had confronted in Egypt twenty years before. Usually ancient sources identify opposition to the identification of the Holy Spirit as a divine agent with Macedonius, the bishop of Constantinople who was forced to resign from his see in 360, apparently under pressure from the radical wing of the anti-Nicene or “Arian” party led by Eunomius of Cyzicus.45 Macedonius seems to have sympathized, in the late 350s, with the “homoiousian” group associated with Basil 42 To Sarapion 1.20 (Shapland, 117), 43 To Sarapion 1.25 (Shapland, 128). 44 To Sarapion, 1.21 (Shapland, 118–119). 45 See Shapland, 25, following Loofs.
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of Ancyra, who sought to find a middle ground between the supporters and opponents of Nicene theology by speaking of the Son as “like the Father in substance”; according to the historian Sozomen, Macedonius originally also regarded the Holy Spirit, encountered in Baptism and the other “mysteries” or sacramental actions of the Church, as essentially subordinated to the Son, a “minister and servant” in the realization of God’s gracious work.46 Whatever his own original position, Macedonius seems to have been basically a moderate in the developing discussion of how the three divine agents or “hypostases” in the work of salvation are all God—unwittingly lending his name to the so-called “Spirit-fighters” of Asia Minor, as they were categorized in the 360s. “Macedonianism” later became the designation for a heresy Macedonius himself may not have directly promoted.47
THE CAPPADOCIAN FATHERS AND THE TRINITY The earliest influential work to argue directly against these Asian doubts about the status of the Spirit was Basil of Caesarea’s famous treatise On the Holy Spirit, which was probably completed in its present form about 375. The origin of the first part of this work was apparently a long theological discussion Basil had the previous year with a friend and former mentor, Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste in Eastern Asia Minor. A charismatic and influential ascetic, Eustathius—like his protégé Macedonius—seems also to have assumed that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit referred to an ordered ranking of actors within God’s saving work. Though both Eustathius and Macedonius were willing to affirm that Christ, presented in the Gospels as Lord and Son, is “like the Father in all things,” even “substantially like” the Father, the character of the Spirit who comes on Jesus, and whom Jesus promises to his followers—the Spirit’s “personality,” one might say, and way of working—was less clear in Scripture and tradition. The Spirit, Eustathius 46 Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, 4.27; see also 4.13, 4.22; Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, 4.25. 47 For brief attempts to situate Macedonius’ way of conceiving the Spirit within fourth-century controversy, see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 214–218; Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2011), 24–26.
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and his followers agreed, is our own means of union with the Lord Jesus, our own access to the transcendent God. But precisely because the Spirit is so centrally involved in Christian experience, so interior to holy individuals and to the Church—and particularly because the form of monastic life for men and women that Eustathius energetically fostered probably understood itself as thoroughly driven by the Spirit of God—Eustathius seems to have identified the Spirit as part of God’s gracious work of transformation within creatures, rather than as part of the Divine Mystery itself. Basil’s treatise on the Spirit apparently used the notes of his own formal conversation with Eustathius about the Spirit’s status—largely a discussion of the implications of the various doxologies and prayers in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are invoked, with their connecting prepositions—as the first eight chapters of a much longer reflection on just what the tradition of Christian faith and worship, drawing from the Scriptures, implies about the faces we discern in God. Basil clearly wants to affirm that the Spirit is, in some sense, a coordinate agent, along with Jesus and the one Jesus calls “Father,” in accomplishing the transforming and deifying work of God in human history. The Spirit, too, is called “Lord” in 2 Cor 3:17, and is given glory in the Church’s prayer alongside Father and Son. If the Father is the originating source (archē) of all that is, the Son is the instrument or “creative cause,” and the Spirit the “perfecting cause.”48 So Basil points to the implied unity of action and nature shared by the three, although—unlike Athanasius fifteen years before—he noticeably stops short of applying to the Spirit the term homoousion, “of the same substance,” that Nicaea had ascribed to Son and Father.49 Gregory of Nazianzus, his friend and associate in ministry, in a celebrated exchange of letters from the late 48 On the Holy Spirit, 16.37–38. In 16.37, he draws on 1 Cor 12:5–6 to make this distinction. 49 Athanasius, by contrast, does apply this inflammatory adjective a few times to the Holy Spirit in his Letters to Sarapion. Contrasting the Spirit to the many angels and other spiritual forces carrying out God’s work in creation, he concludes: “It is obvious that the Spirit does not belong to the many, nor is he an angel. But because he is one, and, still more, because he is proper to the Word who is one, he is proper to God who is one, and one in essence (homoousion) with him” (1.27; trans. Shapland, 133; see also Letter 2.3 and 2.5; 3.1). It is striking that for Athanasius here, the reason we can say the Spirit is of the same substance as God is that he is “proper (idion)” to the Son, and therefore identified with the divine substance in the same way the Son is.
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370s, criticizes Basil for “managing” the Truth in an overly diplomatic way, by avoiding this inflammatory term.50 In the Fifth Theological Oration, which we have discussed above, Gregory of Nazianzus himself is much less hesitant to affirm that Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct agents who nevertheless share a single, if transcendent, substance. Unlike the multiple gods assumed by the Greeks to be at work in nature, he writes, “each of them has unity with what is joined to it as much as it does with itself: by identity of substance and of power.”51 Gregory is primarily concerned throughout this essay to affirm that the Spirit, for whom the Scriptures do not provide the same kind of unambiguous personal profile that they do for the Son, is clearly a being who exists and acts for himself, yet always within the unique reality of God. If the Spirit is simply an activity (energeia) ascribed to God, how can he be described in Scripture as himself speaking and acting and being “grieved”;52 “but if he is a creature, how is it that we believe in him, or that we are perfected in him?”53 But Gregory then raises the inevitable conundrum implied by such Scriptural evidence: If the Spirit is God and not a creature, how do we imagine and speak of his place, his origin within the divine Mystery? Surely he is either unbegotten or he is begotten. But if he is unbegotten, there are two beings without cause. But if begotten, you will make a further distinction: either this Spirit is out of the Father, or out of the Son. And if he is out of the Father, there are two Sons, who are brothers. . . . But 50 See Gregory Nazianzus, Letter 58, and his somewhat apologetic allusion to Basil’s anger over the implied accusation of dishonesty, in Letter 59. 51 Or. 31.16 (SC 250.306). In late antique philosophy, it is assumed that every substance has the “power” (dynamis) to act (energein) in specific ways. In his Epiphany oration, On the Holy Lights, Gregory develops his understanding a little more fully: “For ‘there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things’ (1 Cor. 8:6), and one Holy Spirit, in whom are all things; yet these words ‘of,’ ‘by,’ and ‘in’ do not denote a difference of nature . . ., but they characterize the individualities (hypostaseis) of a nature which is one and unconfused. . . . There is, then, one God in three, and these three are one, as we have said.” (Or. 39.12). On the role played by the idea of “power” in Cappadocian thought, see Michel René Barnes, The Power of God. Dynamis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001). 52 Gregory seems to be alluding here to passages such as Mt 12:20; Jn 14:26; Acts 13:2; Eph 4:30; Jb 4:9. 53 Or. 31.6.
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if he is from the Son, then God the Grandson has appeared before us!54 Apparent problems abound, but Gregory insists here, amidst abundant ironic comment on his critics, that we must seek for “some higher form of relationship” by which Son and Spirit are related to the Father and to each other, free from images of gender and physical relationship.55 Relying for his paradigm on John 15:26 in which Jesus refers to “the Spirit, who proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Father,” Gregory goes on to suggest that “the proceeding one” (to ekporeuton) should not himself be thought of in terms of fatherhood or sonship, but should somehow be conceived of as between the Father, who has no source, and the one who is begotten as Son: Insofar as he proceeds from him he is not a creature; but insofar as he is not begotten, he is not a Son; and insofar as he is between (meson) the Unbegotten one and the Begotten, he is God. . . . What, then, is ‘procession’? You tell me what the unbegottenness of the Father is, and I will explain in natural terms the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, and we will both be driven out of our minds for trying to peer into the Mystery of God! Who are we to do these things, we who cannot know what lies just under our feet?56 For Gregory here, to speak of the Spirit as “proceeding” from the Father is to leave his relationship appropriately undefined, but to suggest it is different from, even in some way prior to, the begetting of the Son whom we recognize, in his incarnate existence, as Jesus.57 In May and June of 381, an assembly of Eastern bishops was called together by the Emperor Theodosius at Constantinople, under the leadership of the aged bishop Meletius of Antioch, to confirm what had by then become a pro-Nicene consensus in the Eastern Churches, 54 Or. 31.7. 55 Or. 31.7. 56 Or. 31.8. 57 The main inspiration for this idea that the Spirit is in some way prior to, and responsible for, the being of the Son may simply be his role in the conception of the Son in human form by the Virgin Mary: see Luke 1:35.
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which seem to have been weary by now with decades of wrangling over the likeness or unlikeness of Son to Father. The Creed produced by the Council of 381 (which many modern Christians simply know, imprecisely, as “the Nicene Creed”) was essentially the formula of 325, in slightly simplified terms, with an expanded final section dealing with the role of the Spirit in history and in the being of God. Following Basil’s cautious example, it stops just short of calling the Spirit “God” or affirming he is “consubstantial” with Father or Son; it emphasizes simply that the Spirit is “adored and glorified” along with them, and that he is given to God’s people in charisms—he “spoke through the prophets.” By appending to this brief description phrases on the unity and sanctity of the Church, on baptism, and on Christian hope for everlasting life, the Creed also suggests that the Spirit lies at the root of these core Christian experiences of common life and hope. In itself, the Creed of 381 seems not to have been intended to define the Spirit’s relationship to either Father or Son, or to affirm or deny any detailed understanding of the Spirit’s origin; alluding to John 15:26, as Gregory had done, it simply affirms that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” God the “source without source (archē anarchos)” is ultimately the one who gives the Spirit his substantial and individual being.
AFTER THE CAPPADOCIANS During the decades surrounding the Council, approaches to formulating the mysterious character of the Spirit’s origin within the Mystery of God varied widely. For instance, Didymus the Blind—the Alexandrian exegete and theologian—in his own treatise On the Holy Spirit (roughly contemporary with Basil’s), insists that the Spirit shares both the substance and the saving will of Father and Son, because of the radical, ordered simplicity of God: “For the Son is nothing else but what has been given him by the Father, and the Spirit is no other substance besides that which has been given him by the Son.”58 Another treatise On the Holy Trinity, ascribed to Didymus and probably from 58 Didymus, On the Holy Spirit 165–166 (SC 386; Paris: Cerf, 1992, 284–286). This work, probably composed around 375, has only survived in a translation by Jerome, made at least ten years later. Didymus also argues here that the Spirit is sent by God, just as the Son is, yet not precisely as a Son; so he is “joined to the Son in unity” and is called, in Scripture, “the Spirit of the Son.” On the Holy Spirit, 139 (SC 386, 272).
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the same Alexandrian milieu (whether or not it is actually Didymus’ work), argues that even though different terms—“begetting” and “proceeding”—are used in Scripture for the origins of Son and Spirit, both terms suggest that the two share equally in the work of creation and renewal, “for all begetting and proceeding are realized by beings that are equal and like each other.”59 Cyril of Alexandria, in his works on the Trinity, as well as in a number of polemical writings on the person of Christ, also has a great deal to say about the Holy Spirit. He insists that the Spirit is truly divine and proper (idion) to the divine substance—“as it were, a quality of his holiness.”60 Using the Eusebian image of the fragrance that makes perfume present to the senses, even though it is materially distinct from the perfume itself, Cyril affirms that the Spirit, who is “as it were, the fragrance of God’s substance,” gives to creatures “a share in that substance which is above all things.”61 In fact, Cyril seems to conceive of the distinctive role of the Spirit in the world to be its intimate, internal presence within intelligent creatures, enabling them to participate in the inner life of God; from our perspective as creatures, at least, the Spirit is thus “the completion (symplērōma) of the holy Trinity.”62 So in his seventh Dialogue on the Trinity, Cyril has his interlocutor ask whether the Spirit is consubstantial with Father and Son, and answers: “Certainly, since it is not otherwise possible for the holy ones to be enriched by participating in God than by receiving 59 On the Trinity 2.2.22, ed. Ingrid Seiler (Meisenheim: Hain, 1975, 28). For the debate about the authorship of this work, see Louis Doutreleau, “Le ‘De Trinitate’ est-il l’oeuvre de Didyme l’Aveugle?” Recherches de science religieuse 45 (1957): 514–57 (against Didyman authorship), but also Doutreleau’s note in his edition of Didymus’ On the Holy Spirit (SC 386; 204–205), where he changes his mind. See also C. Bizer, Studien zu den pseudoathanasianischen Dialogen (Bonn, 1970) (against Didyman authorship) and Alasdair Heron, Studies in the Trinitarian Writings of Didymus the Blind: His Authorship of the Adversus Eunomium IV–V and the De Trinitate (Diss. Tübingen, 1972) (in favor of Didymus as author). 60 Commentary on John 14.23, ed. Pusey, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1872; repr. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1965) 499. For a much more detailed consideration of Cyril’s treatment of the Holy Spirit, see my article, “The Fullness of the Saving God: Cyril of Alexandria on the Holy Spirit,” in The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria, ed. T. G. Weinandy and D. A. Keating, 113–49 (London: T. and T. Clark, 2003). 61 Commentary on John 16.15 (ed. Pusey 2.639). This image of fragrance and the perfume from which it comes recalls Eusebius of Caesarea’s image of the Word’s relationship to the Father, as well as of God’s gift of the Spirit to make all of his people “Christs”: see Demonstratio Evangelica 4.15, trans. William Ferrar (repr. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1981), 194–196. 62 Thesaurus 34, ed. Pusey (Oxford) 608b.
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the Spirit. For we are made perfect by becoming ‘sharers in the divine nature.’”63 The Spirit involves us in the life of God, and in that sense plunges us personally into God’s ineffable and indefinable life; for humans, salvation and the fulfillment of God’s creative design require no less. In perfecting us, he perfects the very Mystery of God. Before leaving this quick tour of Patristic reflections on the Holy Spirit, it seems essential at least to look briefly westward at Augustine of Hippo’s approach to the Mystery of the Spirit’s person and deity, if only because Augustine is often identified by modern theologians, of East and West, as being the originator of a style of thought that so emphasizes the substantial unity of Father, Son, and Spirit that their personal distinctions are lost from view. It would be impossible to discuss Augustine’s theology of the Holy Spirit, or his original, often highly speculative engagement with the Mystery of the triune God, with any adequacy here. Still, it is important to note that while Augustine does, in several sections of his monumental treatise On the Trinity, affirm that the Spirit “proceeds” from both the Father and the Son together, as some of the Latin Fathers had done before him, he also states clearly, in both his early address On the Faith and the Creed (393), and his late Handbook (Enchiridion) on Faith, Hope, and Love (421) that the Spirit is “the Spirit of the Son” but proceeds only from the Father.64 In the De Trinitate, as readers sometimes forget, Augustine begins his reflections with the Scriptures and the Church’s traditional faith. So he affirms, near the start of the first book, that According to the Scriptures Father and Son and Holy Spirit, in the inseparable equality of one substance, present a divine unity; and therefore there are not three gods but one 63 Dialogues on the Trinity, 7 (Pusey 637bc). 64 De fide et symbolo 9.19; Enchiridion 9.3. On Augustine’s “subtle” and carefully nuanced conception of the origin of Son and Spirit within the Mystery of God, see the important article by Gerald Bonner, “St. Augustine’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” Sobornost 4 (1960): 51–66, esp. 60–66. While conceding significant differences between the classic positions of the Orthodox and Catholic traditions on this point, Bonner writes: “it seems to me that Augustine’s doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit is a great deal less revolutionary, and a great deal closer to the thought of the Greeks, than he has usually been given credit for, whether for praise or blame. As I read it, his teaching of procession ‘from the Father and the Son’ is equivalent to ‘from the Father through the Son,’ and certainly does not imply that the mode of the procession is the same in both cases” (Bonner, 65).
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God; although indeed the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore he who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself coequal to the Father and the Son, and belonging to the threefold unity.65 The Holy Spirit, he goes on to insist, is certainly not a creature, but “true God”;66 equal to Father and Son eternally, sharing in the ineffable reality or “substance” of all that it is to be God. In Book 2 of the same work, Augustine reflects on John 16:13, where Jesus tells the disciples the Spirit, in time to come, “will glorify me, because he will receive of mine and will tell it to you,” adding immediately that “all that the Father has is mine; that is why I said, ‘He will receive of what is mine and will tell it to you.’ ” Augustine points out that this depiction does not make the Spirit any less than the Son in status, “since both the Son is from the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father”; yet they are not two sons, because, in a way impossible to explain fully, in God being a Son is different from “proceeding.” 67 In Book 5, Augustine is directly engaging the recently-coined Cappadocian terminology of universal and individual, substance or essence, and hypostasis or “person,” as such language is applied to the Mystery of God. He further reflects on how the Father can be the source of both Son and Spirit without having generated two sons. He concludes that Scripture suggests the Spirit “comes forth” in a different way: “he comes forth, you see, not as being born but as being given, and so he is not called son, because he was not born like the only-begotten Son, nor made and born adoptively by grace like us.”68 Augustine identifies the characteristic feature of the Spirit’s existence here, in other words, as the fact that he is given rather than begotten or created. As “God the gift,” he exists eternally within the divine Mystery, given by Father to Son and returned by Son to Father in a 65 Augustine, On the Trinity, 1.7, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991), 69. 66 On the Trinity, 1.13. 67 On the Trinity, 2.5 (Hill, 100). 68 On the Trinity, 5.15 (Hill, 199).
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structured sequence of causation beyond time, and ultimately given by both of them to creatures, as the center of our divinization. It is that characteristic of being given that, for Augustine, provides us with the sharpest clue to who the Spirit uniquely is, and how the Spirit uniquely works. And since the Scriptures present Jesus both as speaking about the Spirit as “sent by the Father” in his name (Jn 14:26) and as given by Jesus himself “from the Father” (Jn 15:26) to the disciples and the Church, Augustine concludes that both Father and Son must be seen (although in different ways) as his givers, and so as the source of this powerful gift. He writes: If therefore what is given also has him it is given by as its origin, because it did not receive its proceeding from him from anywhere else, we must confess that the Father and the Son are the origin of the Holy Spirit; not two origins, but just as Father and Son are one God, and—with reference to creation—one creator and one Lord, so, with reference to the Holy Spirit they are one origin.69 Yet Augustine makes it clear that this ability to be, together with his Father, the giver and personal source of the Spirit, belongs to the Son in a way that is itself derived in his generation, along with his very Sonship: bestowed by the Father eternally on the Son as part of begetting him. So he specifies, in Book 15: In this triad only the Son is called the Word of God, and only the Holy Spirit is called the gift of God, and only the Father is called the one from whom the Word is born and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds. I added “principally,” because we have found that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son. But this too was given the Son by the Father.70
69 On the Trinity, 5.15 (Hill, 199). 70 On the Trinity, 15.29. In his late treatise Contra Maximinum Arianum from 427–428, Augustine insists that while Christians must hold that the Spirit “proceeds from both” the Father and the Son, he himself is not at all sure what the difference really is between “being born” and “proceeding.” “Not everything that proceeds is born,” he observes, “although everything that is born proceeds.” “Proceeding,” for him, is clearly the more general term for “coming forth from,” and does not bring with itself any further precise implications.
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Part of the reason for future misunderstandings between East and West, surely, is the slightly different understandings of the word “proceed” that developed in the context of Trinitarian thought. For Augustine, it is a generic notion implying movement from one point to another, as from source to goal; for the later Greek tradition, it came to have a more technical yet less positively defined meaning, based exclusively on John 15:26: origin within God that is not generation. Yet both Augustine and his Greek contemporaries recognize that the Holy Spirit’s way of coming forth from God is not such as to make the Spirit a second son of the Father, let alone a grandchild; and all of them recognize that it is the coming of the Spirit into the world, as the one sent from God by the risen Christ, as from Christ’s own divine fullness, that gives us the only glimpse we have of the relationships that constitute the Mystery of God. In the centuries that followed the Council of 381, as most of us know, Christians of East and West became increasingly embroiled in debate over the precise relationship of the Spirit to Father and Son in his origin, and on the legitimacy of the insertion of the word Filioque—”and from the Son” —into the Biblical statement of the Creed of 381 that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” This fateful addition first appeared in the Latin translation of the Creed that was probably promulgated for Spanish use by the Third Synod of Toledo in 587—a translation that was later promoted as the only orthodox profession of faith by the Emperor Charlemagne and his theological advisors at the end of the eighth century. From that point on, what had begun as a small but characteristic difference in theological terminology and homiletic idiom quickly grew into a difference of how East and West conceived Christian orthodoxy—and the Filioque controversy came menacingly into its own!71 Augustine does go on, however, to insist that in the Christian understanding of God, the Spirit proceeds principaliter (i.e., “as from an ultimate source” or principium) from the Father, and “proceeds from the Son by the gift of the Father; for the origin (auctor) of his procession is the Father, who begot such a Son, and in begetting gave him [the status] that the Holy Spirit might also proceed from him.” Contra Maximinum Arianum, 2.14.1. 71 With his characteristic eirenism, Maximus Confessor already recognized, in a work sent to the Cypriot priest Marinus in the mid-640s, that when the Latins of even that period speak of the “procession” of the Spirit from Father and Son, “they are not making the Son into the cause of the Spirit. They recognize the Father as the unique source of the Son and the Spirit.
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IMAGINING THE SPIRIT TODAY My argument here, in the perhaps overabundant sketch I have offered of the beginnings of a Christian theology of the Spirit Christ has given us, is that the question of the Spirit’s “hypostatic” origin within the divine Mystery—whether the Spirit “proceeds” forth eternally from the Father alone and is sent out into creatures, in time, by the Son, as Photius and the Eastern tradition would argue, with increasing intensity; or whether the Spirit “proceeds” from Father and Son together, although in differentiated ways, and is first of all the personal expression of their mutual love and communion, as Carolingian and medieval theologians in the West, inspired by Augustine, would insist—is really not the issue that mainly caught the attention of theological writers either in East or West during the formative, premedieval centuries. For the Fathers, as I have tried to show here, the abiding question was how to conceive of the Spirit at all. Scripture tells us often about “the Spirit of God,” working in the prophets and people of Israel, sent by God on Jesus at his baptism, given to the Apostles and their hearers in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost. But of what and of whom is the Bible speaking? Is this Spirit an instrument of God’s saving work on earth? Is it a way of talking about God’s actions of sanctification and illumination in created minds—God’s power, God’s creative grace? Is “the Spirit of God,” perhaps, a mediating creature itself—a kind of angel? Can this Spirit itself be God? And if it is, can it be truly distinct from the transcendent Father, from whom all reality flows forth? Can it be truly distinct from the risen Lord, who sends it? The Scriptures, Gregory of Nazianzus reminds us, really offer us little direct help in answering these questions. Both in the Old . . . But they are trying to show that the Spirit proceeds through the Son, and therefore that there is a community of essence.” He goes on to add that the disagreement of Latins and Greeks on this point is simply terminological: “It is impossible for them to express their thought adequately in another formulation, in another language, in the same way that they do in their own language, their mother tongue; we, after all, are in the same situation with our language!” Maximus, Opusculum 10, To Marinus; PG 91.133–136. For a discussion of the origins and development of this central controversy between Orthodox and Western Christians, along with theological reflections and practical suggestions on how to move beyond it, see the 2003 joint statement of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation, “The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?” See also my twopart article, “Revisiting the Filioque,” Pro Ecclesia 10, no. 1 and no. 2 (2001): 31–62; 195–212.
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Testament and the New, the God of Israel reveals himself increasingly as the only God, the sole creator, the one companion and guide of Israel, “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” but who holds all people responsible for their moral actions (Ex 34:6–7). This God is unique and beyond depicting, yet he has a decided personality. Jesus, the man from Nazareth whom Christians call Lord and Son of God, ultimately came to be recognized by mainstream Christians—by the mid-fourth century, at least—as also God in the full sense of the word, sharing in the very substance, the inconceivable reality, of the one he calls “Father”: In the words of the Creed of Nicaea, he is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.” But the Spirit of God, the Spirit sent by Christ, is surely much more difficult for the faithful reader of Scripture to characterize and identify; the Spirit does the work of God, but seems to lack a “face”—a prosōpon; the Spirit is a gift, a force, but seems not to have the individual concreteness that Greek philosophy referred to by the term hypostasis. So Gregory depicts his opponents as arguing against him—against his radical affirmation that the Holy Spirit, too, is fully divine, and is part of a Trinity of equal “persons”—that such a notion of God is “strange” and “unscriptural,” something “read into” biblical faith. His own efforts, as well as those of his contemporaries Athanasius and Didymus, Basil and Augustine, are precisely to argue on the basis of Scripture and of the Church’s continuing experience of prayer and baptism and inner transformation, that the Spirit given to us is also God, also “personal” in the mysterious yet central sense of that word—that the Spirit must also be active, powerful, unpredictable, yet capable of defining personal relationships within the Mystery of God—if the salvation promised us in the Gospels is to come to realization. The problem with the Spirit, for early Christian writers and, I suspect, for us still, is that he—or she, or it! —is simply too close to us, too much involved in our own lives of faith, to be adequately conceived or imagined. The Father, as transcendent source of all that is, lies beyond our imagining, yet is gradually revealed in the Hebrew Bible as having a distinctive and complex profile; he is a majestic character who spoke to Abraham and Moses, whose judgments and promises are sketched out by the prophets. The Son stands next to us in the fullness of Jesus’s
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human form, speaks our language, hangs on the cross in the fullness of his human vulnerability, is transfigured on Mount Tabor to reveal the fullness of human, as well as divine, beauty. The Spirit, by contrast, descends on the prophets and Jesus in inner power, appears over the heads of the Twelve as “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:3), and sweeps them on into a new age of human history “with the sound like the rush of a mighty wind” (Acts 2:2). Like any favorable wind, the Spirit is behind us, the fire brightens our lives from above, the power transforms us within; yet none of these figures is really objective and visible as an actor before us; none of them has a “face.” Cyril of Alexandria speaks of the Spirit simply as “the one who brings the Trinity to its completion (to symplērōtikon tēs triados),” 72 and who for that reason “brings the renewal of creation to fulfillment,” as well.73 In the work and by the presence of the Spirit, the involvement of God in our world enfolds us and communicates to us mysteriously, beyond ideas, the structure of God as God is. So Gregory of Nazianzus—in an oft-cited passage from the Third Theological Oration that truly stretches the limits of biblical discourse—remarks of the distinctive Christian conception of God: For this reason the Monad, set in motion from the beginning into a Dyad,74 has come to rest in a Triad. And this, for us, is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The one is begetter and emitter, but I mean this in a way beyond passion and time and bodies. Of the other two, one is begotten, the other emitted—or however else one wants to speak of them, when all visible connotations are completely removed.75 What we want to say about God, on the basis of Scripture and the experience of living faith, has a direction and an order (taxis), a 72 Thesaurus 34 (PG 75.608d). 73 See also Cyril’s Commentary on John 1.1 (Pusey I, 25): “So when the Holy Spirit is added to the number [of Father and Son], and is called God along with them, the holy and adorable Trinity possesses its own proper fullness (plērōma);” and Cyril’s Commentary on John 14.25–26 (Pusey II, 507): like the human will that brings the mind’s purposes to fulfillment, the Holy Spirit is “not other by nature, but a kind of part that brings the whole to completion and exists within it.” 74 See John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word. . . .” 75 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.2 (SC 250.180).
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“movement,” which can only be regarded as complete when the Spirit of God is understood to be God’s hypostatic and consubstantial completion. But the character of his coming-forth from God and within God is beyond imagining. In an article published in French in 1981, the distinguished Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae reflects on the Christian belief that the Holy Spirit, as the one who brings the Trinitarian life of God to its fullness and completion, is really the one who allows Father and Son to experience each other as persons in communion: to find completion in each other, to “rejoice” in each other, without dominating each other or competing with each other. For precisely that reason, it is the Holy Spirit of God in us who enables us, too, to move beyond human individualism and isolation, and to discover the unity in love, the “transparency” to God and to each other, that is the foundation of personal relationships and of Christian community. Fr. Staniloae writes: By the Spirit, we become conscious of our unity with Christ, and among ourselves as the Body of Christ. By the experience of the Spirit’s power, Christ becomes transparent for us. It is also by the Holy Spirit that God sustains the world, acts within it, and—by means of the mystery of the Church—leads it to its goal (telos), to its realization. It is by the Holy Spirit that he realizes his project of salvation and of the divinization of the world. . . . So just as in the Trinity the Holy Spirit reveals that the Father and the Son are distinct yet one in essence, united by love, so the Holy Spirit consecrates us as distinct persons, while building us into a Church, uniting us by the joy of full communion. By the Holy Spirit, we enter into the love of Father and Son.76 Perhaps this powerful yet undefinable, unimaginable drive of the Spirit within us toward communion with God and with each other is really the main reason we modern Christians tend to be, as Rahner reminds us, afraid of the Spirit, resistant to his power. As believers living in a Church, we want to be able to define ourselves over against 76 Dumitru Staniloae, Prière de Jésus et experience du Saint-Esprit (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1981), 101–102.
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one another, to hold onto—or retrieve—doctrines and practices that give us identity, to find our own distinctive profile within a resistant or indifferent world. Yet, right as this instinct is, the Spirit seems to urge us on beyond it; toward freedom, toward the “new law” of “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:19),77 toward a new, spiritually unified creation that is, at the very least, exciting, but also unfamiliar and threatening. As Cardinal Walter Kasper wrote in the 1970s, “The Spirit is, both within God and between God and the world, the bond of unity: a unity in love which, in that it unifies, also sets us free. He is the freedom and the overflow of the love of God. . . . He is the creative, renewing power, which irresistibly leads all reality, through Jesus Christ, to its eschatological fulfillment.”78 And it is that eschatological unity in love, that final communion founded on God’s freedom and creative power, which appears to all of us, at once so inviting and so dangerous. For the last hundred years and more, Christians have talked increasingly about our need for unity in Christ: A unity that can accept differences in theology and practice and Church structure, that can speak and pray and preach in a wide range of voices, because it is founded on common faith and on a common share in the love of God. This is what we mean by Christian reunion. As Catholics and Orthodox especially, we see all the things we share in our long tradition of faith and spirituality, of Church leadership and sacramental practice, and are moved to question whether or not the considerable theological and ecclesial differences that do still divide us are significant enough, real enough, to prevent us from sharing the Eucharist together, and from finding a unity within our differences that will sustain a common mission to the world. Charismatic leaders—spirit-filled representatives of our Churches—like Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI in the mid-1960s, have occasionally taken bold steps toward making such
77 See Thomas Aquinas, ST, IaIIae, q.106, a.1: “That which is preponderant in the law of the New Testament, and whereon all its efficacy is based, is the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is given through faith in Christ. Consequently the New Law is chiefly the grace itself of the Holy Spirit, which is given to those who believe in Christ,” trans. English Dominican Province (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics 1981), 2.1004. 78 Walter Kasper, “Die Kirche als Sakrament des Geistes,” in Kirche—Ort des Geistes, ed. W. Kasper and G. Sauter (Freiburg: Herder 1976), 34–35.
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Christian reunion a fact, in ways we still find hard to imagine. And yet those spontaneous ecumenical gestures of a half-century ago seem today to be bearing little obvious fruit. As someone who has taken part in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue for thirty years, I know there are good reasons for our ecumenical hesitation; a sense of responsibility toward our ancestors calls us to be true to our respective identities, toward our ways of formulating truth and participating in the Mystery of God’s life. But the reason we hold so tightly onto our differences, I suspect, is also at least partly because we, too, are still afraid to discover for ourselves the dynamic divine reality of the Holy Spirit: afraid to let go of our control of the life of faith and its hallowed formulas, and of the institutional structures in which we have learned them, and to live in the freedom of a yet-unimaginable new creation—afraid to become more like God as God is. As we stand hesitating before the brink of communion, let us at least pray that this Spirit—God’s own internal bond of love and joy—might be a new and unexpected discovery for all of us in our day, the guiding force for the world’s transformation. And as we reach forward into the Christian unknown, let us boldly make our invocation, our epiclesis, together: “Come, Holy Spirit!”
6
Beyond the Filioque Disputes? Re-assessing the Radical Equality of the Spirit through the Ascetic and Mystical Tradition Sarah Coakley
INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGICAL CAVEATS The central thesis of my lecture is a bold one, and I want to state it in its starkest form at the outset, because I shall then spend much of the rest of the time evidencing, refining, and nuancing it, whilst also—in closing—considering its potential contemporary spiritual and ecclesiological significance. What I want to argue, centrally, is that the divisive long-standing dispute between Eastern and Western Christendom over the status and place of the Holy Spirit in the doctrine of the Trinity (the so-called filioque problem about the “procession” of the Spirit, whether from the Father or from the Father “and the Son,” as in the Western interpolated version of the Creed) might never have arisen in the form it did had the Spirit’s radical divine equality with the Father and Son not already been implicitly compromised by the historic, conciliar treatment of the Holy Spirit precisely as “third.” In other words, despite the church’s emphatic insistence from the later fourth century, that the Holy Spirit was absolutely equal in divinity with the “Father” and “Son,” sharing all divine characteristics with them, the contingencies of the way in which the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity had been arrived at in conciliar debate, from Nicaea
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through to Constantinople, plus the “linear” structure of the thinking that accompanied this (from “Father” to “Son,” and only then to the “Holy Spirit”) subliminally continued to fashion the thinking of the Spirit as “third” in at least a logical (if not ontological) hierarchy; and this tendency was indeed already written deeply into certain major strands of the biblical testimony (the Johannine, the Book of Acts), on into the early liturgies of the eucharist, and into much prefourth-century theology. One may therefore speculatively place the origins of the eventual Western filioque addition to the Nicene Creed (origins which, as most scholars now agree, were theologically actually as much “Eastern” as they were “Western”) as a certain secondary attempt to correct and palliate this fundamental problem, rather than as a starker acknowledgement of a deeper issue to be addressed. Now this first plank in my argument admittedly involves a rather odd form of “counter-factual” historical thinking. We cannot now turn back the pages of history, nor am I suggesting that we should do so: The historic creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople stand (indeed, it was the insertion of the filioque by the West into the latter without the mandating of another ecumenical council that has arguably caused more trouble than the theological content encoded in it). So it remains our job as theologians to expound these creeds, with as much critical and spiritual insight from the various traditions of the churches as we can muster. And indeed, I am by no means the first person to suggest this particular critique of the conciliar trinitarian history of the early centuries, however contentious it may still remain (Thomas Weinandy comes immediately to mind as one who also offers such a critique from a conservative Catholic position, as does Myk Habets more recently from a Pentecostal angle: Both are represented in Myk Habets’ recent edited book, Ecumenical Perspectives;1 and I shall return to these thoughts at the end of this lecture). What is perhaps more innovative in what I have to say, I trust, and where most of my energy will be taken up here, is in my attempt to 1 Thomas Weinandy, “The Filioque: Beyond Athanasius and Thomas Aquinas: An Ecumenical Proposal,” in Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Myk Habets, 185–197 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Myk Habets, “Getting Beyond the Filioque with Third Article Theology,” in Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Myk Habets, 211–30 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).
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sketch out an alternative approach to the place of the Spirit in the Trinity which would not fall prey to the veiled “hierarchy” problems still encoded even in the historic conciliar traditions and, to some degree, in the subsequent and reactive filioque debates. For even when the notion of the filioque was added to the idea of the Spirit’s procession, whether as an actual insertion into the Creed, as in the later West, or in more impromptu theological reflections in Eastern thinkers such as Cyril of Alexandria, there remained an unspoken question about whether the very notion of Fatherhood as “source” or “foundation” in the Trinity implicitly continued to foster an unintended evocation of subordinationism, despite strong rhetorical enunciations to the contrary. Thus, in what follows, I seek to lay bare a “minority” tradition of thinking about, and responding to, the Holy Spirit in the Trinity which also has its roots in biblical witness and which certain exponents in both East and West have remarkably manifested in a parallel fashion, for the most part without any critical ripostes to the official creedal traditions at all on their part. Thereby, they have found their way into a rendition of the Trinity that I believe purifies it from certain implicit theological dangers of subliminal encoded hierarchalism even as they also hold it to account in terms of its own stated intentions: the radical equality of the “persons.” We might therefore call this a purgative and immanent critique of conciliar trinitarianism within this minority tradition; it takes the fundamental homoousian principle of the Nicene tradition and creatively wields it even against itself, because it is deeply attending to the propulsion of the Spirit. What we shall find is that this “purgative” pneumatological tradition, as I shall call it— which springs up spontaneously in both East and West from the early years, but with certain fascinating repetitive features—often comes from quarters with interesting reforming theological characteristics in other ways, certain tendencies to a particular sort of social location “on the edge,” certain fascinations with the reform of ecclesiastical power, and certain insights into the fundamental nature of the participative human-person-in-God, especially as this participation relates to our deepest “erotic” needs and their resolution. So there is a certain social and political locatedness to this pneumatologically-infused, socalled ascetic or mystical, vision of the Trinity which I wish to explore, one also deeply founded in disciplined prayer and contemplation, one
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unafraid to tackle difficult issues of divine and human desire. You may begin then to see why this material could be of continuing contemporary interest to us, and not merely a somewhat arcane theological debating point for the ecumenists and the polemicists. So far I have merely given you my bold generic thesis by way of introduction. But before I turn to present my evidences for your perusal, in the main body of this lecture, I also need to name a cluster of methodological caveats in relation to some pressing contemporary debates in trinitarian theology—if only to head off some potential misunderstandings of my position. First, in presenting these witnesses from the tradition to a particular Spirit-inflected understanding of the Trinity, I am deliberately refusing the disjunctive epistemological view, common since Kant and Schleiermacher, that the inner life of the trinitarian God (the so-called “immanent” or “ontological” Trinity) is unavailable to us, completely off-limits epistemologically, while only the so-called “economic” Trinity—known through revelation and our participation in the “economy of salvation” in the church—is open for theological inspection. The reason I am going to refuse this challenge will perhaps become more obvious in the telling of my evidences: What is witnessed to here is a form of knowing which is simultaneously revelatory and “apophatic” at the same time, compelling in its very mysteriousness—and this is a paradoxical category of epistemic response seemingly refused, of course, by the modern Kantian epistemological turn, but to be counted more than worthy of new contemporary philosophical defense. It can only arise, I submit, through a very clear understanding of God’s utter transcendence as Creator, evidenced through the unique epistemic oddity of courting intimacy with the divine—and particularly in the postures of prayer. As Jason Smith puts it in a recent article illuminatingly comparing the trinitarian strategies of Schleiermacher and Rowan Williams: Whereas for Schleiermacher there is nothing about the Christian life that could compel one to say anything about God’s inner Triunity (for he assumes it has “no generative effect on the living piety of the church”2), for Williams—in complete contrast—it 2 Jason M. Smith, “Must We Say Anything of an ‘Immanent’ Trinity? Schleiermacher and Rowan Williams on an ‘Abstruse’ and ‘Fruitless’ Doctrine,” Anglican Theological Review 98, no. 3 (2016): 495–512, here at 509.
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is impossible even to start out on the adventure of redemption without “an invitation into the inner divine life,”3 in all its simultaneous darkness and illumination. Such, as we shall see, is also the insight of many of the witnesses we shall summon in what follows. However, in refusing the disjunction of immanent and economic trinities in relation to my project, I am also not simply reducing the former to the latter: To say with Karl Rahner that the “economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity” is to declare a point of substantial identity which had appeared threatened in some speculative scholastic treatments, but not necessarily to disallow a remaining and crucial distinction between the action and life of God in history and God’s eternal nature; for otherwise God could only realize God’s own nature within the contingencies of history. None of the voices to which I am going to appeal assume the latter position—a distinctively novel and postHegelian option within modern theology. Rather, their implicit claim seems to be that the Holy Spirit’s profound incorporation of them into the life of God takes them precisely to the mysterious intersection of the timed and the timeless in the incarnational space thereby opened up. A third issue is also related methodologically. It has sometimes been assumed in the modern period that the Kantian epistemological “nescience” problem in relation to the divine could be got around by appeals to a special direct “mystical consciousness” that somehow circumvented it. On this view (which owes much to William James and his psychologizing of religious states), “mystical” experience can become a criterion of theological truth with a certain selfauthenticating force to be set in contrast with the complex contrapuntal authorities of Scripture, tradition and reason. Something of this instinct seems to inform Anne Hunt’s study, The Trinity: Insights from the Mystics,4 a volume which I have otherwise found most illuminating for my current task, when she writes that the exploration of “mystic consciousness” (her term) is a way of avoiding “philosophical issues” in relation to the Trinity, and of probing to an “unmediated experience” of it. I want to clarify that this is not the task as I perceive it here; for not only am I dubious about the existence of something to 3 Smith, 509. 4 Anne Hunt, The Trinity: Insights from the Mystics (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2010).
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be generalized as a universal “mystic consciousness,” I am also resistant to the idea that any of the exponents on whom I shall be calling avoided the hard graft of discerning the relation of scriptural exegesis, complex, vying theological tradition, and the critical negotiation of these. To put it pointedly, it is the disciplined activity and practice of prayer and contemplation, in creative interaction with these other hermeneutical tasks, which seems to produce the pneumatological and trinitarian insights I seek to explore, not some “unmediated experience” of the Trinity which can be strained untainted out of the mix. A final caveat is one that comes with the contemporary feminist territory, which I also explore critically as a systematician and a philosopher of religion. Here it has become fashionable of late, as searingly critiqued most recently in Linn Tonstad’s God and Difference, for theologians as diverse as von Balthasar on the one hand, or Elizabeth Johnson on the other, to find gendered messages in the very life of the Trinity itself—and thereby to detect a form of social programme for our erotic or political lives as inscribed in the immanent relations of the Godhead itself. I therefore wish to indicate here at the outset (and against Tonstad’s strange misreading of my own work) that this is not my ambition in relation to the pneumatologically-inflected materials I here survey. As we shall see, if there is a general lesson that emerges from their witness in relation to “gender” (as we now call it), it is that desire—the more significant category for the purposes of a number of these writers—belongs properly and ontologically to God, who by definition lies beyond all human categorizations of gender. It is then through the purification of human desire in divine (trinitarian) desire that such human categorizations of gender may come to be transfigured and changed. In other words, as I have put it elsewhere, “desire is more fundamental than gender,” and the desiring, trinitarian God ultimately ambushes all attempts to fix and constrain gender in worldly terms. But that is to anticipate the end of the story I now seek to unfold, one in which a curious convergence of insight emerges most fascinatingly in Eastern and Western forms between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. To tell this story in the highly selective form that is manageable within one lecture, I must return first to that point in the history of formal, creedal-based patristic trinitarianism when “East” and “West”
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supposedly started to diverge—for that presumed divergence is part of the story I want to question. Recall: What we are looking for here are signs of a (relatively neglected) tradition of trinitarian thought deeply inflected by a primary engagement in prayer with the Spirit, and which destabilizes the presumption that what is established first, and normatively, is the perfect relation between Father and Son. When and where does this alternative vision challenge the “linear” or “sequential” thinking about the Godhead that had seemed so necessary a part of the early defense of fourth-century “orthodoxy”?
“PARTICIPATIVE” TRINITARIANISM IN PATRISTIC AND MEDIEVAL TRADITION, EAST AND WEST This is an account I have told in its earlier stages at some arduous length in my first volume of systematics, God, Sexuality, and the Self, and I do not wish merely to recapitulate my argument there, but rather to take it several steps further forward in the body of this lecture. However, what I do need to reiterate here is the crucial scriptural basis for the “alternative” pneumatological vision of the Trinity whose heritage I seek now to trace further. The crucial hinge is the account given by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:14–30. In it Paul underscores what we may call (and what Eugene Rogers has also called, in his creative monograph, After the Spirit 5) the “impossibility” of prayer, that is, the authentic helplessness that Paul witnesses to in our need to abandon ourselves first to the Spirit even to know rightly “what to ask for” and so come into our own as children of God. Prayer is, on this vision, the graced entry-point through the Spirit into the conversation that is already and always going on between the ultimate source in the Godhead (“Abba,” as Paul names it here, following Jesus’s own term) and the Spirit who engenders that conversation in us. Prayer, in other words, is not a monologue to a distant patriarch, but the joining of a conversation which already de-stabilizes that sort of idolatrous thought-experiment from the outset. To enter into that ongoing divine, dialectical conversation, in which God (the Spirit) answers to God 5 Eugene Rogers Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005).
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(Abba) in a ceaseless circle of gift and response, is to be constrained therefore into what we may call the authentic “space of Jesus”—the incarnational, embodied space of physical dying and rising, of suffering and coming glory, into which, according to Romans 8 the whole created and cosmic realm is already also being progressively drawn. Significantly, Paul names this the realm of “eager longing,” a kind of primordial desire set on its rightful, non-idolatrous goal of full adoption as “children of God,” those inheritors of the “glorious liberty” for which God ultimately intends us. This Pauline biblical model, then, despite all its unfinished nature as a merely preparatory intimation of later trinitarian “orthodoxy,” sits somewhat uncomfortably alongside a later trinitarianism which grew out of a primary focus on the Father-Son relationship (as in the Gospel of John, which by the third century had begun to have a certain theological pre-eminence in the life of the church). According to this other, and increasingly dominant, model in the early debates—one which also founded the order of the church year according to the logic of the book of Acts—the unique and perfect relationship of Father and Son is that established order out of which the life of the Spirit and the church is only subsequently created: According to John, the Son then “goes away” after the resurrection in order that the Spirit may come as his substitute and continuator. On this “linear” or “sequential” account, the Spirit is always “third” and in a sense an “under-study” or replacement to what is already established in the Son. Yet this tradition, in turn, sits oddly with the equally-biblical insistence that, in the order of the economy, the Son cannot be incarnate in the first place without the “overshadowing” of the Spirit (cf. Lk 1), nor can he be designated “the beloved Son” at baptism without the descent of the Dove (cf. Mk 1 and parallels). In other words, as many have commented, the biblical witness presents us with no consistent account of the taxis (ordering) of the divine persons for later trinitarian discussion. And the political contingency of the original Nicene crisis in the early fourth century as one that focused not on the Spirit at all, but simply on the Son’s particular status vis-à-vis the Father, led perhaps inevitably to an immediate “solution” (the Creed of Nicaea) that barely mentioned the Spirit, while insisting on the homoousian status of the Son alone alongside the Father. The “sequential” die was therefore already cast. Only in
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the crucial later fourth century was the hypostatic identity and divine status of the Spirit also urged and defended. What is really at stake here, then, theologically and politically? A great deal, as subsequent church history and theological debate would manifest. We meet the “linear” or “sequential” model once more in full flood as the Cappadocian Fathers use it to defend the coherence of the idea of a God who is simultaneously one in ousia (substantia) and three in hypostaseis (personae). For Basil of Caesarea (in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, and especially at IX.23 therein), this is clearly a matter of ascent, a unified journey with neo-Platonic evocations, in which the Spirit first grasps one and takes one up to the level of the Son, whence one begins to be dazzled afresh by the unspeakable mystery of the Father. Gregory of Nyssa also seemingly defends this sequential approach implicitly in various writings, echoing the example of his older brother Basil, albeit with some modifications. The Trinity, he writes (in a letter previously attributed to Basil, yet clearly stylistically Gregory’s), is like a chain which you pull at one end as the different elements present themselves in turn, from the Spirit back to the Father (Ep. 38); and Gregory’s emphasis on the intrinsic mystery of the Godhead in his anti-Eunomian writings does not, as such, destabilize this conviction. It is, however, in his late commentary on the Song of Songs that another, and contrapuntal, voice emerges in Nyssen. Freed up from the burden of insistent apologetic duty, and discoursing with equally free allegorical imagination on the text of the Song and its meaning for the human hope of supreme divine incorporative intimacy, Gregory startles us in Homilies XV with the suggestion of a “double procession” of the Spirit: The Spirit now is the “bond of glory,”6 that is, the very means of unity between Father and Son, which is acknowledged even as it spills over into the disciples and from there to the church at large. Gregory makes this assertion, moreover, in the context of a teaching on the Song that insists on progressive spiritual maturity in prayer and Scriptural meditation as the authentic mark of discipleship. In other words, to “Receive the Holy Spirit”7 in this way, between 6 Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Song of Songs, ed. and trans. Richard A. Norris Jr. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 495–497. 7 Gregory of Nyssa, 497.
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the persons of Father and Son, is to “leave immaturity behind” at last, to grasp what Gregory calls the true “philosophic” reasonings of an allegorical approach to the Bible, and, with that, to acknowledge the ways in which Christian selfhood finally comes to intensify in ecstatic desire for God rather than to set desire aside: “until that time when, since all have become one in desiring the same goal and there is no vice left in any, God may become all in all persons.”8 It seems, then, that in Gregory’s oeuvre there are at least two genres for dealing with the problems of trinitarian expression: One is apologetic and focused on philosophic coherence and tending to the “linear”; the other— more significant ultimately spiritually for Gregory—is rooted in allegorical scriptural meditation and contemplation and undertaken for the training of mature Christian desire, specifically, desire propelled pneumatologically to its ultimate “blending” (his word) with Christ and his body, the church, through sharing in the place the Spirit holds between Father and Son. Do we find anything similar in the West at approximately the same time? Not exactly, but there are certain intimations even in Augustine that suggest a certain convergence. I am, of course, not now alone in insisting that Augustine’s trinitarianism, forged not long after Gregory’s, and with indirect influences from the East via Ambrose, had identical “pro-Nicene” instincts, despite its use of the celebrated “psychological analogies” which later came to be termed distinctively “Western.” In the course of his disquisition on these analogies, Augustine already sketches more than once his own “double procession” of the Spirit, even though he reminds us that this procession remains “principally” (principaliter) from the Father. What is less often commented upon, even now, is his dramatic reversal of tone at the very end of the De trinitate, in Book XV, when all of a sudden his emphatic “apophatic” instincts shine through afresh, with an insistence that none of the analogies he has rehearsed in the earlier books will actually do justice to the subject in hand. Rather, what is central, he now says, is the primary and overflowing Gift of love in the Holy Spirit, an incorporative and ecstatic flow of charity “poured forth in our hearts” to mirror the reality of the divine and transform us “in the image,” but 8 Gregory of Nyssa, 497.
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also to dazzle and mystify us—as “wonderfully ineffable” or “ineffably wonderful” (XV, ch. 23). Again, in closing, he reiterates his conviction that what this spiritual insight implies is a processional flow of the Spirit from both Father and Son. In short, although their exegetical strategies and analogies differ, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine are aligned in their witness, at least at key and distinctive moments in their texts, to a Spirit-leading, ecstatic and participative account of the conforming of the human to the true image of the trinitarian God in us. At this point their more speculative or apologetic techniques seem to retire into the background and a rather different discourse or genre comes to dominate, one primarily infused with pneumatological participative energy. Here is already the birth of the “indwelling Trinity” motif; and it has, as we have noted, implied speculative implications for the relational (“processional”) life of God in Godself. In many ways, then, we may see what I am calling the “minority” trinitarian materials to be discussed hereafter in their respective traditions in East and West as certain extensions or intensifications of these key—albeit somewhat fleeting—moments of insight in Nyssen and Augustine, although we must watch for important elements of variation on their themes. Moreover, Dionysius the Areopagite was to supply, in the late fifth century, a crucial metaphysical undergirding to the idea of such a divine ecstatic flow as Augustine describes, even though he did not explicitly frame it in trinitarian (or pneumatological) terms himself. For him, “desire” becomes an ontological force inherent to the divine life itself, an ecstatic capacity of God to go out and return, always “carried outside of himself” whilst also “remaining within himself.”9 The philosophical overtones here are of course neo-Platonic (specifically, Proclean); but Dionysius makes the case that they are entirely congruent with the themes in Paul he wishes to highlight; for Paul, he says, was a “great lover,” and “beside himself for God” (see 2 Cor 5:13),10 and thus the love to which he was
9 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, “Divine Names” IV, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 82. 10 Quoted in Pseudo-Dionysius, 82.
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ecstatically drawn was itself divine desire. Although this metaphysical account of desire was not part of the original pneumatological intensification of the idea of trinitarian incorporation that I am seeking to highlight, it was to become a particular significant additum for later exponents, as I shall now seek to show. At this point our story needs to divide East and West, if only to show ultimately that there were extraordinary and unexpected coincidences of expression in both strands of development, but variations within each. I shall have to be brief here, alluding only to a few striking examples of the trinitarian typos we have by now identified. In each case the expression of participation in the Spirit is marked by a special emphasis on the Spirit’s incorporative outreach and the breakdown thereby of any merely messenger-bearing hierarchical rendition of that outreach from Father and Son. In each case, too, something other than propositional rectitude about the doctrine of the Trinity is clearly at stake: It is a life to be lived in, and indeed a life already living within one, indwellingly, rather than merely an idea to be expounded or affirmed. It will also have not escaped your notice that there is indeed a tendency in this typos to assert the filioque or something like it (and thus to probe to a new speculative ontology of the very relation of the Spirit to the other two “persons”); and at times—even more radically—to press to some reconsideration even of how to think about the Father as divine “source.” I shall return to this complicating factor to my central thesis at the end; for clearly not all manifestations of the filioque also bring with them any critical re-negotiation of the very notion of “Fatherhood.” There are doubtless more exemplars that I could have chosen in the West than those I have opted to focus on here; but the early French Cistercian, William of St. Thierry (twelfth century), the Flemish Augustinian canon, Jan van Ruysbroeck (fourteenth century), and the Spanish Carmelites, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross (sixteenth century), all offer striking examples of the participative or mystical rendition of the Trinity that we have already outlined, albeit with some interesting differences of emphasis. It is notable also that, along with their interest in ascetic and contemplative exercise, all of these figures were reformers of the religious life involving them in costly political and ecclesiastical criticism and debate. It is thus worth
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considering whether this is a mere coincidence, which to me seems unlikely. There was evidently something about the vibrancy and depth of their contemplative practice, and the novelty and freedom of their speech about God-as-Trinity, that was related to their boldness also in monastic or ecclesial reform. And this, I submit, is a matter of interest in relation to their potential veracity as critics of settled “orthodoxy” in their particular contexts. William of St. Thierry’s writings on the Spirit and the Trinity might be read as an intensification and further theorization of the ecstatic vein of Augustine’s trinitarianism in Book XV of the De trinitate already outlined. In this sense his emphases are typically “Western,” if only because his emphasis on the Spirit as Love and Gift reminds us of that Augustinian “purple passage” and further expands on it. And yet—fascinatingly—William might just as well be read as the inheritor of Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies On the Song of Songs (whose text he probably also did know in the Greek). In Stanza 11 of his own Exposition on the Song of Songs he can therefore say, echoing Gregory on the same theme of “his left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me” (Song 2:6): “This embrace extends to man, but it surpasses man. For this embrace is the Holy Spirit. He is the Communion, the Charity, the Friendship, the Embrace of the Father and of the Son of God; and he himself is all things in the love of Bridegroom and Bride.”11 William goes on, speaking of full consummation in union “Then, I say, it will be the full kiss and the full embrace, the power of which is the wisdom of God; its sweetness the Holy Spirit; and its perfection, the full fruition of the Divinity, and God all in all.”12 Likewise, in his text On Contemplating God, William focuses intensely on the Romans 8 theme of incorporation into divine adoption by the Spirit, whilst drawing out his systematic conclusion in Augustinian vein: “so then, love-worthy Lord, you love yourself in yourself when the Holy Spirit, who is the Love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father, proceeds from the Father and the Son.”13 And in 11 William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs, trans. Columba Hart (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), stanza 11, 106–10, here at 106. 12 William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs, 107. 13 William of St. Thierry, On Contemplating God, trans. Sister Penelope (Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 53–64, here at 54.
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his celebrated Golden Epistle, written for the monks of Mont Dieu, William painstakingly draws out the ascetic programme of the sorting of desires which must accompany the longed for “perfection of man in this life.” Again it is pneumatology that is at the center of William’s thinking—the Holy Spirit which “infuses himself by way of love and gives life to everything, lending his assistance in prayer, in meditation or in study to man’s weakness.”14 As Anne Hunt stresses in her own fine chapter on William, he is Augustinian in influence but not in all detail. For William, the Holy Spirit is not merely love (and gift), but love and knowledge too;15 and the perfection of the human person (to be hoped for in this life, again unlike Augustine) is to be brought about specifically by the Holy Spirit and to involve participation in the very love and knowledge of the divine persons. In many ways this vision anticipates the achieved union of the later sixteenth-century Carmelites. Ruysbroeck, in some contrast, is a sui generis thinker deeply inflected by his own brand of neo-Platonic thinking (with roots in pseudo-Dionysius and others in that tradition), and in particular by his distinctive notion of regiratio—the “flowing back of the divine Persons into their shared unity.”16 It is here that Ruysbroeck caused, and still causes, nervousness in his “orthodox” critics, and, as Rik van Nieuwenhove well shows in his fine study of Ruysbroeck, steps over a line that would never have been contemplated by the great Thomas Aquinas, for whom regiratio could never apply to the realm of the immanent Trinity itself. Writing in the vernacular in order to be “understanded of the people,” and embroiled at times in endless disputes about heresy, Ruysbroeck’s The Book of the Twelve Béguines— one of his last great texts—is amongst his most daring and revealing. Here he also systematically spells out the possibility of actual union with God in this life, via incorporation in the Spirit:
14 William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. Theodore Berkeley (Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 92–105, here at 92. 15 Anne Hunt, The Trinity: Insights from the Mystics, 21. 16 Rik van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec, Mystical Theologian of the Trinity (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2003), 77.
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Now, therefore, hear and understand [he begins Ch. X Part 2 of the Twelve Béguines]; To the good and inward man, who entereth within himself, free and empty of all earthly things, opening and uplifting his heart reverently towards the Eternal Goodness of God, there is thrown wide the Heaven which was shut, and from the Face of Divine Love, there blazeth down a sudden Light, as it were a lightningflash; and in that Light there speaketh the Spirit of our Lord, in this opened and loving heart, and saith: “I am thine, and though art Mine: I dwell in thee, and thou dwellest in Me.”17 Where Ruysbroeck’s account differs significantly from other writers on trinitarian “indwelling,” however, is in the assertion that the end of this process is not simply an ecstasy of the self “beyond ourselves” into God via the Spirit,18 but a “fruition” of the Godhead itself in “a still and glorious and essential Oneness beyond the differentiation of the Persons; where is neither an outpouring nor an indrawing of God; but the Persons are still, and One in Fruitful Love, which is their calm and glorious Unity.”19 Here, it seems, we meet a test case for the “indwelling Trinity” tradition, and an indication of how it could in some circumstances run into actual conflict with established trinitarian orthodoxy via this proposed actual dissolution of the “persons” into their own unity. The example is instructive. It is, to be sure, one radical way to deal with the ongoing difficulty of the precise account of the immanent “relations” and their still-lurking hierarchalization; but Ruysbroeck clearly (to my reasoning) steps here beyond what the Nicene tradition on the eternal nature of the intra-divine relations insists upon in terms of the eternal distinction of the “persons” in unity. Ultimately, then, this propulsion to Oneness appears more Platonic than strictly Christian. The contrast with the later (sixteenth-century) Carmelite account of union in the Trinity is therefore particularly instructive. Here we approach what is probably the most sublime Western accounts of 17 Jan van Ruysbroeck, The Book of the Twelve Béguines, trans. John Francis (London: John Watkins, 1913), 78–118, here at 79. 18 Ruysbroeck, 114. 19 Ruysbroeck, 115.
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achieved union in this life, an account which both Teresa of Avila and her confrère John of the Cross describe in inner-trinitarian terms, yet with significant and fascinating differences of emphasis. Teresa, feigning (as ever) theological incompetence, but manifesting the greatest spiritual insight, insists that achieved union is itself a state in which one is introduced afresh, and directly, to the “the Most Blessed Trinity, all three Persons”; but by passing through “an enkindling in the Spirit” one realizes anew from inside—and now not merely intellectually—that “all three Persons are one substance and one power” and yet also and simultaneously “distinct”20 (the contrast with Ruysbroeck is revealing here). Indeed, says Teresa, since the “King is in his palace”21 —that is, Christ has taken up permanent residence in the deepest part of one’s selfhood—there is no longer any danger of doing anything other than what is the will of God, despite the fact that—as ever—there is “tumult” and “noise” and continuous assaults from outside. Suffering does not go away in union, admits Teresa; but it no longer seems to matter, any more than do the ongoing attacks of enemies, whom now—from the inside of the life of the Trinity—one sees at last how to “love,” according to Jesus’s own distinctive demand.22 The contrast with John of the Cross’s account of achieved union in the Living Flame of Love is somewhat striking. For here we learn of no continuing tensions, no assaults of enemies, but rather of a sublime ascent of the self into that very space between Father and Son in the Trinity which is distinctively occupied by the Spirit. Now the soul “breathes” in that same Spirit between Father and Son: For the will of the two is one will, and thus God’s operation and the soul’s are one. Since God gives himself with a free and gracious will, so too the soul (possessing a will more generous and free the more it is united to God) gives to God, God himself in God; . . . it is conscious there that God
20 Teresa of Avila, “The Interior Castle,” in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 2, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1980), 427–451, here at 430. 21 Teresa of Avila, 436. 22 Teresa of Avila, ch. 3, 438–443.
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is indeed its own and that it possesses him by inheritance, with the right of ownership, as his adopted child through the grace of his gift himself.23 The distinctive allusion to Romans 8 comes around again here, as does the underlying Dionysian metaphysic of divine desire deflected and re-deflected within the life of the Persons, inflamed—as once more— in the Augustinian tradition of ecstasy and incorporation, yet in this case with the daring assurance that this “arrival” can be fully in this life, with a final realization that the divine trinitarian presence has always been there within, awaiting full recognition. As Rowan Williams puts it in a notable article on this theme in John of the Cross, “Thus, we [who are] incorporated into this relation to the Father, share the ‘deflection’ of the Son’s desire towards the Father’s [own] excess of Love: we are taken [thereby] into the movement of the Spirit.”24 The notion of “deflection” is significant here, for it suggests a profound ontological and mutual dynamism within the Persons—the Father too receiving as well as outpouring his divine desire—and to this radical thought we shall return in our final section. But is there anything equivalent to this Carmelite climax on the “indwelling Trinity” to be found in the Eastern monastic tradition? The answer, it seems, is yes; and in a strand of tradition remarkably consonant in its emphases with this later Carmelite Western development. And yet the confluence is not altogether surprising, given that the Pauline account of prayer in Romans 8, the early incorporative vision of contemplation thereby engendered, and the input of the later Dionysian metaphysics of desire, are all shared resources. I can only speak briefly here of the ascetic and contemplative traditions of the Philokalia, that great compendium of monastic wisdom only finally published in full form the eighteenth century. It is again Rowan Williams who in a recent and important article on the spirituality and
23 John of the Cross, “The Living Flame of Love,” in The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), 704–715, here at 706. 24 Rowan Williams, “The Deflections of Desire: Negative Theology in Trinitarian Discourse,” in Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation, ed. Oliver Davies and Denys Turner, 115–135 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), here at 119.
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theology of the Philokalia has drawn attention to the pneumatological “deflections of desire” also in the thought of Maximus Confessor and Gregory Palamas, as excerpted in the Philokalia. Most striking here is the witness of Palamas, who—possibly under a certain influence from Augustine imported from the West—also follows the earlier Maximus in “speaking of the contemplative’s prayer as [distinctively] characterized by eros” (Second Century, 6, II; Williams, 115). Palamas then develops this idea with a certain intricacy and power in his Topics of Natural and Theological Power. In Williams’s paraphrase: For the human subject to “mirror” the divine [in contemplation] is not simply for the [human] logos to participate in the eternal Logos, but for that human logos to be activated by eros, the dynamic of the Holy Spirit, in its unending urge to immerse itself in the foundational mystery of nous itself, which images and participates in the eternal self-giving intelligence that is the divine Source, the Father.25 In other words, the “presence of the image of the Logos in us implies the image of the Trinity as a whole,” with its own erotic mutuality engendering a continual expansion and transformation of human desire in the monastic practices of hesychastic prayer. This is, as Williams himself remarks, an extraordinary anticipation of, and parallel to, the “deflections of trinitarian desire” in John of the Cross, once again in a model of trinitarian thinking in which the pray-er is transported into the primary eros of God by means of the Spirit’s outreach.26 What then, and finally, are we now to make of these texts, both East and West, that I have gathered here for our perusal?
SYSTEMATIC CONCLUSIONS: WHAT CAN BE SAID ABOUT THE “ONTOLOGICAL TRINITY”—BEYOND THE FILIOQUE DISPUTES? I have taken you on a tour of somewhat neglected and pneumatologically-heightened emphases in Western and Eastern trinitarianism 25 Rowan Williams, “The Theological World of the Philokalia,” in The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, ed. Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, 102–121 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), here at 118. 26 Williams, 119.
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in the substance of this lecture. As I hope I have by now shown, what these texts have in common are the following traits. First, they are written by those deeply committed to the practices of prayer and contemplation and willing to discourse creatively on the primary importance of the Spirit in activating those practices in drawing them to union with the divine. Secondly, they move from there to dare to suggest what participation in such practices seems to tell them about the inner life of God in itself and the relations (or more technically, “processions”) of the divine persons; and they do this even at the cost of sometimes chafing at the edges of their contextually-presumed “orthodoxy.” In this, and in other reforming or novel proposals made simultaneously in their writings, they seemingly rely simply on the presumed authority granted to them as outstanding spiritual leaders and shapers of received tradition. Thirdly, insofar as they speak of the Trinity as actually “indwelling” the Christian contemplative, their claim seems to be that speculative insight about the relation of the Spirit to Father and Son may as much be received by looking within as by musing philosophically and theologically on the contents of the conciliar tradition. What then are we to make of these particular witnesses, East and West, united at least by these three traits, albeit in a remaining diversity and complexity of expression? I now move to some systematic conclusions. Necessarily these must be brief and succinct; and in order to stir debate I shall once more adopt a slightly stark and sharp tone, to heighten the force of what I want to suggest. I wish to make only three concluding points of my own, picking up some of the various gauntlets I scattered before you earlier in the Introduction. First, I trust you may have discerned in the material I have covered a possible “alternative” means of discussion of the place of the Spirit in the Trinity from that merely of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, one that might also go beyond the hardened polemicisms between East and West that have at times regrettably afflicted attempts at reconciliation after the various eruptions of the filioque dispute. The sui generis freedom of the voices I have discussed, both East and West, do at least suggest a point of rapprochement that might divert us from blockages created especially by the hardened ninth-century Photian
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insistence in the East that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the “Father alone,” or from more recent twentieth-century (Lossky-an) reassertions of supposedly thoroughgoing symbolic differences between “Eastern” and “Western” Trinitarian thinking. As will now be clear, however, my goal has not been to palliate these particular disputes in their own form, but to turn the tables on them—to urge a purgative spiritual programme such as John of the Cross had in mind, precisely to chasten them in the Spirit. To discover that “East” and “West,” in their deepest respective contemplative assessments of the life of the Trinity, evidence certain significant parallel forms of thought—ecstatic “deflections of divine desire” within the Trinity, as Rowan Williams puts it—which overflow into human selfhood and establish that selfhood in God, goes a long way to indicating how prayer and contemplation in the Spirit may, after all, be the place of the meetings of Eastern and Western minds about the nature of God rather than the point of their divergence. As Brian Daley has put it (in an earlier Holy Spirit lecture here at Duquesne), it is then perhaps only fear of the transformative power of the Spirit that prevents us from comprehending this convergence, that is, fear of the very destabilization of previous polemical certainties which comes with the dark mystery of the contemplative act itself. Second, however, we still need to probe to the actual technical theological issue of how best to parse and express the immanent “relations” of the Trinity, and the implications for the “procession” of the Spirit in particular, in the light also of the materials we have surveyed. And here we necessarily move to speculation which is hinted at, but not completely clarified, by the authors we have surveyed. My suggestion here, as already proposed speculatively at the end of God, Sexuality, and the Self, is, I hope, now given significantly further substance by the authors here covered, but perhaps particularly by the witnesses of Gregory Palamas and John of the Cross, respectively. In significant contrast with the instructively different “solution” of Ruysbroeck (whose end point in union seemed to be the vision of the unification of the divine persons themselves to the point of their hypostatic obliteration), this alternative insight found in the other texts we have surveyed not only reads the Father and Son as intrinsically and eternally related in the Spirit, but as so related through the
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“deflections of desire” as to render the usual meanings of “source” or “foundation” in the Father mysteriously transformed—away from all false hierarchalism and remaining covert subordinationism of the Spirit. As I put it at the end of God, Sexuality, and the Self: “We [now] not only need to speak thus of the Son eternally coming forth from the Father ‘in’ or ‘by’ the Spirit, rather than merely ‘through’ or ‘from’ the Spirit [an approach also shared by Thomas Weinandy]; but more daringly, we also need to speak of the Father’s eternal reception of his status as ‘source’ from the other two ‘persons,’ precisely via the Spirit’s reflexive propulsion and the Son’s creative effulgence.”27 The Father as “source,” I wrote in the last page of the book, has thereby here become ecstatic goal as much as ecstatic origin within the relational dynamics of the life of the Trinity.28 If this continuing use of the traditional term “source” thereby appears somewhat paradoxical, even Pickwickian, it is surely part of that mysteriously apophatic revelation that I urged at the outset characterizes these authors’ whole engagement with the Trinity in prayer. It cannot be, in other words, that there is a chain of inner-trinitarian relations that simply ends in the Father; for the very notion of the reciprocal “deflections of desire” belies that. Third, and finally, I come to the lessons which seem to emerge from this investigation for issues of human eroticism and what we now call “gender.” As intimated at the outset, I see in the project of trinitarian reflection no mandate simply to read preferred personal and political messages onto the life of God: The Trinity is emphatically not “our social or political programme” (Miroslav Volf), as Karen Kilby has underscored of late, in searing “apophatic” critique of once-fashionable “social trinitarianism.” But just as the material we have surveyed does nonetheless strongly give authoritative credence—via Scriptural reflection, ascetic contemplation, critical discernment of tradition, and above all via the logic of the very homoousianism that propelled orthodox trinitarianism in the first place—to a vision of “relations” and “processions” as just suggested, so likewise, I submit again in closing, the insights about divine trinitarian purifying desire that we have 27 Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay on the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 333. 28 Coakley, 334.
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found in these same sources presents a vision of desiring erotic selfhood mysteriously purged, transformed, and rendered labile to the ecstatic workings of the Spirit. And if the endpoint of such a journey is to become more truly oneself (whoever or whatever that is) than one has ever before been, as the Carmelites so describe it, then this is perhaps a fit theological alternative to hold up as a desideratum in comparison to the cacophony of vying secular debates as to the contemporary performances of “gender.” Finally, it is the “indwelling Trinity” (the Trinity disclosing the true nature of desire-in-the-Spirit) that perfects our human selfhood in all its mystery.
PART THREE
Pneumatology Today
7
The Holy Spirit and Ecumenical Dialogue
Theological and Practical Dimensions Cardinal Walter Kasper
In our contemporary context and for understandable reasons, most people are more interested in the interreligious and intercultural dialogue than in ecumenical dialogue. But how can the Church stand for reconciliation and peace in the world when not even Christians are able to attain reconciliation and communion among themselves? So both kinds of dialogues, ecumenical and interreligious, are inseparable and belong together. And not least, they belong together because it is the one Spirit, who will bring us closer together and bring about peace in the world. In this lecture we will discuss this pneumatological approach especially with regard to the recent phenomenon of Pentecostalism. What I want to say touches on the content of seminars for Bishops and theologians that our Pontifical Council held on this issue last year in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
CHRISTOLOGICAL AND PNEUMATOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECUMENISM The relation between the Holy Spirit and the ecumenical dialogue is essential though not usual. Normally the problems of ecumenism are addressed from a christological point of view. One emphasizes in this
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perspective that Jesus Christ wanted and founded only one Church, that on the eve of his death he prayed “that all may be one” (John 17:21), and that we all confess in the Apostles’ Creed the “one holy Church.” Thus, the divisions within the Church contradict Christ’s will; they are sin and a scandal for the world. No doubt, all these statements are correct; they are a call and a challenge for praying and working to overcome the scandal of division, especially at the table of the Lord, and to reach visible unity understood as full communion in faith and love, in sacramental life and in mission. But this christological approach, as important as it has been and remains, reflects at the same time a weakness and a deficit in Western ecclesiology, often criticized by Orthodox theologians. One of the main pioneers and masters of modern ecumenical theology, Yves Congar, in his three volumes Je crois en l’Esprit Saint (I believe in the Holy Spirit)1 made clear that this critique is valid only for the mainstream of posttridentine theology, but that the Second Vatican Council made efforts to overcome these constraints and marked a new departure for a balanced christological and pneumatological approach. This is not only a theoretical and a speculative problem, but has also an enormous practical impact. For a unilateral christological approach oblivious to the pneumatological dimension leads easily to a one-sided institutional ecclesiology and to a subordination of the charisma to the institution, of the prophetic to the juridical, of mysticism to scholasticism, of joint priesthood to hierarchic priesthood. The Second Vatican Council drew lessons from the biblical and patristic ressourcement of the first half of the twentieth century and tried to overcome such shortcomings, making its own a more pneumatological and charismatic view of the Church: It called the Spirit the source of life, unity, and renewal of the Church and compared the function of the Spirit with the soul in the human body.2 Thus, it initiated a renewal of the charismatic dimension within the Church.3 1 Yves Congar, Je crois en l’Esprit Saint (Paris: Cerf 1979–1980). Cf. also Walter Kasper, That They May Be One: The Call to Unity Today (London: Burns and Oates 2004), 96–121. 2 Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964), 7. 3 Cf. Lumen Gentium, 2; 4; 7f; 13; 21; 49f and others; cf. Congar, particularly vol. 2, 187–126; Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (London: Burns and Oates 1976), 230–274.
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This approach had consequences for the Council’s view of ecumenical dialogue. The Second Vatican Council held that the Holy Spirit and ecumenical dialogue belong inseparably together. The Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio, starts with the statement that in recent times “the Lord of Ages . . . has fostered by the grace of the Holy Spirit a movement for the restoration of unity among all Christians.”4 This statement seemed so important to the Council Fathers that they repeated it by saying: “Today, in many parts of the world, under the influence of the grace of the Holy Spirit, many efforts are being made in prayer, word and action to attain that fullness of unity which Jesus Christ desires.”5 Thus, according to the Council there cannot be any doubt that the ecumenical movement is not the result of the spirit of liberalism or relativism, but the fruit of an impetus of the Holy Spirit. The Council goes still a step further. The Holy Spirit is not only the impetus of the ecumenical movement, or its beginning, as the principle of unity;6 the Holy Spirit is its innermost soul and its dynamic principle. At the same time the Holy Spirit is the presupposition of ecumenism, which makes possible the ecumenical process, because he is present also outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church “by his gifts and graces.”7 “For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them (i.e. the separated Churches and communities) as means of salvation.”8 Thus we are with them already now in real but not full communion. Also the way from incomplete to full communion is guided by the Holy Spirit; we as human beings cannot “make” or organize unity; unity will be a gift of the Spirit, a new outpouring of the Spirit, a renewed Pentecost.
4 Vatican Council II, Unitatis Redintegratio (November 21, 1964), 1. 5 Unitatis Redintegratio, 4. 6 Unitatis Redintegratio, 2; cf. Lumen Gentium, 7; 8; 13. 7 Lumen Gentium, 15. 8 Unitatis Redintegratio, 3.
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THE EMERGENCE OF PENTECOSTALISM On this basis, fruitful dialogues and friendly relations have been undertaken since the Second Vatican Council with the Oriental Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Byzantine Orthodox Churches as well, and with the traditional Protestant Communities, the so-called Protestant mainline Churches.9 As Pope John Paul II stated, the main fruit of the Council is not the documents, but the rediscovery of Christian brotherhood; other Christians are no longer considered as strangers or enemies but as brothers and sisters.10 However, since the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new century the ecumenical scene has been changing very rapidly. We find new ecumenical challenges emerging everywhere. The main problem is no longer the Protestant mainline Churches, but the old and new sects and especially the Pentecostal, charismatic, and evangelical movements. Only four years ago a bestseller of Philip Jenkins entitled The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity11 described the vast and rapid worldwide emergence of evangelical and charismatic movements, especially in the Southern hemisphere, and the decline of the Protestant mainline Churches. Jenkins writes: “We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide.”12 All Bishops’ Conferences have expressed great concern regarding this phenomenon during their ad limina visits to Rome over the past 20 years. Pope John Paul II gave particular attention to this issue in many of his addresses over the years. Pope Benedict XVI is aware of the situation as well and expresses the same concerns. The aggressive proselytism and the immediate attractiveness of these groups have meant that the Catholic Church, in common with all the traditional Churches, continues to lose many faithful every year. The instruments 9 The international ecumenical dialogues are collected in Growth in Agreement: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, Vols. I-II, ed. Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, William G. Rusch (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1984/1992). 10 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint (May 25, 1995), 42. 11 Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom. The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 12 Jenkins. Cf. Sects and New Religious Movements—An Anthology of Texts from the Catholic Church 1986–1994, edited by the Working Group on New Religious Movements, Vatican City, English edition (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1995).
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and purposes of these movements are often by and large not as spiritual as they may seem, and indeed are sometimes far removed from Christian origin and spirit. Undoubtedly, these groups represent an urgent pastoral problem and an ecumenical challenge. Already the Ecumenical Directory (ED) of 1993 offered a differentiated analysis of the new landscape and the very diversified new situation. First it referred to an interim report of an interdicasterial study of 1986, “which draws attention to the vital distinction that must be made between sects and new religious movements on the one hand and Churches and Ecclesial Communities on the other.”13 This means that even when these groups call themselves Protestant, they are not to be identified with the mainline Protestant Ecclesial Communities. After this important distinction the Directory continues: The situation in regard to sects and new religious movements is highly complex and differs from one cultural context to another. In some countries sects are growing in a cultural climate that is basically religious. In other places they are flourishing in societies that are increasingly secularized but at the same time credulous and superstitious. Some sects are non-Christian in origin and in self-understanding; others are eclectic; others again identify themselves as Christian and may have broken away from Christian Communities or else have links with Christianity.14 Because of this differentiated background and character we must be prudent and cautious with the term “sect.” The use of the term “sect” generally has a negative and derogatory connotation. However, it should be borne in mind that the term “sect” cannot be defined only in a quantitative way and applied to all small groups; sect has a qualitative meaning and implies normally an exclusive self-understanding connected with fanatic, fundamentalist, and aggressive behavior, which makes dialogue normally impossible. Proselytism and proselytistic methods are part of the main characteristics of sects and a pastoral challenge with regard to Pentecostalism.15 13 Ecumenical Directory, 35. 14 Ecumenical Directory, 36. 15 Different studies have been undertaken on the issue of proselytism; e.g., the study document of the Joint Working Group between the Catholic Church and the World Council of
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Before we start to reflect on the theological and pastoral problems, let’s first briefly reflect on the emergence and the history of this new movement. Within the Reformation tradition, the appearance of “revivalist” and “pietistic” movements with an accent on “freedom of the Spirit” (Free Churches) goes back to the beginning of the Reformation. In particular, we have the Methodists (Wesleyans), Quakers, Mennonites, Baptists, etc. Partly they were a reaction to the development of Protestant Churches, which became quickly institutionalized, established, and overly doctrinal. What matters for these groups is not orthodoxy but religious experience, personal piety, and sanctification. We have regular contacts and official dialogues with some of these communities. In the twentieth century we were confronted with a new Christian revival; new movements have arisen such as the Pentecostals and other charismatic groups. The Pentecostal movement emerged with an experience of ‘baptism in the Spirit’ in the context of the Wesleyan Holiness movement linked with glossolalia around 1900. It exploded in 1906–1909 in Azusa Street in Los Angeles, which is seen as the birthplace of the global Pentecostal movement.16 Very early it spread out to many cities in the US, many European countries, to India, China, West and South Africa, Latin America, especially Brazil and Chile. However, more recent research has made clear that not the whole movement can be derived from the US. In many Third World countries similar experiences independently occurred, so that the Pentecostal movement from its very beginning is a transcultural and a diversified phenomenon. Pentecostals represent a new kind of being Christian, which differs notably not only from the Catholic but also from the traditional Protestant type. After the Christianity of the first millennium (Catholics and Orthodox) and the Ecclesial Communities tracing their origin to the Reformation of the sixteenth century (mainline Protestantism), they represent a third type of Christian communities and are referred to as Churches, “The Challenge of Proselytism and the Call to Common Witness,” in Information Service N.91 (1996/I-II), 77–83; and the joint study of the Catholic-Pentecostal International Dialogue, “Evangelization, Proselytism and Common Witness. The Report from the Fourth Phase of the International Dialogue 1990–1997 between the Roman Catholic Church and Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders,” in Growth in Agreement, 753–779 and also in Information Service N.97 (1998/I–II), 38–56. 16 Cf. Cecil M. Robeck, The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nashville, Tenn.: Emanate Books, 2006).
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the third force of Christianity. The Pentecostal movement understands itself as a revival of the Pentecost outpouring of the Holy Spirit and his gifts as listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 and lost in the later history of Christianity.17 Today worldwide Pentecostals (including the Catholic charismatic renewal) number about 600 million Christians, and they are still growing very fast. By virtue of such numbers alone, these communities should not be called sects. On the other hand, they also cannot be called churches in the sociological sense of the term, because each assembly is independent and there is no representative body which can speak for the entire Pentecostal movement. Thus we should speak simply of “Pentecostals” or “Charismatic communities.” There are different groups within the Pentecostal movement, with the largest being the Assemblies of God Church (about 51 million), followed by the Church of God in Christ, the United Pentecostal Church, the Foursquare Church, the Oneness Church, etc. For all of them the experience of personal Pentecost, that is, the baptism in the Spirit, is constitutive; spontaneous prayer, personal witness, holistic emotional and bodily expression, healing, prophecy, glossolalia, and especially a strong participatory lay involvement are characteristic. There was no formal education at the beginning, with the emphasis placed on the emotional and exalted forms of communication. In the third generation we find not only established institutional forms, but also Bible colleges and other educational institutions and a more conceptual expression of faith. With some of these classical Pentecostals a fruitful ecumenical dialogue has become possible,18 whereas others have remained rather suspicious and even hostile to the ecumenical
17 For a first overview cf. Peter Hocken, “Pentecostals,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, ed. N. Lossky, J. Bonino, J. Pobee et. al. (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991), 900– 902. Important texts: Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven, The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2001); W. J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997); Cecil M. Robeck, A Collection of Pentecostal Writings on Ecumenical Issues (Pasadena, Calif.: 2000). 18 Catholic–Pentecostal Dialogue: Final Report 1972–1976, in Growth in Agreement II, 713–720; Final Report 1977–1982, in Growth in Agreement II, 721–734; Perspectives on Koinonia (1985–1989), in Growth in Agreement II, 735–752; Evangelization, Proselytism and Common Witness (1990–1997), in Growth in Agreement II, 753–779.
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movement, which they accuse of being a merely human effort to organize institutional unity. From the late 1950s onward a second wave of the Spirit, the charismatic movement originating in North America, began to flourish in the Protestant mainline Churches.19 Following the experiences at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh) in 1966 and at Notre Dame University (South Bend) in 1973, the charismatic movement found its way into the Catholic Church. It was through the charismatic movement that the Pentecostal sensibility found its way into the Catholic Church. In contrast to the free Pentecostal movements outside Catholicism, the Catholic charismatic movement remains within the sacramental and institutional structure of the Church; it therefore has the possibility to instill an invigorating effect into the Church. Worthy of particular mention in this context are the spiritual movements, which are characteristic of post-Conciliar Catholicism and constitute a hope for the universal Church.20 By the 1990s a third wave of neo-charismatic or nondenominational Pentecostals emerged. Unlike classical Pentecostals, who formed distinct Pentecostal congregations or denominations, this neo-Pentecostalism with independent congregations diverged from strict Pentecostal doctrine and tended to diminish the emphasis on baptism in the Spirit. They are inclined to a more eclectic and syncretistic type of Pentecostalism, sometimes adopting or imitating also specific Catholic forms of piety and worship, and thus becoming increasingly less identifiable and difficult to survey. In many neoPentecostal congregations the spiritual experience has turned into a worldly one, that is, into the promise of worldly happiness and success, and has sometimes become a business, which in time disappoints many of its members. A clearly recognizable theology is only developing, and therefore a theological dialogue in the strict sense 19 Peter Hocken, “Charismatic movement,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, 145–149; Kilian McDonnell, The Holy Spirit and Power: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975); Presence, Power, Praise: Documents on the Charismatic Renewal, 3 vols., ed. Kilian McDonnell (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1980). 20 Massimo Camisaca and Maurizio Vitali, I movimenti nella Chiesa, Già e non ancora 85 (Milano: Jaca Book, 1982); Paul J. Cordes, Mitten in unserer Welt (Freiburg: Herder, 1987); Den Geist nicht auslöschen (Freiburg: Herder, 1990); John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici (December 30, 1988).
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up to this moment has not been possible, and in those cases where it does seem possible, is only in its first beginnings.
SOCIO-CULTURAL AND THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF PENTECOSTALISM How has this enormous and unprecedented growth and spread of Pentecostalism been possible? A first hint for an answer may be the fact that the Pentecostal movement flourished firstly among the poor and uneducated, often among the poorest of the poor and in multiracial, mostly black milieus. It found a fertile soil in the enormous social and economic changes which have taken place practically in all parts of the world, particularly in the Southern hemisphere, with urbanization and the emergence of huge urban conglomerations with large depressed areas, with industrialization, migration, extreme poverty, AIDS, etc. These developments have created a cultural, ethical, and spiritual void, where traditional religious values, behaviors, customs, and structures break down. The uprooted individual in such situations feels powerless and helpless, and finds in the Pentecostal congregations a sphere of freedom, new orientation, participation, support, and consolation, thus becoming easily susceptible to emotional religious expressions as a form of compensation, substitution, surrogacy, and escapism. The Pentecostal congregations correspond exactly to these needs; they give uprooted individuals inner support and a new feeling of belonging. Furthermore, due to the fact that, in the meantime, more or less all social sectors have been affected by the social, economic, and cultural changes, also many educated middle class people are attracted to the Pentecostal and charismatic groups and congregations. In such a sociological situation of breakdown of traditional structures, religious individualism and the possibility and even necessity of the immediate individual experience of the Holy Spirit becomes understandable. This brings us to the theological background of Pentecostalism. Immediate experience of the Spirit is the characteristic mark of all groups and of all charismatic movements. Therefore, the fundamental theological problem that the Pentecostal movement
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raises is the need for a renewed but serious theology of the Holy Spirit, especially of the gifts (charismas) of the Spirit, of spiritual experience, and of discernment of the spirits. The rules for the discernment of the Spirit, found already in the New Testament (cf. 1 Cor 12:3, 10:28; 1 Thes 5:21; 1 Jn 4:1–3) and further developed in the spiritual tradition (especially by St. Ignatius of Loyola) become important and acute. There are especially two aspects that are crucial for a Catholic pneumatology. Firstly, there is the understanding of the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ, therefore maintaining the internal link between christology and pneumatology. This means that the gifts of the Spirit have to be tested according to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the teaching of St. Paul, who affirms that it is not glossolalia and miracles, but love that is the highest gift of the Spirit (1 Cor 13). According to St. Paul the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22). The second aspect to highlight is the not only individualistic, but essentially communal and ecclesial dimension of the Spirit and of the gifts of the Spirit. “To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). In this sense the renewal of the charismatic dimension within the Catholic Church was initiated by the Second Vatican Council. Both Paul VI and Pope John Paul II saw the charismatic movement as an opportunity for the Church and for the world.21 In his speech on the vigil of Pentecost on May 30, 1998 to the participants at the meeting with ecclesial movements and new communities, Pope John Paul II stated: “The institutional and charismatic aspects are co-essential as it were to the Church’s constitution.”22 In 2000 John Paul II spoke of a “springtime of the Spirit” and repeated the warning of the Apostle: “Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything and hold fast what is good” (1 Thes 5:19–21).23
21 Paul VI in his speech of May 1, 1975 to the Third International Congress of Catholic charismatic renewal and John Paul II in his speech of May 7, 1981 to the Fourth International Leaders’ Conference of the charismatic renewal. Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Dominum et vivificantem (May 18, 1986), 26, and Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio (December 7, 1990), 72. 22 Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, Nuove irruzioni dello Spirito: I movimenti nella Chiesa (San Paolo: Cinisello Balsamo, 2006). 23 Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte (January 6, 2001), 46.
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This means that in contrast to the Pentecostal movement outside the Catholic Church, the Catholic charismatic movement remains inside the sacramental and institutional structures of the Church. In this way, the charismatic movement offers the possibility of holding people not only in a local community, but in the universal community of a worldwide Church; and at the same time it has a dynamic and stimulating effect on the Church as a whole. In some parishes and congregations one may even speak of a certain “pentecostalization” of the Catholic Church, manifested in the way the liturgy is celebrated with the maximum participation of all the faithful and the inclusion of emotional elements, especially popular songs, healing ceremonies, etc. After this brief overview on the background to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements we can state that these developments represent a new stage in the ecumenical movement which cannot be overlooked. It presents an enormous challenge, but it cannot be seen only in a negative and critical perspective: Despite all its ambiguities it must be seen not only as a pastoral challenge, but as a pastoral opportunity as well. These movements are part of a religious renewal which is more or less going on throughout the world. This situation is profoundly ambiguous; while undoubtedly it has negative and dangerous aspects, it offers also promising new pastoral opportunities. It is a kairós and it depends on us, and on what we, with the help of God’s Spirit, make of it. Thus, in the third part of our reflections we have to ask ourselves how we can respond to this new situation.
PASTORAL PERSPECTIVES Self-Critical Dialogue of Love and of Life It is obvious that what follows cannot be a pastoral prescription. I can only remind you of some basic pastoral principles, which must be adapted in a practical way by the local bishop and priest. As a general guide, the main pastoral response to the new ecumenical situation cannot be different from the general recommendation and rule for the ecumenical commitment. The answer the Second Vatican Councils gives us is: dialogue. This means that our response cannot be in the form of a polemical approach. Limiting ourselves to condemning the
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activities of Pentecostal groups as proselytism or referring to them as sects is not constructive and could even be counter-productive. Our answer remains: dialogue. At first glance this answer may appear naïve. Though dialogue with some classical Pentecostals has borne good fruits and should go on, theological dialogue with neo-Pentecostals at the present stage in some places, where it seems possible, is only in its still modest beginnings. But dialogue is not at all limited to theological dialogue in the strict sense. We have to distinguish between the dialogue of love and the dialogue of truth. Both are internally linked with each other. Love without truth is dishonest; truth without love can be cold and repelling. But both forms of dialogue can and should happen on different levels, and both presuppose the dialogue of life, or more exactly, the dialogue of daily life. For this form of dialogue of daily life many possibilities present themselves; it is more or less a question of imagination, of good will, and of sensibility to discover and to implement them. Catholics and Pentecostals live and work together in many ways on a daily basis, as neighbors and colleagues. They meet when they are shopping, jogging, as partners in sport and holiday activities, and so on. There can be joyful and happy, or bad and sad events in the family or community, where they can and should express solidarity. There are opportunities where pastors meet or can meet, express congratulations or condolences, and extend birthday, Christmas, and Easter greetings. For a dialogue understood as exchange—not only of ideas but of gifts, perhaps, in the beginning, of small gestures—is possible in many ways. Perhaps at first the partner does not respond, but that is no reason not to try a second time. A second distinction is also important. There is not only an ecumenism ad extra but also an ecumenism ad intra. When there are problems with the Pentecostals, at least some reasons may be also on our side. Our first reaction must be a critical examination of our pastoral conscience. In a self-critical way we should ask ourselves: Why do some Catholics leave our Church and become victims of non-Catholic groups and congregations? We should not limit ourselves to asking: What is wrong with the so-called sects? We should also ask ourselves: What might be wrong with us? What do people feel is lacking in our
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Church, and what do they expect to find in these other movements and groups? Why do these Catholics change their religious affiliation? Could we learn something from the pastoral methodologies applied? What do we need to avoid? Where and how can we improve our pastoral methods? The reasons why Catholics leave our community can be manifold. Speaking to the Bishops of Ghana during their ad limina visit in 1993, Pope John Paul II made a remark that merits further reflection. He explained that “the attraction of these movements sometimes lies in their apparent success in responding to the spiritual needs of the people—the hunger of their hearts for something deeper, for healing, consolation and contact with the transcendent.”24 Our main question should therefore be whether we provide this spiritual help and support that people should expect from us, and whether we give them enough spiritual food to satisfy their hunger and thirst for God. Is the form in which we celebrate our liturgy attractive and appealing? Do our sermons answer their deeper existential questions? Our response to spiritual revivalism, as ambiguous as it may be in many cases, can only be our own spiritual renewal.
Emphasis on Spiritual Ecumenism The last remarks about how to respond to the new situation brings us back to what we already affirmed as the very heart and core of ecumenism: spiritual ecumenism.25 Motivated by the last Plenary of our Council, we will publish in the next weeks a handbook of spiritual ecumenism. This fundamental concern matters in a particular way in this context since the heart of the matter with the Pentecostals is, in the ultimate analysis, a spiritual problem and a spiritual task. Without spirituality, all our other activities—as good, necessary, and useful as they may be—become a soulless machine. I well appreciate that spirituality is an ambiguous and often misused term.26 Today there is the danger of a purely subjectivist 24 Address to the Bishops of Ghana on their ad limina visit, 23 February 1993. 25 Unitatis Redintegratio, 8; Ut Unum Sint, 15–16; 21–2. 26 For clarification, cf. Walter Kasper, “Spiritual Ecumenism,” in That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity Today, 155–172.
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spirituality of emotions without content, which becomes arbitrary, relativistic, syncretistic, and, in the end, empty and void. Spirituality, as it is understood in our sense, does not disregard the objective message of the gospel, but makes it one’s own and, like Mary, treasures it and ponders it in one’s own heart (Lk 2:19.51) and realizes it with one’s whole heart and one’s whole life. Spirituality, which is in essence the contemplative and Marian dimension of Christian life, is not without the discernment of the spirits, for which the person and the message of Jesus Christ is the main criterion (cf. 1 Cor 12:3; 1 Jn 4:1–3). Reading, studying, and meditating on the Bible is fundamental for Christian spirituality. The Second Vatican Council recommended especially the renewal of lectio divina, that is, the prayerful reading of Scripture;27 it is the best basis for the ecumenical formation of the faithful and of the clergy. Ultimately, the objective of ecumenism is to join the priestly prayer of our Lord for the unity of his followers: “Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one. Father may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me” (Jn 17:20–21).
Priority of Evangelization and Catechesis The sacraments are sacraments of faith, but faith comes from hearing the message (Rom. 10:17). This is why the Popes after the Second Vatican Council again and again emphasized the priority of evangelization and proclamation of the gospel. Paul VI called this the very identity of the Church.28 Indeed, one reason why so many of our faithful leave the Church and join Pentecostal or other charismatic groups is simply a question of ignorance about the Catholic faith and of ingenuousness toward sectarian propaganda. Most of the people affected tend to be Catholics living in rural areas, or the urban poor whose faith roots are not deep. Our response to this challenge must be new catechetical efforts in order to deepen the understanding of faith in such a way as to 27 Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965), 25. 28 Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi (December 8, 1975), 14; cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor hominis (March 4, 1990).
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enable Catholics to respond to this propaganda and to the accusations against the Church. Better faith formation of the faithful is needed, particularly of less educated and rural Catholics.29 If there is one thing that our faithful can learn from the Pentecostals, then it is to speak about their faith and to give personal witness to it. In order to meet the challenge of proselytism it is necessary first of all to have a pastoral plan and a program that helps the Catholic faithful to deepen their faith so that they can appreciate and value their own condition as Catholics, so that they really understand and love their Church. I refer here to the task of evangelization in general, and especially to an on-going catechesis at all levels, but more particularly for the youth in primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education, where aggressive student groups, such as the Campus Crusade, tend to be very active. Pastoral programs for this purpose need to include an ecumenical dimension that helps to form the faithful with an open Catholic identity that welcomes other Christians rather than rejects them or speaks negatively about them. The faithful need to be formed in such a way that their identity enables them to meet other Christians in a mature manner, deeply convinced and proud to be Catholic. The task of catechesis implies the preparation of well-formed catechists who can train others in faith formation. The Ecumenical Directory underlines the importance of such formation and offers detailed suggestions.30 It outlines the means of formation, and the settings or places of formation (the parish, schools, groups, associations, ecclesial movements, etc.). Similarly, the same Directory underlines the importance of doctrinal formation for those engaged in pastoral work, drawing attention at the same time to formation in institutions of higher learning. In this connection, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has also published a document that offers concrete useful direction for the formation of those in theological studies, in order to prepare them for future pastoral activity at various levels.31 29 About the importance of catechetical instruction, cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi tradendae (October 16, 1979). Of particular importance is the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) and the Compendium of the Catechism (2005). 30 Ecumenical Directory, chapter 3. 31 Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Ecumenical Dimension in the Formation of those Engaged in Pastoral Work (Vatican City, 1998).
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To Feel at Home within the Church In the same way as the gift of the Spirit is not only an individual gift, but has always an ecclesial character, so also faith has this dual dimension. This cannot be only an abstract affirmation. People want to, and must feel at home in the Church. They cannot be only the object of pastoral care. They increasingly want to be subjects; they want a Church understood as communion, where they can actively participate. “Ecclesial communion implies that each local Church should become a ‘participatory Church,’ a Church, that is, in which all live their proper vocation and perform their proper role.”32 This normally is possible through parish life. “The ecclesial community, while always having a universal dimension, finds its most immediate and visible expression in the parish. It is there that the Church is seen locally. In a certain sense it is the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.”33 Unfortunately, parishes in some parts of the developing world are often so large that our faithful do not feel at home, and may even feel abandoned and neglected, whereas they feel at home, accepted, approved of and welcomed in the small communities of the sects. The answer may then be to build up a family climate in our parishes through small communities, prayer groups, groups for young people, etc., and to train lay people to lead such groups. In this perspective, the post-synodal Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia stated: In every Diocese, the parish remains the ordinary place where the faithful gather to grow in faith, to live the mystery of ecclesial communion and to take part in the Church’s mission. Therefore, the Synod Fathers urged Pastors to devise new and effective ways of shepherding the faithful, so that everyone, especially the poor, will feel truly a part of the parish and of God’s People as a whole. Pastoral planning with the lay faithful should be a normal feature of all parishes. The Synod singled out young people in particular as those for whom the parish should 32 John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia (November 6, 1999), 25. 33 John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici (December 30, 1988), 26.
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provide greater opportunity for fellowship and communion . . . by means of organized youth apostolates and youth clubs. No one should be excluded a priori from sharing fully in the life and mission of the parish because of their social, economic, political, cultural or educational background. Just as each follower of Christ has a gift to offer the community, so the community should show a willingness to receive and benefit from the gift of each one.34 “The presence of these small communities does not do away with the established institutions and structures, which remain necessary for the Church to fulfill her mission.” The same is true for “the role of renewal movements in building communion, in providing opportunities for a more intimate experience of God through faith and the sacraments, and in fostering conversion of life. It is the responsibility of Pastors to guide, accompany and encourage these groups so that they may be well integrated into the life and mission of the parish and Diocese. Those involved in associations and movements should offer their support to the local Church and not present themselves as alternatives to Diocesan structures and parish life. Communion grows stronger when the local leaders of these movements work together with the Pastors in a spirit of charity for the good of all (cf. 1 Cor 1:13).”35 To build up such family-like parish life with small communities, groups, movements, etc. where people feel at home, can be also the answer to the often-heard argument that people leave the Church because they find themselves at home in the small communities of the sects. Often there may also be a materialist aspect, the promise of material help, with people being bought or purchased, and naturally in time being betrayed and disappointed. Indeed, often these groups dispose of funding that comes sometimes from abroad, which we simply do not have. However, let us leave aside in any case that we do not want to buy the faithful. Let us focus on the fact that it may not be simply a question of money, but perhaps also a lack of sensitivity and attention to basic social needs, a question of social and charitable care. Often Pentecostals find access to our people when there is a tragedy, an 34 Ecclesia in Asia, 25. 35 Ecclesia in Asia, 25.
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accident, a case of extraordinary need, and so on. The question is then: Why are they aware, and why are they there and we are not? That’s not primarily a question of money but of attention and sensitivity.
CONCLUSION Ecumenism is one of the essential building blocks of the Church of the future, of a Church which among the conflicting cultures and nations is a sign and instrument of reconciliation, peace and unity. To be the sacrament of dialogue between God and humankind and between human beings as well does not only pertain to the nature and the mission of the Church in the future, but it is also the reality of the current new phase of the ecumenical pilgrimage in the encounter with the new Christian communities, which understand themselves as the outpouring of the Spirit. Pope John Paul II was clear-sighted enough to see not only the negative aspect of the problem. In his encyclical on the missionary mandate of the Church, Redemptor hominis (1990), he saw the new situation and its challenges in the context of an ongoing “religious revival.” He wrote: “Our times are both momentous and fascinating. While on the one hand people seem to be pursuing material prosperity and to be sinking ever deeper into consumerism and materialism, on the other hand we are witnessing a desperate search for meaning, the need for an inner life, and a desire to learn new forms and methods of meditation and prayer. Not only in cultures with strong religious elements, but also in secularized societies, the spiritual dimension of life is being sought after as an antidote to dehumanization.” He added: “This phenomenon—the so-called ‘religious revival’—is not without ambiguity, but it also represents an opportunity.”36 Thus, in our current situation the Church faces many challenges, but she experiences also a kairós. She has the opportunity to realize more fully and more deeply her own very nature as dwelling, building, and temple of the Holy Spirit, where people, women and men, young and elderly, can feel at home and find the space for true and fulfilled human life. 36 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis (March 4, 1979), 38.
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Creative Giver of Life An Ecological Theology of the Holy Spirit Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ
INTRODUCTION: A LIVING PLANET The image of Earth from space, a blue marble swirled around with white clouds against a vista of endless black, has become familiar to our generation. Astronauts who have seen this view with their own eyes speak of its power to change their attitude. Saudi Arabian astronaut Sultan bin Salman al-Saud, part of an international crew, recollected: “The first day we all pointed to our own countries. The third day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were all aware of only one Earth.” Another astronaut, American Rusty Schweigert who walked on the moon, had this to say: “From the moon, Earth is so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in the universe, that you can block it out with your thumb. Then you realize that on that spot, that little blue and white circle, is everything that means anything to you—all of history, music, poetry and art, birth and love and death, tears, joy. . . . And then you are changed forever; your relationship to the world is no longer what it was.”1 In our day, a new awareness of the magnificence of Earth as a planet that hosts life is growing among people everywhere. It is an ecological 1 Both astronauts are cited in Michael Dowd, Earthspirit (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991), 95.
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awareness; ecological from the Greek oikos, meaning home, and referring to this living planet as our home. It is a consciousness pervaded by wonder at Earth’s living beauty and, simultaneously, by distress at its despoiling. Ecological awareness is a new dialogue partner for theology. It raises challenges and provides opportunities to take yet another step in the age-old journey of “faith seeking understanding” of the ineffable mystery of God whom we confess. This lecture begins by sketching an ecological view of the world, which will in turn open the door for insights about the Creator Spirit to come to the fore. Consider the story of how life came about. Current scientific consensus holds that the universe originated about 14 billion years ago in a primordial flaring forth, rather inelegantly named the Big Bang. From that explosive instant on to this day, the universe continues to expand. In one corner of one galaxy, our own solar system formed about 5 billion years ago, coalescing under gravity’s pull from debris left by ancient exploding stars. On one of these planets, Earth, life began about 3.5 billion years ago, igniting from minerals and gasses to form communities of single-celled creatures deep in the seas. Life then evolved from single-celled to multiple-celled creatures; from sea to land and air; from plant to animal life; and very recently from primates to human beings, we mammals whose brains are so richly textured that we experience self-reflective consciousness and freedom, or in classical philosophical terms, mind and will. This contemporary universe-story teaches us amazing things.
The Universe Is Unfathomably Old We humans have only recently arrived. Carl Sagan memorably used the timetable of a single Earth year to dramatize the cosmic calendar. If the Big Bang occurred on January 1st, then our sun and planets came into existence September 9th; life on Earth originated on September 25th; and the first humans emerged onto the scene on December 31st at 10:30 pm.2 Placing this timetable into graphic physical motion, the American Museum of Natural History in New York contains a spiraling
2 Carl Sagan, Dragons of Eden (New York: Random House, 1977), 13–17. An eminently readable account of cosmic history is Sagan’s Cosmos (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980).
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cosmic walk. Starting at rooftop level with the Big Bang, each normalsized step you take down the spiral covers millions of years. At the bottom, you step over all of human history in a line as thin as a human hair.
The Observable Universe Is Incomprehensibly Large There are over 100 billion galaxies, each comprised of billions of stars, and no one knows how many moons and planets, all of this visible and audible matter being only a fraction of the matter and energy in the universe. Earth is a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star toward the edge of one spiral galaxy.
The Universe Is Profoundly Dynamic Out of the Big Bang, the galaxies of stars; out of the stardust, the Earth; out of the molecules of the Earth, single-celled living creatures; out of the evolutionary life and death of these creatures, an advancing tide of life, fragile but unstoppable, up to the riot of millions of species that exist today; and out of one branch of this bush of life, homo sapiens, the species in which the Earth becomes conscious of itself. Human thought and love are not something injected into the universe from without, but are the flowering in us of deeply cosmic energies. Religiously this positions us, in Abraham Heschel’s beautiful phrase, to be the cantors of the universe, able to sing praise and thanks in the name of all.3
The Universe Is Complexly Interconnected Everything links with everything else; nothing conceivable is isolated. What makes our blood red? Scientist and theologian, Arthur Peacocke, explains, “Every atom of iron in our blood would not be there had it not been produced in some galactic explosion billions of 3 Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (New York: Scribner, 1954), 82. “All Thy works praise Thee (Ps. 145:10): We are not alone in our acts of praise. Wherever there is life, there is silent worship. The world is always on the verge of becoming one in adoration. It is man who is the cantor of the universe, and in whose life the secret of cosmic prayer is disclosed.”
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years ago and eventually condensed to form the iron in the crust of the earth from which we have emerged.”4 We are made of stardust. The subsequent story of evolution makes clear that humans share with all other living creatures on our planet a common genetic ancestry. Bacteria, pine trees, blueberries, horses, the great gray whales: We are all genetic kin in the great community of life. This story of life makes us stand in awe. But at the same time, we humans are inflicting deadly damage on our planet, ravaging its identity as a dwelling place for life. The way we consume and exploit resources and pollute is dealing a sucker punch to life-supporting systems on land, sea, and air. The litany makes for nightmare headlines: global warming, holes in the ozone layer, rain forests logged and burned, ruined wetlands, collapsed fisheries, poisoned soils. The widespread destruction of ecosystems has as its flip side the extinction of the plant and animal species that thrive in these habitats. By a conservative estimate, in the last quarter of the twentieth century 10 percent of all living species went extinct—and the dying continues. We are killing birth itself, wiping out the future of our fellow creatures who took millions of years to evolve. Their perishing sends an early-warning signal about the death of our planet itself. In the blunt language of the World Council of Churches, “The stark sign of our times is a planet in peril at our hands.”5 The picture darkens as we attend to the deep-seated connection between ecological devastation and social injustice. Poor people suffer disproportionately from environmental damage; ravaging of people and ravaging of the land on which they depend go hand in hand. In the Amazon basin, for example, lack of just distribution of land pushes dispossessed rural peoples to the edges of the rain forest where, in order to stay alive, they practice slash-and-burn agriculture, in the process destroying pristine habitat, killing rare animals, and displacing indigenous peoples. Closer to home, in our country the 4 Arthur Peacocke, “Theology and Science Today,” in Cosmos as Creation, ed. Ted Peters (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1989), 32. 5 WCC, Canberra Assembly, “Giver of Life Sustain Your Creation!” Section I, in Signs of the Spirit, ed. Michael Kinnamon (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), 55; for details of ecological damage, see James Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1991): chs. 1 and 2.
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economically well-off can choose to live amid acres of green while poor people are housed near factories, refineries, or waste-processing plants that heavily pollute the environment. The bitterness of this situation is exacerbated by racial prejudice as environmental racism pressures people of color to dwell in these neighborhoods. Feminist analysis clarifies further how the plight of the poor becomes exemplified in poor women whose own biological abilities to give birth are compromised by toxic environments, and whose nurturing of children is hampered at every turn by lack of clean water, food, and fuel. Women-initiated projects such as the Chipko movement in India, where village women literally hug the forest trees to prevent lumber interests from cutting them down, and the Green Belt movement started by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai in Kenya, whereby women plant millions of trees and receive a small income for nurturing them, show how restoring the earth interweaves intrinsically with the flourishing of poor women and their communities. Poverty and its remedy have an ecological face.6 For people of faith, the question of God is profoundly involved in these considerations. Where is God, and what is God doing, and how does that affect our lives, in an evolutionary world under threat? The ancient but neglected field of pneumatology (study of the Spirit) is poised to make a contribution. On the frontier of cosmic science and ecological responsibility, it invites us to rediscover the reality of God the Holy Spirit, Creative Giver of Life.
REMEMBERING THE SPIRIT From the opening scene in the Bible where the Spirit moves over the waters at the beginning of creation, to the last scene where the Spirit invites all who are thirsty for the water of life to “Come,” the ruah/breath/wind/spirit of God is at play everywhere in the natural
6 Examples in Rosemary Radford Ruether, ed., Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996); David Hallman, ed., Ecotheology: Voices from South and North (Geneva: WCC Pub., 1994); and Leonardo Boff and Virgil Elizondo, eds., Ecology and Poverty (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995). The effects of the global economy on nature and communities of poor people are astutely analyzed by John B. Cobb, The Earthist Challenge to Economism (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999).
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world. We cannot flee from God’s Spirit even by flying to the highest heaven or diving to the deepest canyon in the sea (Ps 139:7–10). The Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life, natural and human. This much is obvious: To teach an a-cosmic relation to God is not to know the God of the Bible.7 The first fifteen hundred years of Christian theology by and large paid attention to this point. Theology was like a three-legged stool, held up by interlocking considerations of God, the human race, and the natural world. This was true of Christian as well as Jewish and Islamic reflection. However, the fierce sixteenth-century conflict in the West over how humans are saved from sin, whether by faith alone (the Protestant position) or by faith and good works (the Catholic position), caused an intense focus on the human dilemma. As happens in any fight, people lost sight of the wider reality. In the post-Reformation centuries, Catholic theology tied the Spirit very tightly to church office and the teaching of the magisterium, while Protestant theology fastened onto the Spirit’s work of justification in the individual person. The churches paid attention to the Spirit at Pentecost and during Confirmation ceremonies but, with few exceptions, both sides forgot the biblical, early Christian, and medieval witness to the cosmic presence and activity of the Spirit of God.8 During these centuries, neo-scholastic theology envisioned God on the model of a monarch at the very peak of the pyramid of being. “He”—for it was always the ruling male who was the model for this idea—dwelt beyond the world, uncontaminated by its messiness. He gave commands which the world had to obey. Even when this Supreme Being was portrayed with a benevolent attitude, which the best of theology did, He was still essentially remote, ruling the universe while not affected by it in any significant way. He loved the world, but humans had to try hard to find their way back to “Him.” This theology’s brilliant achievement was to establish the transcendence of
7 Carol Dempsey and Mary Margaret Pazdan, eds., Earth, Wind, & Fire: Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Creation (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2004). 8 Elizabeth Johnson, “Losing and Finding Creation in Christian Tradition,” in Christianity and Ecology, ed. Dieter Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, 3–21 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). This is one of ten volumes on world religions and ecology, e.g., Hinduism and Ecology, Islam and Ecology, Judaism and Ecology, etc.; the series, published by Harvard, presents a wealth of insights.
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God beyond any second thoughts. But it was less keen on divine immanence, the nearness of the incomprehensible God dwelling intimately in the depths of the world from the beginning, throughout history, unto the end. Just as new cosmology reconfigures the relationship between human beings and the Earth, it also leads to reappropriation of this truth. Let me be very clear. I am not suggesting that we should ignore transcendence, or collapse the difference between God and the world. But the stunning world opened up by Big Bang cosmology and evolutionary biology points to the value of envisioning and relating to God not at the apex of a pyramid but within and around the emerging, struggling, living, and dying circle of life. To retrieve this ancient sense of relationship, theology needs a trinitarian framework that acknowledges the one God to be transcendent, incarnate, and immanent in the world. In the late second century, the theologian Tertullian used a wealth of images to explain this. If God the Father can be likened to the sun, then Christ is the sunbeam coming to earth, and the Spirit is the suntan, the spot of warmth where the sun arrives and has an effect. Similarly, the first person of the Trinity can be likened to an upwelling spring of water, the second person to the river flowing from it, and the third person to the irrigation ditch where the water reaches plants and makes them grow. The Triune God can also be compared to the root, the shoot, and the fruit of a tree: a deep unreachable foundation, its sprouting into the world, and its power which produces flower, fragrance, fruit and seed.9 These are all metaphors for the God beyond us, who as God comes forth in the flesh to be with us in history, and as God again actually has an effect within the world. In this framework, the Spirit is always God who actually arrives in every moment, drawing near and passing by with life-giving power. The Nicene Creed expresses this beautifully when it confesses belief in the Holy Spirit as “the Lord and giver of life,” in Latin vivificantem, the Vivifier. In a nutshell, the “person” of the Spirit refers primarily to God present and active in the whole world, human, planetary, cosmic.
9 These images are suggested by Tertullian, Adversus Praxean (Against Praxeas), 8.
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PRESENCE OF THE CREATOR SPIRIT At the end of his popular book, A Brief History of Time, physicist Stephen Hawking asks a famous question: “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”10 In the integrity of his adherence to atheism, he leaves the question open. Biblical faith answers that it is the Spirit who breathes life into the exuberant, diverse, interrelated universe. The mystery of the living God, utterly transcendent, is also the dynamic power at the heart of the world and its evolution. This refers to divine action not just in the beginning at the Big Bang, but even now, persistently, as the universe continues to take shape into the future. The Creator Spirit is the unceasing, dynamic flow of loving power that sustains the world, brings forth life, weaves connections between all creatures, and repairs what gets damaged. Instead of sitting beyond the point of the pyramid of privilege, the divine Spirit encircles and indwells the universe.
Creative Presence To describe this, the Bible uses cosmic images whose imaginative resonance is different from anthropomorphic images of God as king, lord, or father. It refers to the Spirit as ruah/breath or blowing wind, as blazing fire, as flowing water. None of these has a definite, stable shape; they can surround and pervade other things without losing their own character; their presence is known by the changes they bring about. Just so, the Spirit energizes the natural world of birthing and dying throughout billions of years. The schema that allows for the most intelligible interpretation of this indwelling is panentheism. Unlike theism, which infers God to be the highest member of the order of being, insisting on God’s difference and distance from the world while paying little attention to divine nearness (the model which modern atheism rejects), and unlike pantheism (all is God), which erases the difference between created and uncreated, thereby collapsing God and the world into each other, panentheism posits a relationship where everything abides in the Creator Spirit who in turn encompasses everything. Here the Giver of Life 10 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 174.
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is “over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6). What results is a mutual abiding for which the pregnant female body provides a good metaphor. Widespread adoption of this understanding in contemporary theology has been called “a quiet revolution.”11 Even so, Augustine long ago depicted this indwelling in memorable terms: I set before the sight of my spirit the whole creation, whatsoever we can see therein (as sea, earth, air, stars, trees, mortal creatures); yea and whatever in it we do not see. . . . But Thee, O Lord, I imagined on every part environing and penetrating it, though in every way infinite: as if there were a sea, everywhere and on every side, through unmeasured space, one only boundless sea, and it contained within it some sponge, huge, but bounded; that sponge must needs, in all its parts, be filled with that immeasurable sea: so conceived I Thy creation, itself finite, yet full of Thee, the Infinite; and I said, Behold God, and behold what God hath created; and God is good, yea, most mightily and incomparably better than all these.12 The natural world of Augustine’s day was thought to be static, set up by God in the beginning according to a blueprint in the divine mind. The presence of God that he envisions within it takes on new contours in an evolutionary universe. Present as sea to sponge, the Spirit of God is supremely radiant, relational energy, continuously creating in and through the processes of nature, which have their own integrity. The Spirit of God is like a great creative matrix who grounds and sustains the cosmos and attracts it toward the future. Throughout the vast sweep of cosmic and biological evolution, the Spirit embraces the material root of life and its endless new potential, empowering the cosmic process from within. The universe, in turn, is self-organizing and self-transcending, energized from the spiraling galaxies to the double helix of the DNA molecule by the Spirit’s quickening power.
11 Michael Brierley, “Naming a Quiet Revolution: The Panentheistic Turn in Modern Theology,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, 1–15 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004). 12 Augustine, Confessions, VII:7, trans. E. B. Pusey (Chicago: 1952; being Vol. 18 of Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.), 45.
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Cruciform Presence There is yet more to be said. For the natural world is not only beautiful in its harmonies; it also presents us with an unrelentingly harsh and bloody picture, filled with suffering and death. Bodily existence requires eating; hence predation is an inescapable part of the pattern of biological life. On a grand scale, the history of life itself is dependent on death; without death there would be no evolutionary development from generation to generation. The history of life is a story of suffering and death over millions of millennia. The temptation is to deny the violence and escape into a romantic view of the natural world. But there is another option, namely, to seek the Creator Spirit in the midst of pain.13 To do so, theology performs a typical maneuver, taking its eyes off the immediate question to consult the gospel. Christian theology interprets Jesus as the Word and Wisdom of God whose life, death, and resurrection reveal the character of the living God. What do we glimpse through this lens? A merciful love that knows no bounds, a compassion that enters into the depth of people’s sin, suffering, and terrifying death, to bring new life. An ecological vision gives theology warrant to cross the species line and extend this divine solidarity to all creatures. The Creator Spirit dwells in compassionate solidarity with every living being that suffers, from the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroid to the baby impala eaten by a lioness. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without eliciting a knowing suffering in the heart of God, who constantly works to renew the face of the Earth. Such an idea is not meant to glorify suffering, a trap that must be carefully avoided. But it works out an implication of the vivifying Spirit’s relation to an evolutionary, suffering world with an eye to divine compassion. Nature’s crying out is met by the Spirit who groans with the labor pains of all creation to bring the new to birth (Rom 8:22–23). Thus is the pattern of cross and resurrection found at work on a cosmic scale.
13 Mark Wallace, “The Wounded Spirit as the Basis for Hope in an Age of Radical Ecology,” in Christianity and Ecology, 51–72.
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Futuring Presence Rather than being a settled place, the universe is ever-changing. In the beginning was a homogenous sea of radiation. Rather than remain at a granular level of existence, the universe has unfolded extravagantly over time, emerging in increasingly elaborate forms. Biologists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, warn against interpreting this story as a necessary, directional, linear march from the Big Bang to the human race. The story of life is more like a branching bush, with humanity itself one recent twig on one branch of the bush. While granting this point, other scientists argue that, since the universe as a whole has in fact moved in a certain direction from its cosmic origins, it obviously has propensities toward ever more complexity, beauty, and ordered novelty. Taking the long view, we can see that from the beginning the universe is seeded with promise, pregnant with surprise. More has regularly come from less. The cosmic story has been one of restless adventure that produces the genuinely new. Indwelling the world with creative compassion, the Creator Spirit’s presence is future-oriented, luring the world along the paths of creative advance. This realization connects the natural world squarely with the biblical story, where God is a God of surprises who keeps approaching with a call to “come ahead” into the future, promised but unknown. Think of the call to Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and travel to a new land, capped off by the surprising gift of a child to them in their sterile old age (Gen 12–21); think of the summons to the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt to pass over the sea into freedom (Ex 1–15); think of the surprising annunciation to an unknown young woman in a poor village inviting her to bear the Messiah (Lk 1:26–38); think of Christ’s commission to the women disciples at his empty tomb to go and announce that he is risen (Mt 28:1–10; Jn 20:1– 18). Divine presence in human history keeps acting unexpectedly to open up the future. So too with the natural world: The vivifying Spirit is forever at work, generously bringing forth novelty in the world of nature. And the adventure is not yet finished. The natural world is the bearer of divine promise that moves toward the final day when heaven and earth will be transformed by divine blessing: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rv 21:5).
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ACTION OF THE CREATOR SPIRIT The presence of the Creator Spirit in the natural world raises in direct fashion the question of divine agency. How does God act in an evolutionary, emergent universe? The scientific picture of the universe indicates that over uncounted millennia, nature actively emerges into new forms at all levels. Even the dawning of life and then of mind can be accounted for without special supernatural intervention. One mistaken religious concept places divine intent and action directly into the physical nexus of the universe. The bitterness of the disputes between adherents of intelligent design and the so-called new atheists is due to the fact that they both share this assumption. Fundamentalists posit direct divine action while the materialist scientists find no trace. I want to say: A plague on both your houses. The fundamental view of how God acts that is held by both parties is inadequate. In a review of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, which is a diatribe against religion, Terry Eagleton observed that part of the problem with Dawkins’ thesis is that he imagines God, “if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized.”14 It is this deficient view of God’s action as part of the physical nexus of the universe that gets contemporary discussion into impossible dead-ends. Disputes within theology over divine agency can be just as fierce as those between science and religion. At least six positions claim a seat at the table. Single action theory understands God to have acted once, in the beginning; since then, God sustains the world while the details of cosmic history are just how it all happens to work out (Gordon Kaufman, Maurice Wiles). Positing much more divine involvement, process thought holds that God provides initial aims to every concrescing event, and acts by the power of persuasion to lure the world in a desired direction (Alfred North Whitehead, John B. Cobb, David Griffin). Making an analogy with the agency of embodied human persons, a third position envisions the world as the body of God, with God acting in the world the way the soul acts in the body (Sallie McFague). Using information theory, the top-down causality 14 Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” London Review of Books 28, no. 20 (Oct. 19, 2006).
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position understands that God acts in the world through the influence of the whole upon the parts (Arthur Peacocke). The ‘causal joint’ theory uses the innate openness of physical processes to predicate that God acts as one of the initial conditions of an event, inputting the pattern that influences the overall outcome (John Polkinghorne, Nancey Murphy, Robert Russell). A sixth, more classical position holds to the distinction between primary and secondary causality, seeing God’s agency effective through the working out of natural causes. As the unfathomable Source of the world’s existence, God bestows natural forces and individual creatures with power to act with their own independence. These two causes are not two species of the same genus, not two different types of causes united on a common ground of generating effects. They operate on completely different levels (itself an inadequate analogy), one being the Cause of all causes, the other participating in this power to act, as things that are burning participate in the power of fire. This idea continues to be articulated by some Catholic thinkers today. Working in this tradition, Australian Denis Edwards observes, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) long ago clarified that God’s way of acting in the world (what can be called primary causality) is not opposed to the whole network of cause and effect in nature (secondary causality). God’s work is achieved in and through creaturely cause and effect. It is not in competition with it. Aquinas never knew Darwin’s theory of evolution, but he would have had no difficulty in understanding it as the way that God creates.15 While markedly different from each other, these various positions have much in common. They shun an extrinsic model of divine activity. They seek to make intelligible the idea that the Creator Spirit, as ground, sustaining power, and goal of the evolving world, acts by empowering the process from within. They see divine creativity acting in, with, and under cosmic processes. God makes the world, in other words, by empowering the world to make itself.
15 Denis Edwards, The God of Evolution (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 47.
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Even granting this, what makes the conversation so dicey for theology is chance. Unlike the science of the Enlightenment period which envisioned the universe operating in a determined, mechanistic way, today’s science has revealed the existence of extensive zones of openness in nature. In these areas what happens next is intrinsically unpredictable. This is not because we have not yet developed instruments capable of measuring such systems and thus predicting outcomes. Rather, there is something in nature itself that defies total measurement. The microscopic realm studied by quantum physics is one such zone; large, non-linear, dynamic systems studied by the physics of chaos are another; the biological development of species by natural selection is a third. Take as an example the non-linear, dynamic system of weather. One day a butterfly flutters its wings in Beijing; the small current of air it sets in motion cascades upward in ever-amplifying intersection with other air currents; one week later, as a result, there is a major storm in New York. There is no simple cause and effect, but an open, dynamic system that can be tipped this way or that way with the most minute changes. Over time, a certain pattern will emerge as the systems continue to work. But given the sensitivity of the system to initial conditions, in any given instance no sure prediction is possible. Or take biological evolution. Things run along smoothly until some slight change is introduced: a gene mutates due to bombardment by solar rays, or a hurricane blows a few birds off course to a new island, or the Earth is struck by an asteroid. This disrupts smooth operations to the point almost of breakdown. Then out of this turbulence emerges, spontaneously, a more intricate order adapted to the new conditions. Technically speaking, random events working within lawful regularities over eons of time have crafted the shape of the world that we inhabit today. If there were only law in the universe, the situation would stagnate. If there were only chance, things would become so chaotic that no orderly structures could take shape. But chance working within nature’s laws disrupts the usual pattern while being held in check, and over millennia their interplay allows the emergence of genuinely new forms that cannot be reduced to previous components. This chance-within-law pattern over deep time is precisely what one would expect if the evolving universe were not predetermined, but
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were left free to explore its potential by experimenting with the fullest range of possibilities inherent in matter.16 This means that as far as science can fathom, the universe’s unfolding has not happened according to a pre-determined blueprint. A startling moment occurred at an annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America when Bill Stoeger, Jesuit astrophysicist from the University of Arizona, asked: Rewind the clock of the world back to the first moment and let it start ticking again: Would things turn out the same way? The scientific consensus is an emphatic “No,” because of chance. There was stunned silence and then an eruption of argument as a roomful of theologians tried to wrap their minds around this idea and relate it to our basic ideas about divine providence. How does the intrinsic role of chance in cosmic and biological development impact our understanding of divine agency? Theology now discovers that the indwelling Creator Spirit not only grounds nature’s regularities, being the source of law, but also empowers the chancy interruptions of regularity that bring about the new. Boundless love at work in/with/under the processes of the universe, the Spirit embraces the chanciness of random mutations and chaotic conditions of open systems, being the source not only of order but also of the novelty that causes chaos to happen in the first place. Divine creativity is much more closely allied to disorder than our older theology ever imagined. In the emergent evolutionary universe, we should not be surprised to find divine creativity hovering very close to turbulence. The concept of divine power in this reflection is obviously different from omnipotence wielded in a monarchical way. On many fronts today, theology has been working to redefine omnipotence as the power of love. This idea gains added currency in the framework of ecology, which delineates the inner capacity of nature to self-organize into new, more complex forms, and sees this being accomplished by the mechanism of random events working within law-like regularities over deep time. If the source of nature is the Creator Spirit, then divine power is acting here in a self-emptying, infinitely humble and generous way, a christic way, endowing the universe with the capacity 16 See extended discussion in Arthur Peacock, Theology for a Scientific Age (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), especially 115–121.
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to become itself. It is as if at the Big Bang the Spirit gave the world a push saying, “Go, have an adventure, see what you can become. And I will be with you.” In more classical language, the Giver of life not only creates and conserves all things, holding them in existence over the abyss of nothingness, but is also the dynamic ground of their becoming, empowering from within their self-transcendence into new being. This is not a denial of omnipotence, but its redefinition. The Spirit of God moves in the world with compassionate love that grants nature its own creativity and humans their own freedom, all the while companioning them through the terror of history toward a new future. In view of the openness of the natural world, John Haught suggests, happily in my view, that we should no longer think of God as having a set plan for the evolving universe, but rather a vision.17 This vision aims at bringing into being a community of love. The Creator Spirit is at the heart of the process, guiding/luring the world in that direction, all the while inviting the world to participate in its own creation through the free working of its systems. At the quantum level, in non-linear dynamic systems, through natural selection, and by free human agency—the new emerges! Grounded and vivified by such freeing power, the universe evolves in the integrity of its own proper autonomy.
CHALLENGE OF THE CREATOR SPIRIT An ecological theology of the Creator Spirit in the natural world not only expands our awareness of divine presence, it also reframes our understanding of the natural world itself. Instead of being divorced from what is holy, matter bears the mark of the sacred, being imbued with a spiritual radiance. For the Spirit creates what is physical—stars, planets, plants, animals, ecological communities, bodies, senses, sexuality—and moves in these every bit as vigorously as in souls, minds, ideas. Catholic sacramental theology has always taught that simple material things—bread and wine, water, oil, the sexual union of marriage—can be bearers of divine grace. This is so, it now becomes clear, only because to begin with the whole physical world itself is the locale of God’s gracious indwelling, a primordial sacrament of divine 17 John Haught, The Promise of Nature (New York: Paulist Press, 1993).
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presence. This leads to the crucial realization that the natural world enjoys its own intrinsic value before God. It is not created simply for human use, nor is it only an instrument to serve our needs. We can no longer reduce divine care to one, newly arriving species, homo sapiens. Far from being a mere backdrop for our human lives or a stage for our drama, the natural world is a beloved creation valued by God for its own sake. Hence this theology of the Holy Spirit directs the church to hear the divine challenge to love and justice in a new key, calling for responsible, assertive care for the Earth. It becomes clear in our day that a moral universe limited to human persons is no longer adequate. Ethical reflection needs to widen attention beyond humanity alone and recenter vigorous moral consideration on the whole community of life. Pope John Paul II articulated a stunning principle that supports such praxis: “respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of creation.”18 In other words, we owe love and justice not only to humankind, but to “otherkind.” In such an ecological ethic, Jesus’s great command to love your neighbor as yourself extends to include all members of the Earth community. “Who is my neighbor?” asks Brian Patrick? He answers: “The Samaritan? The outcast? The enemy? Yes, yes, of course. But it is also the whale, the dolphin, and the rain forest. Our neighbor is the entire community of life, the entire universe. We must love it all as our very self.”19 Converting minds and hearts to such an Earth ethic entails at least three responses that will enable us to live as partners with God in continuing creation rather than as destroyers of the world.
The Contemplative Response Here we gaze on the Earth with eyes of love rather than with an arrogant, utilitarian stare. We will not save what we do not love, and 18 John Paul II, “The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility,” in And God Saw That It Was Good: Catholic Theology and the Environment, ed. Drew Christiansen and Walter Grazer, 215–222 (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1996). This volume carries pastoral letters on the environment from conferences of Catholic bishops in the United States, Guatemala, Philippines, Northern Italy, and Dominican Republic. See www.usccb. org for sources of Catholic teaching; and www.nrpe.org for ecumenical and interreligious resources (National Religious Partnership for the Environment). 19 Brian Patrick, cited in Dowd, Earthspirit, 40.
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this response begins by awakening our biophilic desires. As the scientist Louis Agassiz noted: “I spent the summer traveling; I got half-way across my back yard.”20 The wonders of our planet are a source of revelation. Anyone who has ever glimpsed the beauty of God through an experience of delight or awe in the natural world knows this. The contemplative response engages the natural world with religious imagination and heart, allowing it to lift our minds and hearts to God and enfolding it into our religious love.
The Ascetic Response Here we restrain our rampant consumerism and self-indulgence in order to protect the Earth. A sensuous, earth-affirming asceticism leads us to live more simply: observe the Sabbath as a genuine day of rest; fast from shopping; endure the inconvenience of running an ecologically-sensitive household; and conduct business with an eye to the green bottom line as well as the red or black. We do these things not to make ourselves suffer and not because we’re anti-body, but so that we can become alert to how enslaved we are by the marketplace and act to offset its effect on the planet.
The Prophetic Response Here we take critical action on behalf of the survival of the planet. The ongoing destruction of the Earth through human acts of ecocide, biocide, geocide is a deeply sinful desecration. In the tradition of biblical prophecy and the spirit of Jesus, we counter this destruction by acting for the care, protection, restoration, and healing of nature, even if this goes counter to powerful economic and political interests—and it does. If nature is the new poor, as Sallie McFague suggests, then our passion to establish justice for the poor and oppressed now must extend to include suffering human beings and life systems and other species under threat.21 “Save the rain forest” becomes a concrete 20 Cited in Holms Rolston, Philosophy Gone Wild: Essays in Environmental Ethics (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1986), 241. 21 Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 200–202.
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moral application of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” The moral goal becomes ensuring vibrant life in community for all.
CONCLUSION An ecological theology of the Creator Spirit has two benefits. First, it opens doors to new forms of relationship with the all-holy God present and active throughout the whole world. The Holy One who fires up the blaze of being does not stand over against the world, or rule it as a king from afar, but dwells in vivifying and compassionate relationship with human beings and the whole universe, attracting all into the future. Second, this theology motivates an ethic of care for the Earth. In our day a terrible drama of life and death is being played out in the natural world. Instead of living as thoughtless or greedy exploiters, we are called to live as sisters and brothers, friends and lovers, mothers and fathers, priests and prophets, co-creators and children of this Earth which God so loves. Karl Rahner once famously wrote, “the devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic,’ one who has ‘experienced’ something, or he [she] will cease to be anything at all.”22 Our times call for experience of the Creator Spirit in the natural world, forever moving over the void, breathing into the chaos, pouring out, informing, quickening, warming, groaning, interrupting, comforting, setting free, befriending, challenging, and blessing, being indeed the One in whom we live and move and have our being (cf. Acts 17:28). Now when we hear that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us” (Rom 5:5), we realize that this love is universal, planetary, cosmic, and unceasing. An ecological theology of the Spirit sets religious people off on a great adventure, expanding the repertoire of our love.
22 Karl Rahner, “Christian Living Formerly and Today,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 7, trans. David Bourke (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), 8.
9
Dust and DNA
The Intertwining of Word and Spirit in History and the Trinitarian Life Robert Davis Hughes III
INTRODUCTION AND THANKS May we begin with prayer, starting with the words of Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatios IV, as translated by Metropolitan Kallistos in his 2007 Holy Spirit Lecture: Without the Spirit, God is far away, Christ belongs to the past, The Gospel is a dead letter, The Church is a mere organization, Authority takes the form of domination, Mission is turned into propaganda, Worship is reduced to bare recollection, Christian action becomes the morality of a slave. But in the Spirit, God is near, The risen Christ is present with us here and now, The Gospel is the power of life, The Church signifies Trinitarian communion, Authority means liberating service, Mission is an expression of Pentecost,
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The Liturgy is a making-present of both past and future, Human action is divinized.1 O God, you teach the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.2 First, let me [say how grateful and honored I am to be the recipient of the inaugural des Places-Libermann award in Pneumatology for my book, Beloved Dust.3] What I propose to do here is build on what was said in Beloved Dust and what has been said about it. One guiding passion of Beloved Dust is missiological, a search for a missiology that must, of necessity now more than ever, include an apologetics, a commending of the gospel to our time, place, and culture that addresses the scientific worldview. In many ways science recommended, if not dictated, the anthropology of dust,4 a physicalist interpretation of humanity enhanced only by the Holy Spirit, not by any occult properties of humanity itself. Beloved Dust was also born out of a passionate desire to retrieve, recover, and revise for our time the wisdom about life in the Holy Spirit locked in the neo-scholastic rhetoric of the classic spiritual theologies. It backed into pneumatology by suggesting that a theology of the spiritual life must be foremost about the Holy Spirit, not about us, however much we may 1 See chapter 4 of this volume, especially footnote 52 for Metropolitan Kallistos’ full attribution of these words. 2 Collect for Pentecost Sunday, translation The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 227, modified. 3 The occasion for this colloquium was the inaugural des Places-Libermann award in Pneumatology, given for Robert Davis Hughes III, Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in Christian Life (New York and London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008). The award is named for Claude-François Poullart des Places and the Ven. François-Marie-Paul Libermann, the founder and re-founder of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. The causes of both are being advanced in Rome. For the theological, spiritual, and missiological interests of these two saintly founders, see the excellent articles in the inaugural issue of Spiritan Horizons, Fall 2006. If you are wondering about “pneumatology,” it is the study of the Holy Spirit, from the Greek pneuma for spirit. 4 See Beloved Dust, ch. 4, 53–68 and the attributions there.
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have learned from the spiritual psychologies of much of the modern mystical tradition. By its very nature and conception, Beloved Dust is not a complete pneumatology, because it focuses on the personal dimension of the spiritual life. Yes, there are important “hooks” to the larger story in the insistence that all true Christian spirituality must be corporeal, corporal, corporate, and ecclesial, and ultimately grounded in the eschatological reality of the Holy Spirit’s work of the final pleroma, the fullness and fulfillment of all things. But the larger issues of the Spirit’s role in creation and history were evident only in hints and glimpses. My own current thinking and research is focused on expanding the insights of Beloved Dust to the consideration of these larger issues; it is some preliminary thoughts about these that I would share here. And I do mean preliminary. Please bear with me, as this will be more glimpses of a work under construction than a finished piece, more of an effort to probe problems and questions and make a few tentative suggestions than an offer of complete solutions. Let me quote something from Ralph Del Colle’s book, Christ and the Spirit,5 which helps define the intersection we seem to be occupying at present. He has discussed the temporal missions, the sending of Word and Spirit by the Father into time and history and the work they do there in what is called the divine economy, describing them as hypostatically engaged (that is, each person of the Trinity is fully involved in propria persona, not merely as a kind of appropriate hook for the undivided action of the one divine essence), and also as distinguishable but inseparable at every moment. In examining the human reception of these missions in cultural and historical pluralism, he states: Formally speaking, all that is human is included in these temporal missions of the Son and the Spirit. Also, as we have seen, the two missions are not identical but neither are they separated. The Holy Spirit creates, sanctifies, and 5 Ralph Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). I cite Del Colle’s work not only because he was a colloquist on this occasion, but also because I find it admirable and accurate. His work is in turn a consideration of that of David Coffey, see his “Spirit-Christology and the Trinity,” in Advents of the Spirit: An Introduction to the Current Study of Pneumatology, ed. Bradford E. Hinze and D. Lyle Dabney, 315–338 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2001), with Del Colle’s response to Coffey and Moltmann, 339–346.
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unites the human nature of Jesus to the divine Son while the risen Lord is present through the modality of the Holy Spirit who is the mutual love of the Father and the Son and who now in the divine economy extends that love to include all those who are sons and daughters in the Son. However, this delineation of the model does not extend to a material explanation of the manner in which the various concerns, actions, and dimensions of the human are the object of the missions. This would come under the rubric of a more practical exposition of the theology of grace and the Christian life.6 This latter is what Beloved Dust attempted, not yet fully engaged with the dogmatic concerns in Del Colle’s work, though certainly with those concerns on the horizon. So, we might envision this conversation as me working up from Dust toward the dogmatic concerns, while Del Colle might work down from the constructive-dogmatic model of Spirit-christology toward Spiritual theology, perhaps as performed not unlike as in Beloved Dust. That is at least one way of defining where we are. As Cardinal Kasper noted in the opening lines of his paper for the second Holy Spirit Lecture,7 the motto of Duquesne University “It is the Spirit who gives life” is the ground of all our work at this Lecture, and it is precisely this theme that I undertake here, in exploring the Christian creedal confession that the Holy Spirit gives life; specifically the Spirit is confessed in the Nicene Creed as Dominum et vivificantem, to Kyrion, to Zõopoion, “the Lord and Giver-of-Life.” What does that mean in our day, with our understanding of cosmology, evolution, natural history, and history? At the interface of dust and the Holy Spirit as life-giver we find above all in our time, the remarkable properties of DNA, which Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and now of NIH, called “the language of God.”8 Also, one concept 6 Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, 202. 7 Cardinal Walter Kasper, “The Holy Spirit and Ecumenical Dialogue: Theological and Practical Dimensions,” in chapter 7 of this volume. 8 Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006). This book is a rarity, sensible on both the science and the theology, making a philosophical/theological claim for theism as an interpretation of the scientific
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stands out from all the current discussion in pneumatology—the inseparability of Word/Wisdom/Child/Son/Christ on the one hand, and the Holy Spirit on the other. The missions of the second and third persons of the Trinity in the divine economy of creation and history are now seen as accompanying one another, as indelibly linked and inseparable, even though distinct and thus distinguishable. We speak, and here my fellow colloquists have been eloquent, as have Killian McDonnell and Eugene Rogers,9 of the ongoing necessity of both a pneumatological christology and a christological pneumatology, of understanding the Spirit as the mediation of that of which Christ is the mediator. Furthermore, pneumatology proper has begun to ask about the implications of this fundamental insight from the economy for our understanding of the inner life of the Triune God, the immanent Trinity. I propose to bring together these two insights, the inevitability of dealing with DNA when we consider the Spirit as life-giver on the one hand, and the intertwining of the Word/Wisdom and the Spirit in their missions on the other, by suggesting that DNA may indeed be a vestigium, a vestige or footprint, of the Trinity. Or, to be a more faithful interpreter of my own work, I suggest that DNA as the very structure of life as we know it is a kind of resonance of the divine life, one of the myriad ways in which the self-expressive self-transcendence of the Triune God evokes all drives toward self-transcendence in the creation. So, I propose to do three things. First, we shall explore the idea of DNA as a vestigium or resonance of the Trinity and the way that enlightens our understanding of the tradition of the Holy Spirit as life-giver as we have received it. Second, this will lead us inevitably into a consideration of the role of the Holy Spirit in history, and how what we have learned from DNA may strengthen suggestions I have made about that role in earlier work. Finally, we shall ask if we have picture without falling over into Creationism or Intelligent Design as the importation of occult causes into science. For a similar account see the document “Catechism of Creation” at: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/CC-CreationCatechism.pdf. 9 Killian McDonnell, The Other Hand of God: The Holy Spirit as Universal Truth and Goal (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003); Eugene, F. Rogers, After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology From Resources Outside the West (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2005) are seminal works in contemporary pneumatology, cited frequently throughout Beloved Dust.
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learned anything in these largely economic considerations that might give us insight into the place of the Spirit in the immanent Trinity, and especially the question of the filioque, the debate between Eastern and Western Christianity over the procession of the Holy Spirit.
DNA AND THE MISSIONS OF WORD AND SPIRIT The first proposal, then, is that we examine DNA as a possible footprint or resonance of the Holy Trinity in creation, especially the creation of life. This is not designed to replace others, but to complement them; for example Irenaeus’ picturing of the Word and Spirit as the two hands of God is a model that has been used by many contemporary authors. The idea of an aspect of evolution as a vestige of the Trinity is not itself new. James Salmon and Nicole Schmitz-Moorman propose as a Trinitarian vestige the unity we see in systems evolution and later stages of thermodynamics in generating the irreversible arrow of history.10 Ian Barbour has likewise written persuasively on how we might envision divine action in evolution.11 He suggests five issues in contemporary biology that any theological reflection must take into account: self organization in material systems; indeterminacy at various levels from the quantum to the historical; the phenomenon of “top-down causality” in complex systems; new concepts in information theory and its communication; and, most especially, the place of history in all of these. Each provides a possible model of God’s interaction with the evolutionary process, which Barbour then supplements with what he sees as an even more powerful model—the concept of interiority in process thought. Thanks to Phillip Cary’s work on Augustine,12 I 10 James F. Salmon, SJ, and Nicole Scmitz-Moorman, “Evolution as Revelation of a Triune God,” Zygon 37 (December 2002): 853–871. 11 Ian G. Barbour, “Five Models of God and Evolution,” in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, ed. Robert Johnson Russell, William R. Stoeger, SJ, and Francisco J. Ayala, 419–442 (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1998). I am grateful to my Sewanee colleague, Dr. Cynthia S. W. Crysdale, for calling my attention to these last two works. 12 Phillip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
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am becoming even more wary of Western notions of interiority than I was when I wrote Beloved Dust, so, perhaps, Teilhard’s notion of “centreity” in complex systems will serve us better than the concept of “interiority.” I should also note again that Francis Collins has also called DNA “The Language of God,” which is, indeed the title of his book relating his scientific work to his Christian faith. As far as I know, however, no one has as yet proposed the double helix structure of DNA itself as a Trinitarian vestige or resonance, though Elizabeth A. Johnson has imagined a triple helix as such.13 It is vital, when we make a move like this, to be clear that we are not letting theology dictate to science or importing occult causes into science, or even supporting creationism or intelligent design as scientific concepts. Rather, we are doing some philosophical and theological reflection on what science offers as a picture of the world. This reflection, however, suggests that DNA is more than a mere metaphor for God as the source of life. To summarize quickly some common but contested ground, proper theological language goes beyond metaphor to analogy, looking for places where there are true commonalities between creaturely realities and God; by the principle of analogia entis or analogy of being, when we find such an analogy there really is something in common between the creature and God 13 As Bradford Hinze reminded me at the colloquium, I was wrong about DNA as such never having been used. Elizabeth A. Johnson has twice made the suggestion, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 221; and Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (New York and London: Continuum, 2007), 220. As I am familiar with both of these excellent works and admire their exposition of the current state of the doctrine of the Trinity, I should have been aware of these references. In a personal communication, Dr. Johnson has stated that she has not developed this suggestion further, nor have others who have found it attractive, as far as she knows. (E-mail, Sept. 23, 2010, in which Dr. Johnson graciously gave permission for me to forge ahead with the idea.) In both instances, she uses the image of a “triple helix” for the Trinity, while acknowledging that the double helix is the form of life as we know it. In fact, Linus Pauling originally imagined a triple helix, until the work of James Watson and Francis Crick showed that such an arrangement would be unstable and proposed the double helix as an alternative. A triple helix may exist at the end of chromosomes and in at least one biological process, and has also been envisioned as a possible structure for DNA-influencing medications. The Wikipedia article “Triple Helix” as of January 10, 2011, is actually quite accurate and helpful. See also Peter E. Nielsen, “Triple Helix: Designing a New Molecule of Life,” Scientific American (December 1, 2008). Despite the obvious Trinitarian resonances in a triple helix model, as will be seen, I have chosen to stick with the double helix as the fundamental structure of life, and the result is different though not contradictory insights into the Trinity from those that would follow from a triple helix model.
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at the level of being, even though there is also much that is not in common, as the finite can never completely or accurately reflect the infinite. This prevents us from ever thinking that an analogy asserts a simple, literal identity, which would be idolatry. The task of positive theology is to explore the commonality and learn from it, and of negative theology to state and take careful note of the differences, which will always be more than the similarities.14 Sacraments, understood as real symbols rather than mere signs, are one example of this analogical existence between metaphor and identity, and Augustine’s idea that creation contains vestigia, vestiges or footprints of the Trinity, is a particularly interesting case. The most famous example of the latter is his assertion that the threefold psychological principle in his anthropology—that human consciousness is made up of memory, reason, and will—reflects the structure of the Trinitarian life. In our day, “footprint” sounds a little too physical, a little too literal, and in Beloved Dust I suggested that “resonance” and “current” were better ways to get at the “imprint” of the analogia entis. I hope you all are familiar with the experiment, which involves two tuning forks of the same pitch. Strike one, and the other will begin to sound as well, even more loudly if they touch. Similarly, take a resonating tuning fork and touch it to a container of water and ripples become evident. More unknown to most of us, and still mysterious even in science, is the way in which at the quantum level particles are able to exchange information with each other across huge gaps in the space/ time continuum. So, our first task is to explore what it might look like to suggest the existence of an analogy between the very structure of life as we know it, the double helix or twisted “ladder” of DNA, and the source of life as we Christians confess it, in the manner in which the inner Trinitarian life is expressed in the external missions of Word/ Wisdom and Spirit in the giving of life to creation. Should we be surprised that there is such a correspondence, that creaturely life is a kind of resonance of divine life without in any way being identical to it or a chip off it?
14 The definitive work on theological analogy remains David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981).
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Even a current inspection of any diagram or model of the now familiar double helix of DNA in its standard B-form reveals suggestive features. In this structure, the two long pieces, the vertical elements of the twisted ladder, called strands, run in opposite directions (antiparallel) and wind about a common axis in a right-hand twist. The repeating unit on each strand, termed a nucleotide, is composed of a sugar15 and phosphate chain; the horizontal rungs on which we find the actual genetic coding are one of four chemical compounds, called bases.16 One unit of one strand of the “ladder,” called a nucleotide, is composed of a sugar, a phosphate group, and one of four bases, each of which is attached to the sugar. The phosphate groups link sugars of adjacent nucleotides, thus building the long polymeric chain that makes up one side of the DNA “ladder.” Each base comprises half of one of the horizontal rungs, and their order along each strand is responsible for the encoded genetic information. Further, the bases form hydrogen bonds in predictable pairings with counterparts on the other strand, giving rise to the term “base-pairs.” The double helix, or “twisted ladder,” is formed as two complementary streams nucleotides join together through these hydrogen bonds. The emerging structure has the bonded base pairs on the “inside” of the helix, while the sugar-phosphate chain forms a kind of negatively charged skeleton on the outside. All the observable biological action involves the information encoded by the order of the bases, though the flexibility of the sugar-phosphate skeleton contributes to the distinct shapes DNA can take.17 The first thing I propose is that we see the character of the strands as a vestige or resonance of the inseparability of the economic missions of Word and Spirit that has become a touchstone of contemporary 15 A 5-carbon deoxyribose. 16 Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, abbreviated as A,C,G,T. 17 Simply for the sake of completeness it should be noted that in our cells the DNA, when not being used, does not form a linear and exceedingly elongated structure; rather, it is compacted by a factor of approximately 10,000, first by being wound around a protein core, forming what are called nucleosomes. The resulting structure gives the appearance of beads on a string, where the beads are the nucleosome particles joined by the continuous DNA double helix. In other words, the double strand chains bend sufficiently to form nucleosomes. This “string of beads” is then further compacted through coiling and supercoiling within the structure of chromosomes in the cell.
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pneumatology. As ECLA theologian Robert Jenson puts it, the issue is to see how the external acts of the Trinity are undivided but distinguishable. That is exactly what we see in the strands of DNA.18 First, they are, in a sense, inseparable. True, they “unzip” and put some distance between the two strands in brief regions of the DNA chain when they are working, either in transcription or replication,19 a fact to which we shall return, but then they re-entwine when the process is complete. If they are unwound from each other by various chemical means in experiments, when “released,” they also intertwine again if they remain intact. There is in life as we know it no way one functions without reference to the other. Thus, they are not absolutely inseparable, as space does open up between them in specific regions when work is being done; but they are functionally inseparable and in fact, in nature, never fully come apart. They are tightly joined, intertwined, connected in a very stable way, and always related to each other through attraction. I shall continue to use “inseparable,” but in this relative sense. I hope in future work to expand the theological analogy further by examining the fact that in DNA the work gets done precisely when a bit of space opens up between the strands in a limited section or bubble. Does even this tell us something of how Word and Spirit work with each other in the economy? In addition, as previously noted, the two strands are not exactly identical. The base pairs are not homogeneous, and have a determined directionality and sequence determined by the shape of the sugar molecules (dictated by their chemical structure), and the strands are not parallel but anti-parallel in this directionality; that is, the order 18 My original presentation of the science, including the preceding paragraph, contained a number of factual errors. I am grateful to the Rev. Daniel E. Hall, M.D., of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Episcopal Church, for pointing out these errors. I have corrected as many as I can, relying heavily on an excellent general introduction to the subject, Chris R. Calladine, Horace R. Drew, Ben F. Luisi, and Andrew A. Travers, Understanding DNA: The Molecule and How It Works, 3rd ed. (Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press, 2004). I am grateful to Dr. Hall and most especially to my brother-in-law John David Puett, Ph.D., Chair, Biochemistry Department, University of Georgia, emeritus, for checking the science and making many helpful suggestions, most of which I have adopted. I remain responsible for any remaining errors and for drawing the theological analogies. 19 In transcription, a messenger RNA, encoded on the basis of a stretch of a DNA strand, is biosynthesized and in turn carries “instructions” to another part of the cell for manufacturing a protein. In replication, the DNA reproduces itself prior to chromosome doubling leading to cell division or reproduction.
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of the nucleotides in them runs opposite; if one runs from what the scientists call three prime to five prime (denoted as 3' to 5'), the other strand runs from five prime to three prime (5' to 3');20 and this may indeed be a reflection or cause of their inseparable intertwining. The strands are identical, however, if read from the same direction (3' to 5'). This resonates with the idea that the persons of the Trinity are of the same substance (homoousios), but distinguishable by the taxis or order of their origin. The directionality and complementarity of the DNA strands also reminds me immediately of the classic rhythm of exodus/reditus in theology, or of what our Spirit-christology theologians call the taxeis of bestowal and return. One thinks even of Irenaeus’s theology of recapitulation. What we see in the DNA is a simultaneity and inseparability of the strands, which can nevertheless be distinguished because they are indeed distinct. This seems to me a good way to understand how the Word is the light that enlightens every human, and is the life of humans (John 1: 4–5), and yet the Spirit is confessed as Dominum et vivificantem, to Kyrion, to Zõopoion. The gift of life, of evolving life, the DNA analogy suggests, is one act of two inseparable but distinguishable actors. Note how this fits the most fundamental points of Del Colle’s exposition of Spirit-christology, the temporal missions of the Word and Spirit being distinguishable but inseparable, full hypostatic or personal engagement in the economy reflecting the originating processions within the immanent life of God who is triadic unity. The relative inseparability of the DNA strands deriving from their distinction and directionality is an insight that would deepen our understanding of how Word and Spirit interact in Christology and the other great mysteries of the faith. It certainly helps counter any threat of modalism, of collapsing one into the other as if there were no true distinction. The inseparability is not in tension with the distinctions, but actually caused by them. This could, I believe, be the source of very fruitful further theological reflection, especially when we view the Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son, from the eternal beginning.
20 Parallel strands can be imagined and even produced artificially, but are less stable and hence do not occur in nature. On this issue of directionality and anti-parallelism see Calladine et al., 8, 27–28.
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Second, however, there are other features of DNA from which we can learn and draw theological analogies. However crucial the sugarphosphate skeletal strands are, we really don’t know much about what they do except that by their intertwining helical structure they provide an architecture for the bases, the rungs of the ladder, which in sequence form the genes whose effects we can study. The relationship between these genes and the phenotype of the organism is far more complex than once thought. Even at the cellular level, each gene sequence—in “conversation” with various regulatory bits of DNA and what can occur post-transitionally—may produce a variety of proteins. Some of these seem to respond to the environment, giving Lamark (the Russian biologist who argued for inheritance of acquired characteristics) and acquired characteristics new life in evolutionary theory. This complex interaction among proteins, the genes that encode them, and the metabolism of the cell may be analogous to the great economic mysteries of the Christian faith, and it is only with the eyes of faith that we can see the analogy between these complex processes and the Trinitarian mystery. The point I wish to make, however, is that despite all we have learned, within the cellular economy the strands have a kind of ineffability by themselves. It is where they come together, where they interact along the rungs, that we can actually see what is happening. Here again, the analogy to Word and Spirit is exact. We know little of the divine persons, energies, or missions in isolation. What we know best is their interaction in certain key mysteries, and for Christians the archetypal mysteries are the Incarnation and the Resurrection, both mysteries in which we also see precisely the bestowal of life by the Spirit on the Word in a manner that is definitive for us also, as we find life in Christ, in the flesh and body of Christ, by the indwelling of the Spirit in us as well. It is worth pausing for a brief look at these two mysteries. Lindbeck’s proposal that the two great Christian dogmas are the grammar of the Christian conversation is now enshrined in the theological conversation.21 What I propose is that the great Christological mysteries 21 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia, now Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/Knox, 1984, 2009). The two great dogmas are the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the union of two natures (human and divine) in the one person, Jesus the incarnate Word.
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are the bases, the fundamental genetic structure at the center of the DNA of the entire divine/human conversation and interaction, the Rosetta Stone that allows us to “crack” the rest of the code and read the whole “theological genome.” This, of course, moves us more deeply from science into theology. I take them in reverse order because it is the reality of the Resurrection that allowed the disciples of Jesus in their time, and now us in ours, to see Jesus enough in depth to contemplate the reality of the Incarnation. As the early apostolic preaching asserts, it is by raising him from the dead that the Father manifests Jesus as both Lord and Messiah.22 Jesus does not first become these at the Resurrection, but perhaps as per Pannenberg, Schoonenberg, and Macquarrie,23 among others, he only fully becomes them there. Certainly, only there are his divinity and messianic anointing fully apparent in a manner that has caused believers to read everything that came before and after in that light. And the power by which the Father raises Jesus from the dead is the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit whom we can now receive in baptism, and thus be joined to the Church as Jesus’s new, resurrected, pneumatological body of flesh in the church as community and on the church’s tables as sacrament. I do, however, want to emphasize a truth we have rediscovered through the liturgical renewal movement in the West, in our recovery of Easter as the Great Fifty Days. Pentecost is not what comes after Easter; it is not subsequent to it. Pentecost is rather the climax of the paschal mystery, the outpouring on all flesh, all animated dust, of the resurrected life we see most intensely in the resurrection of Jesus itself. We also see this in the way the Johannine evangelist telescopes the two realities in his account of Easter evening.24 This, along with the inseparability and complementarity of the divine missions, warns against any scheme like that of Joachim of Fiore in the twelfth century in which in a final age of the Spirit we can leave cross and resurrection behind. There is no age of the Spirit not also marked by cross and empty tomb, because it is there that we first 22 Acts 2:14–36. This is, of course, the fundamental point of C. H. Dodd’s classic, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments: Three Lectures, with an Appendix on Eschatology and History (London and New York: Harper, 1954, and many subsequent editions). 23 See Del Colle’s appendix on Schoonenberg and van Beeck, 217–226. 24 Jn 20:19–23.
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find the Spirit as Christians. From that point only we read back both Incarnation and the gift of life itself as theological. We turn next, in the light of the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Resurrection of Jesus and its aftermath, to consider the mystery of the Incarnation as symbolized in the Annunciation. Eugene Rogers has done such a splendid job on this mystery in particular that I simply refer you to what he wrote in After the Spirit,25 if you have not yet read it. The DNA analogy we are exploring requires that we confront a couple of very specific theological questions. One, as Del Colle has so helpfully shown, can be stated very precisely in neo-scholastic terms. Surely, the Holy Spirit is involved in the Incarnation, even though only the Word is personally incarnated; Mary of Nazareth conceives Jesus by the Holy Spirit, who comes upon her as the shekinah cloud of divine glory comes upon the Holy of Holies in the temple, so that God the Word tabernacles in her womb just as in and around the ark of the covenant. But, especially in the Western Catholic tradition, the external works of the Trinity are undivided. No act of God is ever an act of just one person of the Trinity; all three are always involved and precisely in their unity. We have already noted one addition or correction of our time: “The external works of the Trinity are undivided, but not indistinguishable,” Here above all we see the “distinct and distinguishable but inseparable” highlighted by the DNA analogy. Second, we must allow our conversation with the Christian East to correct a Western tendency to view the divine essence as primordial in its unity, which then gets expressed in the three hypostases. In this aberration, the divine essence becomes the fount of all being and activity rather than the Father. The more Eastern view that the divine essence is known and indeed “exists” only in the triadic unity of the three hypostases is surely correct. But that still leaves us with a question of the level of the Spirit’s involvement in the Annunciation, and, indeed in the other great Christological mysteries, which can be stated technically as follows: Are the acts of the Spirit in these mysteries only “appropriate,” that is, expressing the Spirit’s participation in the one divine essence and will, or are these acts “proper,” that is, also expressive of the 25 Rogers, After the Spirit, 98–134.
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hypostatic properties of the Spirit that distinguish her from the other persons in the Trinity? As Del Colle has shown clearly in his work on Spirit-christology, the old answer was that these acts were appropriate only.26 More recently, however, theological opinion has shifted: Even though the acts of God remain undivided, though distinguishable, the Spirit is fully involved personally, hypostatically, “properly” in the Christological mysteries. Certainly theological reflection based on DNA as a vestige or resonance of the Trinity, specifically of the divine missions and perhaps the Trinitarian processions, would suggest that: Both Word and Spirit are fully, personally, hypostatically involved in the Christological mysteries, which precisely so express the one divine essence and will. If this sounds overly technical, I hope we will be able to see its importance when we turn in conclusion to pneumatology proper. The theological use of DNA points to further problems we must tag in thinking about the Incarnation and Annunciation and the role of the Spirit in them; one comes from the shift in our scientific understanding of the human biological realities on which the analogy of begetting is based. Aristotle expressed the common view of his time that the entirety of the human person was in the male sperm or seed, the female womb being only the passive ground in which that seed is planted and from which it draws its nourishment, its material substance. The discovery of human ova in 1827 by Karl Ernst von Baer and subsequent discoveries about the nature of human reproduction, including its basis at the level of chromosome and gene, have indelibly altered the way we must now think about “begetting,” as we now recognize the much greater contribution of the woman and her genes. Neither our understanding of the virginal conception of Jesus nor of the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father in the inner life of the immanent Trinity have been adequately rethought in the light of this shift in the human ground of the analogy. Traditionally, Mary provides the full enfleshed humanity of Jesus, though current Spirit-christology emphasizes the role of the Spirit resting in the womb of Mary in the creation of that sacred humanity, sanctifying it, and then uniting it to the Word. Must we not now transcend this and think instead of 26 See esp. Del Colle, 64–90, but continuing to wrestle with this issue in post-scholastic terms is much of the backbone of chapters that follow.
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the Spirit as somehow providing Mary with DNA from the Word to combine with her own DNA in Jesus’s human begetting? This must be done carefully, however, if Jesus is not to emerge human on the X chromosome but divine on the Y! We cannot do more with this now with regard to Annunciation and the human birth of the Word, but I file the question as relevant to one to which we shall return, namely the role of the Spirit in the first nativity of the Word, the eternal begetting. These considerations may also bear on a pneumatological retrieval of the Immaculate Conception. Poullart des Places is known especially for his devotion to the Holy Spirit and Mary the Theotokos, the GodBearer. This particular conjunction is especially evident in the Incarnation and its historical symbol, the mystery of the Annunciation, which is one reason I chose Eugene Rogers’ superb chapter on the Annunciation as one of the colloquium readings. We seek to grasp from the traditional interpretations of this mystery new ways to envision the interaction of the Holy Spirit with the historical reality of the flesh of the Blessed Virgin as in her and with her consent the Spirit gratuitously provides the Word with a human body, immersed not just in human nature as an abstract substance, but in all of human history and of the covenant history with Israel in particular. For Mary is not just any woman, as the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception struggles to say. Above all, and of note for our considerations, she is Bethulah Israel, the Virgin Daughter of Israel, precisely in her flesh the icon of all the covenant history of God with Israel up to that point. I would also like to pick up on the devotion of des Places and Libermann to Maria Immaculata by suggesting a pneumatological interpretation of the Immaculate Conception. Before my evangelical Anglican friends object, let me refer all of us to the work of Anglican evangelical theologian John de Satgé who pointed out that though Anglicans cannot accept as dogma this teaching that Mary is conceived by her parents (traditionally Sts. Joachim and Anne) without taint of original sin, that is an argument over the nature of dogma, not the truth of the teaching, which Anglicans are free to accept. He argues a specifically evangelical reason for accepting it: Only so is Mary’s “fiat mihi” a graced act rather than one of supererogation.27 If we understand the 27 John de Satgé, Down to Earth: The New Protestant Vision of the Virgin Mary (Wilmington, N.C.: Consortium, 1976).
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Holy Spirit’s creation of the sacred humanity as the creation of a fully historical reality rather than an abstract essentialist one created in heaven and dropped down into history, then the Immaculate Conception is the penultimate stage of the creation of the sacred humanity of Jesus precisely within Covenant history. The emphasis is on Mary as the bearer of the priestly and remnant-prophetic aspects of that history, as the story of her marriage to Joseph will add the royal; that would have been fully reasonable to both Jewish and Roman hearers of Luke’s telling of the story; after all, Octavius Augustus was the adopted son of Julius Caesar. In flesh and history the actual, historical humanity Mary embodies then already carries the offices of priest and king, and the full Messianic office lacks only the prophetic anointing that comes, for Luke at least, at the Baptism in the Jordan. Prophethood is in any case not inherited but always bestowed, and as Rogers argues, Mary is both prophet and patriarch in Luke’s tale anyway. Thus, by the incarnational anointing through the flesh of Mary, the engaged, future wife of Joseph, Jesus is already by flesh priest and king and his messiaship awaits only the prophetic anointing in the Jordan. But the essential point here is that the sacred humanity created by the Holy Spirit is not an abstract human nature but a very specific human animated (ensouled) body in a very specific human context, the womb of a very specific woman of priestly descent who is virgin but betrothed to a man of Davidic descent. This understanding of Mary as the penultimate climax of the covenant history, and precisely as such the place where the Spirit rests in gratuitously providing the Word with a human body, opens the door, I believe, to a pneumatological understanding of the Immaculate Conception free from any nineteenth century Romantic or Mariolatrial overtones: The same Spirit who is about to create in her a sinless sacred humanity, and will in baptism free all from original sin, is perfectly free to grant that grace to her preveniently, and thus prepare not so much an “untainted vessel” as a spunky young daughter of the covenant with the courage to receive and respond to a further grace of the Spirit with “fiat mihi,” “OK, I’ll do it.” Laying aside some of the technicalities, the point is this: In the great Christological mysteries we see both the Word and the Spirit as fully and personally present, as not merely appropriately but properly,
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hypostatically active in their intertwined missions. In particular, in both great mysteries we see the creedal mission of the Holy Spirit as Zõopoion, life-giver, both as full hypostatic presence, activity, mission, and also as always intertwined with the Word who is likewise fully, personally, and hypostatically present in his proper mission. These two missions are always intertwined, and at every moment also the perfect expression of the love and will of the Fount, who is also fully present in the undivided external acts, but precisely in the missions of the other two as the one who sends. By extension, we read this DNA model of “Spirit-christology” back into the narrative of creation and covenant, and forward into ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and spiritual theology of the salvation and sanctification of the believer through the indwelling of the Spirit and union with Christ, and precisely as such, with the Fount. In this light we look even further to the great eschatological mysteries of the communion of saints (Commonwealth of God), the forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and eternal life; then ultimately, because even these acts, though distinguishable in their Trinitarian structure, are nevertheless undivided, we read the Beatific Vision as a loving knowledge of the Triadic Unity of God, and theosis as participation in that very life. The theanthropic principle itself—that in the God/human Christ all humans are invited to share the divine life—consistently expresses the hypostatic presence, distinguishability, and yet indelible intertwining of Word and Spirit at every moment. I hope we can all learn to say theanthropic rather than theandric, by the way. It is not only more sensitive to gender issues; it more accurately reflects the creedal language and intent. How does this discussion of DNA as a footprint or resonance relate to the traditional analogy of Word/Breath? In the economic order, the realm of God’s external acts, this is relatively easy—the Word is always vocalized on the Breath, but is the Breath always breathed as a vocalization of the Word? Does the Spirit/Breath have her own mission apart from the Word, apart from Christ? It is tempting to say “yes” as a means of hospitality to persons of other faiths, but in the end I believe that is a mistake, and would invite our guests of other faiths into an empty room. Kirsteen Kim and Del Colle come to very similar conclusions in their own work, though Kim challenges us in
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her very fine book on the subject to make room for considering the reality of other spirits;28 this is another issue to which more attention must be given than is possible here. It is vital in both Asian and African contexts, where questions of ancestors and witchcraft still predominate among theological issues surrounding the enculturation of the gospel. I believe these questions will be best resolved by theologians from cultures where they are of first importance. But, in the end, I think we shall not find a Christian theology in which the Spirit has a mission separate from that of the Word, but where Word/Wisdom and Spirit together have intertwined missions beyond the covenant and its communities, and hence with less obvious connection to the historical Jesus, though in the end, as Christians, we shall be discerning all spirits in his name. If this is largely correct, then in the economy there is no Breath that is not also a vocalization of the Word, and the congruence with DNA as a vestige or resonance is exact. When we turn, however, to the immanent Trinity, or even to the Divine Energies prior to the economy, we reach the more vexed question of what Augustine calls the inner Word: What is the role of the Breath in the formation of the inner Word or Wisdom? Is that formation “inspired”? Does God “inhale” before speaking? Or, to state baldly the problem to which we must return in our third major consideration, does the Spirit have a role of some kind in the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father within the Trinity? If so, what does this say about the taxis or order of origin or procession? We must return to this question in the third consideration in this lecture.
SPIRIT, DNA, AND HISTORY But first, we must notice a vitally important aspect of DNA: It is a product of a unique history, and it carries much of that history in its own code. We cannot avoid the question of history in exploring DNA as a vestige or resonance. Ian Barbour puts it well:
28 Kirsteen Kim, The Holy Spirit in the World: A Global Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2007; London: SPCK, 2008). Kim was a colloquist on this occasion. See also my “Christian Theology of Interfaith Dialogue: Defining the Emerging Fourth Option.” Sewanee Theological Review 40, no. 4 (1997): 383–408.
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Stored in the DNA is a wealth of historically acquired information [emphasis original] including programs for coping with the world. . . . Even at low levels, reality consists not simply of matter and energy, but of matter, energy, and information.29 And, as Barbour has pointed out, the actual content of this information has been acquired in a history that, precisely as historical, is opaque to scientific method. Consider, for example, Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Science can speak of wetness, human skin, etc., but has nothing to say about the historic importance of that man crossing that river on that day. Science studies the repeatable, what can be replicated in experiment; but it is precisely the unrepeatable that is important to history. Caesar cannot go back and recross the river if his director needs another “take.” The agreement with Pompey is broken only by the first crossing. Freedom, final causality, all those things that make the event historical drop out in a scientific analysis, where they become either determinate or random. That is why the methods of history as a discipline are perfectly reasonable and rational, but quite different from those of natural science. The issue of history gets more complicated when we enter the realm of “natural history.” The fact that Sally dinosaur met Harry dinosaur and he lit up her Christmas tree before Tom dinosaur got there may well determine the whole course of evolution by being imprinted in the DNA of the offspring of Harry and Sally. From a scientific point of view, the meeting is only the result of random chance, but to Harry, Sally, and their offspring it is an event fraught with historical meaning. History as a natural history of evolution is not ephemeral; it is actually carried as a physical record in the DNA itself. Many of the historic bits have been thought of as “junk” until recently, when we have begun to find out that this “junk” often has complex regulatory functions. The point is that these aspects of DNA are present as the result of an evolutionary history that, precisely as history, is opaque to biology as a science. It is opaque to more than natural science, however. History as we now think of it is a late modern concept, arising with historical 29 Barbour, “Five Models,” 430.
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consciousness somewhere in the eighteenth century in Europe. As such, it is also opaque to the language of classical Greek metaphysics and the later Christian scholasticism based upon it, which “in its conceptual formulation . . . expressed being in preference to becoming. The result,” as Salmon and Schmitz-Moorman put it, “was an explanatory system that took little account of the interpersonal, the historical, and the evolving process of growth and development.”30 This is one of the forces driving all theology beyond the boundaries of scholasticism, Catholic or Protestant. Although Roman Catholic scholarship had many important historians, it was, according to Hans Frei, Protestant theology that brought the gift of historical consciousness to theological thinking, a consciousness he so keenly expressed in his own narrative theology. By this I do not point to any lack of Church history or history of theology in Catholic or Orthodox communities, but specifically an awareness of history and historicity as a theological problem in its own right, of the need for a theology of history, of human being as temporal, historical being, including the humanity that the incarnate Word, in the power of the Holy Spirit, inherits from Mary through her historically derived DNA and cultural heritage.31 Here is where we must go beyond even Chalcedon. We now share a sense that it is not just human nature in the abstract, but Jesus the Jew, the rabbi from Nazareth, son of the daughter of the little people, who is decisive for our salvation. We mean something now by “person” and “personality” that formed in response to the gospel and was not yet present in the conceptual framework of the framers of Chalcedon. Without it in our picture of Jesus, we feel as if we were facing a new Alexandrian heresy, with something important about Jesus’s humanity left out. The problem will be deciding how to fill that lacuna in Christology without falling over into the crypto-Nestorianism that Jenson believes haunts all Western theology. This sense of history is also one of the great differentiating features from the milieu in which classical pneumatology was formulated. As
30 Salmon and Schmitz-Moorman, “Evolution as Revelation,” 855–856. 31 Del Colle treats this theme throughout Christ and the Spirit, but especially, as previously noted, in the Appendix.
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I read Moltmann, Coffey, and Del Colle in Advents of the Spirit,32 this really stuck out—both Eastern and Western pneumatological formulas and the whole issue of the three orders or taxeis in the Trinity exist in a milieu in which being is defined as perseverance, as Robert Jenson puts it.33 We must at least ask how to re-envision these issues in the light of historical consciousness in which being is defined by becoming, and also note, this is key to understanding the cultural pluralism Kim calls for. In earlier work, based on the philosophy of Paul Weiss and the theology of history of W. Taylor Stevenson and Moltmann’s more mature eschatology,34 I suggested that only a revived pneumatology can make history translucent, providing both God and creatures with a meaningful and effective past and a hopeful and significant future. I proposed seven theses, which I shall simply revise here as a possible way through. They make use of a concept from Paul Weiss, the “historic ought-to be,” an historic ideal, or ought-to-be, which is at once a critical principle allowing the historian to determine what of the past is relevant for the present, and an actual causative factor that allows the accumulated past to be present. It has real ethical content,35 even though it is neither the absolute Good (which is larger and includes private as well as public life) nor simply the desired outcome of any age (Zeitgeist).36 For history as written to be true, Weiss believes, the past must also exist outside the present, and, he insists, it is God’s role to be the one who re-members, and preserves the past, making historical truth claims possible. God is also the one who always presents the historical present with the ought-to-be, providing history with a meaningful future grounded in the past, and guaranteeing that History as 32 Hinze and Dabney, 302–346. 33 Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: I, The Triune God (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 159. 34 “The Historic Ought-to-Be and the Spirit of Hope,” in A Heart for the Future: Writings on Christian Hope, ed. Robert B. Slocum, 109–120 (New York: Church Publishing, 2004). The principal works referred to are Paul Weiss, History: Written and Lived (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962); W. Taylor Stevenson, History as Myth: The Import for Contemporary Theology (New York: The Seabury Press, 1969); and Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996). 35 Weiss, 18. 36 Weiss, 16.
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written (Geschichte) will bear some resemblance to the fullness of history as lived (Historie).37 Indeed, without taking account of the historic ideal and God, the historian will not even be able to do the work of history properly, let alone know why what is written could be true.38 Here are my theses, applying contemporary pneumatology and even more now the DNA model to the problem of history: (1) History as written confronts us with texts. The Spirit brings the Word to life in the process of hearing, reading, and interpretation. It is not the text that brings the presence of a previously absent spirit to a reader, but rather an already present Spirit who presents the reader with the text (the Spirit gives the text as a present, brings it into the present, makes it a vehicle of presence and re-presentation of the living Word/Wisdom). This is supremely true of Scripture, but also true of all meaningful text. The issue is the reality of the helix of the Spirit/Word missions in the process of interpretation. Indeed, Taylor Stevenson argued that it is neglect of the Spirit that opens the late modernist chasms between word, referent, and hearer or reader.39 (2) The Spirit is also the sanctifier of human culture as a means of grace, and the resolver of the ambiguities of history as the presence of unambiguous life, albeit in fragmentary ways in this world, as the theology of Tillich has so powerfully shown.40 This, too, is always related to Word and to Jesus, specifically as the Spiritual Presence re-members the New Being manifested in Jesus as the Christ in new concrete situations. (3) The Spirit fills the gap between Resurrection/Ascension and Parousia by creating those structures of koinonia that bind the people of God into the church as Body of Christ as a sacramental reality; this is not just a metaphor, but a sacrament of the Commonwealth to come as well as of the Jesus who has inaugurated it. Here the intertwined missions give new, resurrected life to the people of God. The church and its time and its actions become part of the account of salvation, 37 Weiss, 217–230. 38 Weiss, 230. 39 Stevenson, History as Myth, 80-92. 40 ST III; Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).
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not merely a vehicle of memorial and proclamation “in the meantime.” See here especially Hinze’s Spirit-ecclesiology.41 Without this sense, nothing truly meaningful takes place between Pentecost and Parousia, except perhaps one’s own conversion, an ahistoricism that haunts many versions of evangelical Christianity. (4) In short, only the intertwined Spirit/Word helix bridges the gap between Geschichte and Historie; Word, referent, and hearer/reader; faith and knowledge; the “yield of the past” and “the meaning of the future”;42 between the living and the dead, this life and eternal life. This is not to make the Spirit a “God of the Gaps,” which may be filled by later scientific inquiry. These gaps are never actually there. They arise when we attempt the human historical or theological enterprise in denial of the Spirit as the “Go-Between God.”43 (5) The Spirit carries out her missio by inhabiting or indwelling the present moment, re-presenting the graceful past of the Word as precisely the ground by which the historic-ought-to-be is presented to the present as both real ideal and real hope, as a possible future of God and world in the Word by the power of the Spirit. As the Spirit of covenant and Sabbath holiness44 the Spirit presents this ought-to-be within history in propria persona, definitively as the incarnate Word, Jesus. This is one of the ways in which the Spirit is another advocate, another Christ.45 The Spirit continues to present and re-present the Word, now with the humanity of Jesus as a permanent feature, to the world as both its meaningful past and viable future. This is the Spirit as covenant partner executing what we may call the objective, historical dimension of the missio as hope, and again, always intertwined with the Word as now carrying the DNA of Jesus in full historical humanity. (6) The Spirit provides this hope not only to church and world on the objective side, but also to individuals and communities on the 41 “Releasing the Power of the Spirit in a Trinitarian Ecclesiology,” in Hinze and Dabney, 347–381. 42 Stevenson, 80. 43 John V. Taylor, The Go-Between God: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Mission (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973). 44 Abraham J. Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1951). 45 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, Anchor Bible 29A (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), appendix on “The Paraclete,” 1135–1144.
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subjective side by the gift of the theological virtues, specifically the virtue of hope. This personal indwelling in the form of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, notably, in this case, as hope (the virtue which resonates with the Spirit’s own proper missio) is the personal, subjective, and even epiphanic dimension of the eschatological missio. Here I can only file by title what I said about the theological virtues in Beloved Dust.46 The virtues are the direct, immediate effect in believers of the uncreated grace of the indwelling of the Spirit in person, in full hypostatic reality. The purpose is to make us more like Jesus, conformed to Christ in the process of theosis. Hence again the intertwining. True hope must thus be grounded not merely in a utopian apocalyptic commitment to the future. It must remain grounded in faith in “the yield of the past,” the entirety of past history read under the signs of covenant and cross, and read realistically in the fullness of its ambiguity and fragmentation as illuminated by those symbols.47 True hope thus requires humility as its mother, in an ongoing practice of repentance in the face of the proclamation of the gospel which is the “yield of the past” as that proclamation ruthlessly exposes the failure of the human community at every moment fully to live up to the oughtto-be with which the Spirit presents it. Hope is thus never optimism.48 True hope must also be grounded in the praxis of love in the present, as the Spirit creates the church as beloved community through concrete sacramental structures of koinonia, binding faithful, loving, and hopeful individuals into the body of Christ. The Spirit then empowers that body for its mission of proclamation of the yielded past of the gospel, calling all persons into membership in the people of God, in loving service to all (the classic dominion of charity in all traditional spiritual theologies, based on 1 Cor. 13). This love is also unsentimental, realistic, and unromantic. It, too, stands under the signs of covenant and cross, ministering to the deep wounds caused by sin in past and present, including the church’s own sins.
46 pp. 131–150. 47 See Tillich on the ambiguities of life and history in ST III, 138–277, 362–426. 48 Moltmann, lecture in Cambridge, Mass., 1967.
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This manifestation of love terminates in a prophecy of liberating hope that holds before the world and all its people a true historic ought-to-be of justice and peace for all in the divine Commonwealth. This latter allows the believer to see the Spirit at work in the present manifestations of love in juncture with the yielded gospel past and the hopeful future. True eschatological hope is thus fully Trinitarian, grounded solidly and realistically in past and present as well as future, in the fullness of the Trinitarian economy.49 It must be true hope for all humanity, not merely those within privileged enclaves of the covenant. As such, it must face all the issues raised by Kim in her work. (7) This awareness of the “helix” of the divine missions—their inseparable complementarity—as the historic ought-to-be is, I believe, the only solution that holds together the notion that the present moment, the here and now, the Dasein of humanity, is of ultimate theological significance; it is so precisely as the Spirit builds the beloved community into the sacrament of the coming Commonwealth, while maintaining its grounding in the Christ-event (recalling the words and deeds of Jesus) and yet assuring that the end, when it comes, indeed, as it comes, will be an irruption of God’s graciousness, and not the mechanistic working out of some optimistic trend inherent in human nature and the world. If we think otherwise, we have failed the test of I Constantinople—we have not confessed that the Spirit is both distinct from the Father and the Son, and is yet fully God. Without the Spirit and her missio in the present, the eschaton is either pure apocalyptic or mere religious metaphor for a historic ought-to-be that is really to be explained better in worldly causal terms. Only in the Spirit, and hence in Christ, is the eschaton truly the historic ought-to-be; only in these terms can the historic ought-to-be be recognized as both truly historical (the apex of the myth of history and yet also truly active in the present) and justifiable in terms of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty as precisely an “ought” and not merely a terminus ad quem. History, then, from a Christian point of view, is not the history of the Spirit but 49 The debt here to David Tracy’s three modes of theology in The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981) is, I trust, obvious. For a closer analysis see my “A Critical Note on Two Aspects of Self-Transcendence,” Sewanee Theological Review 46, no.1 (2002): 112–132.
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the history the Spirit provides the world by re-presenting to it at every moment the Word/Wisdom as meaningful past and viable, hopeful future, gospel past and historic ought-to-be.50 It is the double helix of life writ large in nature and human society. Bringing our first two parts together: Evolution, cosmic and biological, and “natural history” as “written” in the DNA itself can be seen as a place between random chance and determinism, alongside systems theory. This has been a largely neglected topic in both science and theology until very recently. For our purposes, how do we see the resonances between the Holy Spirit as giver of life and the Holy Spirit’s role as Lord of history (again the double helix, since the Messiah is Lord of the Sabbath, the purpose of history), that is, the Holy Spirit as giver of life precisely as co-Lord of “natural history?” Because DNA is the bearer of history—specifically natural history— and the flesh of Mary bears also the covenant history to that point, the flesh Jesus inherits from his mother (by the gratuitous provision of the Spirit) bears both the natural history of the species, and, by being born “under the law,” also the covenant history, even as that interlocks with all other human histories and cultures. I hope the model of the double helix as an analogy for the interplay of the divine missions has helped us see the Spirit’s role in all that, as she gratuitously provides the Word with precisely that body, that dust, that flesh, by resting on the Word in precisely that womb and no other.
THE TURN TO PNEUMATOLOGY PROPER We now turn to pneumatology proper, to ask if we have learned something from our pursuit of DNA as an analogy for the intertwining missions of Word and Spirit in the gift of life and in human history that might apply to God’s own immanent triadic life. Del Colle provides us with a good summary of the methodological commitment we share in common with so many others at this point: “Spirit-Christology is revelatory of the being of God who communicates the divine self in these two missions. This underscores that the relation of the divine 50 See Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, 207–210 for a highly sophisticated account of the relationship of the Word and the Spirit in their intertwined missions to history and hence between salvation in God and human emancipatory action in history.
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persons to one another in the divine being [the inner life of God or the immanent Trinity] is the basis for communion with the other—i.e. the creature—that is actualized in the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Spirit.”51 We do need to proceed with some caution at this point. All Trinitarian theology in some sense begins with what is revealed to us in the economy, harvests what by analogy can be learned about God’s own life, and then returns to the economy with still further insights. There are, however, great tectonic divides about just how much of the inner life of God is knowable even on the basis of God’s self-revelation in the economy. These also have to do with how detached our knowledge of the immanent Trinity can become from that revelation in the economy.52 Those issues are much too large to chew on in this lecture. But, if Rahner’s Trinitarian Grundaxiom on the Trinity means anything—that the Economic Trinity is the Immanent Trinity and the Immanent Trinity is the Economic, that is, we are not talking about two separate Trinities, two gods, as it were—then surely we can learn something by applying the DNA analogy to the Immanent Trinity, to God’s own personal life, as it were, and prescind from the debate about just how deep into that life we have been taken by this move. As with all theological language we are dealing with analogy at best, and at some point will need to say where the analogy does not hold and breaks down; but it is our theological task to say first as much on the positive side as we can. It is also important to say that we are plowing some new ground here, which always risks falling into some heresy or other. So, this is a trial balloon, floated for the purpose of seeing what works and what does not, and where it is in error we must either confess the analogy has broken down, or perhaps even withdraw the suggestion. Most of the discussion over the ages about this level of the Trinitarian reality has been about the filioque, that is, the classic debate between Eastern and Western Christianity about the role of the Son in the procession of the Holy Spirit by spiration. Coffey, Del Colle, and others in the Catholic Spirit-christology camp have attempted to make 51 Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, 183. 52 See the excellent discussions by Elizabeth Johnson in She Who Is, 191–223 and Quest, 202–225.
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some room for the traditional view of Augustine, that the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, by returning to a model of the Spirit as the mutual love of Father and Son. In most cases they have tried to move away from the interpretation that this involves either a double procession, or even a procession from the Father and the Son as a single principle. Common ground with the Eastern view that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, though perhaps per filium, through the Son, or always accompanied by the Son53 (Staniloae) is usually now explored, and nearly everyone (and I am firmly in this camp, as is the Episcopal Church officially) now agrees that the text of the Nicene Creed which is authoritative is the one tradition holds was passed at I Constantinople in 381, without the filioque. Does the DNA analogy shed light on this issue, and if so, what might it mean? I believe it does, but only by raising up for further discussion a very vexing problem that has had much too little exploration in either East or West, a question that the analogy of the divine missions as a double helix must inevitably raise: What is the role of the Holy Spirit in the eternal begetting of the Son within the Trinity? Can we really assert the co-equality and co-eternity of the Holy Spirit as one of the three divine hypostases if the answer continues to be “none?” Even though we know we speak as fools, we have talked as if, in the order of procession or origin, the generation Son is properly first, and then comes the Spirit, either in a second but subordinate procession from the Father alone (East) or from the Father and the Son or from the Father through the Son as their mutual love for each other (West). I suggest that the DNA analogy does make real, if dangerous progress here. First, the helix model would suggest that the two processions, if they reflect at all what we see in the economy, must be eternally simultaneous, eternally distinct and hence distinguishable, but always inseparable, not merely alongside each other, or eternally 53 See the classic defense of this particular Eastern position by Dumitru Staniloae, “The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and his relation to the Son, as the basis of our deification and adoption,” in Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy (Faith and Order Paper No. 103) (London: SPCK; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1981), 174–186. For some important reservations about the Eastern view, see Jenson, Systematic Theology I, 146–161, where we also find his views on the role of the Spirit in the generation of the Son.
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accompanying each other, or even as closely related as two hands, but as inseparably intertwined as DNA. This suggests the following picture: The self-communication of God is truly monopatristic, of the Abba-Fount alone—here we agree with the East. There is one, great eternal act of self-expression from the Father alone as the Fount of all being, which takes the form of the helix, two simultaneous, co-eternal, co-equal processions, one of generation and one of spiration, Word and Breath always perfectly together, intertwined but distinguishable, inseparable and complementary, in the one act of self-donation and self-communication. From one side, that of the second person, the Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son, and in that sense in their mutual love they eternally mutually spirate the Spirit, and the order of that strand, of that procession, is Father-Son-Spirit. We can still view this as monopatristic in that the ultimate source is the Father, though from this side when the Father spirates the Spirit it is always as Father of that Son and the Spirit as the Spirit of that Son. So far, so good. Now we get to the risky part. The analogy of the double helix demands we ask the question from the perspective of the other strand, the procession of the Spirit. From that perspective, can we say there is a role of the Spirit in the eternal generation of the Son? Our method demands that the answer be “yes,” not only by the analogy of the double helix and the complementarity of the strands, but at a more certain level. We have touched upon the way that all Spirit-christology now emphasizes the proper, hypostatic role of the Spirit in the Incarnation. I have put on the table some of Del Colle’s own work on that, and also the chapter on the Annunciation in Eugene Rogers’ book. In layer after layer of contemporary theological analysis we see how powerful and omnipresent is the personal role of the Spirit in the second nativity of the Word, the one in time and space and history, in short, in the economy of covenant and grace. However gratuitous this is, that is, dependent only on God’s free will and graciousness, it is inescapable in the story: The Holy Spirit tabernacles in Mary’s womb just as the shekinah of glory tabernacles in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Can we any longer tolerate an assertion that what we learn here in the economy from the second nativity says nothing about the first, the eternal begetting of the Word by the Father within the immanent Trinity?
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Not, I submit, without entirely abandoning Rahner’s Grundaxiom and all its corollaries. Not without abandoning the very principle of revelation that the one true God has truly given and revealed the divine self in the great narrative of the economy of grace. So, here we go, way out on a limb. There must be a role for the Spirit in the eternal begetting of the Word, an order or taxis on the strand of the Spirit that reads Father-Spirit-Son, always deeply entwined with the other strand. Can we envision this? Is there any evidence in the tradition? Well, there is Prudentius’ Christmas hymn Corde natus ex parentis, translated in the Episcopal hymnals as “Of the Father’s love begotten.” There are the clues in Rogers’ work on the Spirit resting on the Word in the womb of the Father. Robert W. Jenson’s work on the Trinity also provides clues. There is the question we raised tonight about the “inspiration” of the formation of the inner Word, the question, “does God inhale before speaking?” My own doctoral work on theology of parenting also suggests a consideration. I know a lot of children are conceived casually or unintentionally but still then loved, at least by somebody. But let’s consider as ideal a case as we can in the economy that includes the Fall. When a deeply in love married couple choose to have a child, they do not first conceive her and then love her when she arrives. Instead, the child is conceived in love, and loved personally and hopefully from the very start. It is, as I have written, a wonderful moment when at birth we finally meet her, but part of the phenomenology of the moment is “I have always loved you.” There was a wonderful moment of what I would call theological insight when my grandson said: “You loved me even before I was born!” reflecting, of course, Psalm 139 among other biblical texts. Then begins the adventure of the actual concrete history of that love. So, I suggest, in the Trinity, the Father does not first beget the Son and then love him and in turn is loved by him. Rather, the eternal motive for the eternal begetting is itself the Love who must be the Holy Spirit. What else or who else could it be? Only so can the two nativities of the Word, so key to the teaching of II and III Constantinople,54 be truly analogous. 54 In the ongoing effort to show that the council of Chalcedon was not Nestorian, these two councils virtually ceased to talk about two natures of Christ and instead spoke almost exclusively of two nativities of the Word, one within the Trinity before all time and a second by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary in history.
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The picture that emerges then, is one great act of self-communication with two eternal processions, one by generation in the taxis of Father-Son-Spirit, and one by spiration in the taxis of Father-SpiritSon, always distinct and distinguishable but inseparably intertwined and acting together, each with a conceivable role in the procession of the other but only as eternally simultaneous, fully intertwined. Notice that the one act is truly monopatristic, protecting the deep theological concerns of the Eastern Church. But the Spirit is always not merely accompanied by the Son/Word/Wisdom, but inseparably intertwined; so also, the Son/Word/Wisdom is always intertwined with the Spirit. This protects the legitimate theological concerns of the West that the Spirit never be separated from the Son, though it holds open the possibility in the economy of distinct missions of the Spirit beyond the boundaries of the covenant community, deeply affirmed by many passages of Scripture, not least “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.”55 It also affirms the Western tradition of the Spirit as mutual love without challenging the monopatristic character of the one great act of self-communication. And, it is truer to the real depths of both human parenting and filiation. Then something else happens as we move from the sphere of the divine hypostases to that of the divine energies. Just as there is a selfemptying, a kenosis of the Word going forward, so also there is one of the Spirit. The Spirit gives up her own taxis of origin, Father-Spirit-Son, and instead, I suggest, following hints from McDonnell, takes on the taxis of return, Spirit-Son-Father, so that in what we see of the helix, the two strands are indeed anti-parallel. This is the deference, the reticence, the gratuitousness of the Spirit, Rogers so powerfully depicts. The Word/Wisdom keeps the taxis of procession or origin proper to himself, but yields or self-limits some of the divine attributes, while the Spirit yields even her own proper taxis of origin to take on the taxis of return. It is the two, together, I think, in their eternal anti-parallel intertwining that are the taxis of bestowal.56 55 Jn 10:16. 56 Dr. Hall subsequently made an observation that bears further reflection (slightly edited): “And even more so, the information on either strand (Son or Spirit) is released by [the DNA] analogy only when the love of God the Father [analogous to the hydrogen bonds between the bases holding the strands of the helix together] kenotically releases them from that love just long enough for the information to be transcribed. An eternal procession of love and release.”
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Although I do not propose an amendment to the Creed, I think there is here a possible deeper solution to the filioque debate than we have yet seen. Just as the Spirit is worshipped “together with” the Father and the Son, so also the Spirit proceeds always “together with” the Son, and vice versa. Con in Latin, syn in Greek. Perhaps “conprocedit?” Anyway, I hope the proposal is clear. It draws the deepest analogy between the two nativities of the Word and the role of the Spirit in them, and is more faithful to the depths of human begetting at our best. This is in addition to making clearer what we mean by calling the Holy Spirit Lord and Life Giver, Dominum et vivificantem, to Kyrion, to Zõopoion, in the Creed, as we see the very structure of life as we know it resonating with the intertwined life-giving processions at the heart of the divine life. This model also asserts that history matters from the beginning, even at the very heart of the monarchy of the Father. DNA bears history. The economy is not something added on extrinsically to the eternal Trinitarian life, but flows naturally out of it, is intended by it from the beginning. God’s creating is not necessary to God, but it is in character. Eternity must thus be timefull, not timeless; transhistorical, embracing all history, not ahistorical. Process theology is right thus far. So is Jenson. The Trinitarian identities are the identity of the God who is those characters in that story. One vestigial clue in the DNA, then, is that the strands of the double helix are differentiated by the anti-parallel order of the nucleotides, which also appears to be a “cause” of the intertwining. It is precisely in the intertwining of the two energies and thus the two missions, of mediator and mediation, of bestowal and return, and the taxis appropriate to each, as played out in the one story of salvation we know, that we shall find the clues to understanding the taxis of origination. This far I think we have come: Whatever the priority of the Son as second after the Father, and hence of begetting and filiation, there must be some role of the Holy Spirit, and thus of spiration, in the eternal begetting itself if history, that history, matters; also if begetting, as we now understand the human side of that analogy, takes two equal partners to tango. The eternal begetting of the Word by the Fount must itself be “inspired,” but only by God’s own love, which is always Trinitarian love, and is itself always God. The procession of the Holy Spirit
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is not subsequent to the generation of the Son, not even logically, but properly part of it. The Father does not first generate the Son and then decide to love him, but generates the Son eternally precisely as the Beloved, with—I believe the Dust intended from all eternity, Fall or no Fall (here I am a Scotist) —love being the “motive” for the eternal generation and the Incarnation alike. So, the spiration of the Spirit arises solely from the Father, but always and already as within and eternally contributing to the generation of the Son. Generation is in-spired, and so is filiation, and yet the procession of love is clearly distinguishable from the generation/filiation relation and perhaps, in some sense (I speak as a fool), subordinate to it, if this is where the analogy begins to break down, but I wonder even about that. The Father ex arche loves the Son as his own future in the history he intends for Word and Spirit with their distinguishable but intertwined missions. Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus, and Veni, Creator Spiritus, are, in the end, not two prayers, but one with distinguishable strands, for it is the Spirit and the Bride who say to the Incarnate Word, Come. And so, for now, Amen.
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How Does the Holy Spirit Assist the Church in Its Teaching? Richard R. Gaillardetz
We Christians do not simply make things up as we go. The church is not its own Lord. In baptism we are claimed by a story not of our making, a story of a God who addresses us as friends and invites us into his company. It is a story of scandalous, profligate love embodied in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a story of a God who showers us with mercy and forgiveness and requires us to extend that mercy and forgiveness to others. We gather weekly that this story may be bodied forth in bread broken and wine poured out for us and for our salvation. This church, constituted by baptism and nourished at the Lord’s Table, is a school of discipleship wherein we learn how to both live this story and keep it alive for others. It is a school that sends us into the world with hearts aflame with the love of God. We call this story “Good News,” the announcement of the Spirit-led in-breaking of God’s reign in Jesus of Nazareth. It is a story that must be told and re-told, heard and re-heard, enacted and adapted to time and place. And yet, even as the story acquires new forms, it must remain grounded in its initial telling. The story we tell today, in all its freshness, must remain faithful to its origins in the Christ Event. Since the apostles were the first tellers of that story, we use the term, “apostolicity,” to name this enduring connection between the story once told by tongues of fire and the story we tell today. As Eastern Christians remind us, the church’s apostolicity is grounded in its worship such that, paradoxically, we remember
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not only our apostolic origins but our apostolic future. Our Eucharistic worship is an anticipation of the eschaton, the final fulfillment of the in-breaking of God’s reign.1 Yet whether remembering the ancient apostolic testimony or looking in hope to that future convocation of all God’s creation, as Christians we are rightly concerned with remaining faithful to the great story of our faith. In the early centuries of Christianity, two ecclesial structures emerged to help the church preserve the essential features of the Christian story. The first was the construction of a biblical canon, a collection of sacred texts that gave reliable, “God-breathed” testimony to the Good News of God’s saving love for the world. The second structure, which emerged quickly over the course of the second century, was the rise of the office of the bishop. The ministry of episcopē or apostolic oversight became an enduring ministry charged with giving normative witness to that apostolic faith. Episcopal teaching was to preserve the regula fidei, the “rule of faith” or the regula veritatis, the “rule of truth.” “This episcopal teaching was not meant to replace or supersede the Scriptures,” John Burkhard notes, “but to assist the believer in understanding the Scriptures, which always remained the point of reference.”2 All Christians have embraced the providential development of the first structure, the sacred Scriptures; those within the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican communions, and to a certain extent select other churches of the Reformation, have seen God’s hand in the development of the apostolic office of the bishop as well. We must remember, however, that both the biblical canon and the teaching office of the bishop, including the bishop of Rome, presuppose a more fundamental conviction, one too easily forgotten today. The apostolic faith testified to in Scripture and preserved by the apostolic office, has always resided, first and foremost, in the life witness of the Christian community itself.
1 John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 171–208. 2 John Burkhard, Apostolicity Then and Now: An Ecumenical Church in a Postmodern World (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2004), 53.
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My lecture, despite the embarrassingly prosaic title, is really about how the church preserves its fidelity to the Good News. Given the time constraints, I will focus my reflections, not on the role of the biblical canon, but on that of the bishops. In particular, I want to explore one key question: What do Catholics really mean when we claim, as the Second Vatican Council did, that the Holy Spirit assists the bishops in their teaching ministry? I recognize that this might seem to be a rather technical question of only ancillary interest to the life of the church. In fact, I am convinced that the Catholic Church has suffered from inadequate and reductive understandings of how the Holy Spirit assists bishops in their teaching (Let me add here that whenever I am speaking of the teaching of the bishops, I am including in my consideration the unique teaching responsibilities of the bishop of Rome). For much of the last one hundred and fifty years, the teaching authority of the pope and bishops has been exercised in a predominantly juridical mode, the mode of “command and obey.” This juridical mode focuses narrowly on discrete, magisterial teaching acts, too easily closes off debate, suppresses disagreement and impedes the discovery of new insight on the part of the Christian faithful. What the church today requires is a more adequate theological account of the assistance of the Spirit in church teaching. This account will draw on two seminal insights of the Second Vatican Council. The first is the council’s teaching that the church is constituted by its participation in the triune life of God. This church is “co-instituted,” as Yves Congar put it, by the dual Trinitarian missions of the Word and the Spirit.3 The second insight lies in the council’s teaching that the church is pilgrim, subject to all the conditions and limitations of human history even as it lives in anticipation of its eschatological fulfillment. I will divide my presentation into two sections dedicated to each of these conciliar teachings as I draw out their implications for the topic at hand.
3 Yves Congar, “The Church Made by the Spirit,” in I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith, vol. 2 (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 5–14, here at 7.
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THE TRINITARIAN FOUNDATIONS OF THE CHURCH AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EXERCISE OF MAGISTERIAL TEACHING Vatican II took decisive steps to recover the long-neglected place of Trinitarian theology in Catholic ecclesiology. The Christological foundations had already received renewed attention in the Catholic ecclesiology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The early nineteenth-century Tübingen theologian, Johan Adam Möhler4 offered a rich theology of the church as the mystical body of Christ and, in a sense, as the continuation of the incarnation. The Roman School of neo-scholastic manualists carried this Christological focus forward.5 The mystical body theology was given a new impetus in the twentieth century in the work of Emile Mersch6 and in Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi. This mystical body theology obviously foregrounded the church’s relationship to Christ but it was not entirely lacking a reference to the Holy Spirit. However, the tendency was to draw on the Augustinian view of the Spirit as the animating soul of the ecclesial body. The difficulty with this approach is that it presents the Spirit as a secondary adjunct to Christ; the Spirit is too easily presented as the Trinitarian person who comes along later to animate and guarantee what Christ has already established.
Vatican II’s Teaching on the Trinitarian Foundations of the Church The council benefited from the work of periti like Yves Congar who had been calling for a more thoroughly Trinitarian account of the church. Congar was shaped by his extraordinary grasp of the Christian theological tradition, East and West. Yet we should not overlook
4 Johann Adam Möhler, Symbolik. oder, Darstellung der dogmatischen Gegensätze der Katholiken und Protestanten nach ihren öffentlichen Bekenntnisschriften (Regensburg: G.J. Manz, 1924). For an extensive study of his ecclesiology see Michael Himes, Ongoing Incarnation: Johann Adam Möhler and the Beginnings of Modern Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1997). 5 The Roman School included such figures as Giovanni Perrone, Carlo Passaglia, and J. B. Franzelin. 6 Emile Mersch, La théologie du corps mystique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937).
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the significance of his exposure to the diverse Orthodox theologians who at one time or another taught on the faculty of the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. Over the course of two generations the distinguished faculty at St. Sergius helped create a profound neo-patristic synthesis in the work of figures like Sergei Bulgakov, George Florovsky, Nicholas Afanasiev, Paul Evdokimov, Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff. Afanasiev, Schmemann and another figure not associated with St. Sergius, the Romanian theologian, Dumitru Staniloae, contributed to a more thoroughly trinitarian and Eucharistic ecclesiology, elements of which would find their way into the texts of the council. The council’s retrieval of the trinitarian foundations of the church allowed it, for the most part, to avoid two common dangers in ecclesiology. The first privileges the role of Christ in the church while neglecting the mission of the Spirit, leading to what some have called a Christomonism.7 The second attends exclusively to the activity of the Spirit in the church, and can devolve into an ecclesial pneumatocentrism.8 The council, however, presented the missions of Christ and the Spirit working jointly to sustain the church in its life and mission.9 For example, in Lumen Gentium 8 the analogy of the hypostatic union is employed to establish the vivifying work of the Spirit of Christ with respect to the “social structure of the church.” The council drew on a famous passage from the third-century bishop, St. Cyprian of Carthage, declaring “[i]n this way the universal church appears as ‘a people made one by the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’” (LG 4). In that same document the council wrote: “Christ, when he was lifted up from the earth, drew all people to himself; rising from the dead, he sent his life-giving Spirit down on his disciples and through him he constituted his body which is the church as the universal sacrament of salvation” (LG 48).10 The Constitution on the Sacred 7 Yves Congar, “Pneumatologie ou ‘Christomonisme’ dans la tradition latine,” in Ecclesia a Spiritu Sancto edocta [Festschrift for Gérard Philips], 41–63 (Louvain: Duculot, 1970). 8 Yves Congar, “The Pneumatology of Vatican II,” in I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 1, 167–173, here at 167–168. 9 Yves Congar, “The Church Made by the Spirit,” 5–14. 10 Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the Vatican II documents will ordinarily be taken from Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990).
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Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, describes the church’s sacramental life as a trinitarian participation in the paschal mystery. In Dei Verbum, The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, the council eschewed the more propositional theology of revelation dominant in the dogmatic manual tradition that imagined revelation as a collection of propositional truths. In its place the council presented revelation as nothing less than the self-communication of God in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit: It has pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the secret purpose of his will. This brings it about that through Christ, God’s Word made flesh, and in his Holy Spirit, human beings can draw near to the Father and become sharers in the divine nature.11 This deeply trinitarian account of God’s self-communication with us in love portrays the Holy Spirit as active in believers, giving “to all facility in accepting and believing the truth.”12 Here the Spirit is the divine principle at work in both the individual and the community, making possible the active reception and appropriation of God’s Word. We also find something of this trinitarian framework in the council’s consideration of the teaching office of the bishops, what Catholics refer to as the magisterium. In Dei Verbum 10 the council acknowledged the assistance of the Holy Spirit in the teaching ministry of the bishops: This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit.13 We should not overlook the significance of the council’s insistence that the magisterium always works at the service of God’s Word and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The council resisted any claim that the magisterium had an exclusive role to play in the transmission 11 Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965) 2. 12 Dei Verbum, 5. 13 Translation from Flannery.
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of the apostolic faith. All the Christian faithful play a role in receiving God’s Word. Lumen Gentium 12 teaches that every Christian, by virtue of their baptism, receives from the Holy Spirit a supernatural instinct for the faith, the sensus fidei: Through this sense of faith which is aroused and sustained by the spirit of truth, the people of God, under the guidance of the sacred magisterium to which it is faithfully obedient, receives no longer the words of human beings but truly the word of God; it adheres indefectibly to “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”; it penetrates more deeply into that same faith through right judgment and applies it more fully to life. This acknowledgement of the work of the Spirit in the lives of all believers appears as well in Dei Verbum’s presentation of the dynamics at work in the growth and development of tradition. According to the council, tradition grows and develops through the contemplation and study by believers, who “ponder these things in their hearts”; through the intimate understanding of spiritual things which they experience; and through the preaching of those who, on succeeding to the office of bishop, receive the sure charism of truth.14 This passage marks out an important insight; the sense of the faithful and the teaching of the bishops are intrinsically related because both reflect the action of the Spirit. Unfortunately, the council largely failed to consider what concrete consequences must follow from this conviction that the same Spirit, active in the teaching of the bishops, is active as well in the spiritual instinct for the faith given to all Christians. The council invoked St. Irenaeus’s teaching that the bishop receives a charisma veritatis certum at ordination.15 Although Irenaeus believed that the bishop had special access to the apostolic faith, he did not see that apostolic faith as the bishop’s private possession; the bishop shared the faith of his church. This conviction was at the heart of the 14 Dei Verbum, 8. 15 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, 4, 26, 2.
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early Christian rejection of absolute or titular ordinations, the practice of ordaining a bishop to serve as an auxiliary or in a diplomatic or bureaucratic post, and assigning to the bishop a titular or nonexistent local church. It was inconceivable that a bishop could teach the apostolic faith without being embedded in a living apostolic community of faith. Indeed, I contend that the modern practice of titular ordination has indirectly contributed to the idea that the charisma veritatis refers to some supernaturally infused knowledge conferred at ordination without any reference to the faith of a local church. What we see in the council teaching is the beginnings of a trinitarian ecclesiology that could offer a coherent account of the church, whole and entire, as a listening church, a community of reception, as Ormond Rush puts it.16 Yet when it came time to focus on the exercise of the doctrinal teaching authority of the magisterium in chapter three of Lumen Gentium, this Trinitarian framework is attenuated. For example, the chapter begins with the following statement: For the nourishment and continual growth of the people of God, Christ the Lord instituted a variety of ministries which are directed towards the good of the whole body. Ministers who are endowed with sacred power are at the service of their brothers and sisters, so that all who belong to the people of God, and therefore enjoy real Christian dignity, by cooperating with each other freely and in an orderly manner in pursuit of the same goal, may attain salvation.17 Although this passage offers a welcome emphasis on power as service, it refers to Christ’s institution of the ordained ministries of the church without any mention of the Holy Spirit. In the place of an explicit consideration of pneumatology we have the first of a series of problematic assertions regarding the conferral of “sacred power” upon bishops, an assertion that lacks a necessary pneumatological conditioning, as I will indicate later.
16 Ormond Rush, The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 17 Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964), 18.
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Scattered throughout the chapter are various references to the Holy Spirit but without an exposition of how it is that the Spirit works through the bishops’ ministry and, more importantly, how this is conjoined to the Spirit’s work among all the faithful. The one interesting exception occurs in LG 25 in the council’s treatment of papal infallibility where the council insists that the assent of the church to papal definitions will never be lacking “on account of the activity of that same Holy Spirit, by which the whole flock of Christ is preserved and progresses in unity of faith.”18 Here we find the only suggestion in the entire chapter that, due to the Holy Spirit, the teaching office of the pope and bishops must be linked to the Spirit’s work in the life of all the Christian faithful. Lumen Gentium 4 affirms that the same Spirit directs the church “through a diversity of gifts both hierarchical and charismatic.” Yet this is left largely undeveloped. This theological lacuna marks out an area where Roman Catholicism could benefit from the work of prominent Orthodox theologians like Nicholas Afanasiev and Dumitru Staniloae. In his book, The Church of the Holy Spirit, Afanasiev contended that there was a basic theological sense in which all church members, ordained and non-ordained, were “charismatics.”19 For his part, the Romanian theologian Staniloae would write: If the variety of gifts derives from the same Spirit who is at work in all and is revealed in the service of the common good, then we can conclude that the institution is not devoid of spirituality while spirituality on the other hand is not inevitably lacking in structure and institutional order.20 As Duquesne’s own scholar, Radu Bordeianu, has pointed out, Staniloae insisted on both “the Christological character of charism and the pneumatic character of the institution.”21 Afanasiev and Staniloae both resisted any sense that we can speak of Christ first instituting 18 Lumen Gentium, 25. 19 Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (originally published in 1971, Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2007), 2–3. 20 Dumitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 39–40. 21 Radu Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 134.
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church office and the Spirit subsequently guaranteeing the efficacy of that office.
The Trinitarian Foundations of the Teaching Ministry of the Bishop in Post-Conciliar Ecumenical Documents The Trinitarian foundations of the teaching ministry of the bishops were more fully and fruitfully explored in post-conciliar ecumenical dialogue. The Orthodox-Roman Catholic dialogue offers an ecclesiological vision deeply informed by the conjoined missions of Word and Spirit in the life of the church. In an ecumenical statement published in 1982, often referred to as the Munich Statement, we find the assertion that: “The church is continually in a state of epiclesis.”22 The active work of the Spirit is evident in every moment of the church’s life. The interrelationship between the witness of all the faithful and the apostolic ministry of the bishop can only be grasped within a Eucharistic context. The document insists: The function of the bishop is closely bound to the eucharistic assembly over which he presides. The eucharistic unity of the local church implies communion between he who presides and the people to whom he delivers the word of salvation and the eucharistic gifts. Further, the minister is also the one who “receives” from his church, which is faithful to tradition, the word he transmits.23 As the servant of communion, the bishop presides over the Eucharistic gift exchange. This exchange, however, consists not only in the offering of bread and wine, which are returned to the people as the Body and Blood of Christ, but also in the apostolic faith offered by the people to the bishop who receives this faith witness from the people
22 The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, “The Mystery of the Church and the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity,” I: #5. The document can be accessed at http://www. christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodossedi-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/ documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-inglese4.html. 23 Joint International Commission, “The Mystery of the Church,” II: #3, emphasis is mine.
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and returns it in his own apostolic teaching. The bishop’s apostolic ministry then finds its proper context in the Eucharistic synaxis where his apostolic teaching office is situated within and not above the apostolic community. If the bishop’s teaching office is inextricably linked to the faith of the people, then any understanding of the apostolic succession of the bishops must be linked to the apostolic faith of the churches. This leads the Munich statement to assert: Apostolic succession, therefore, means something more than a mere transmission of powers. It is succession in a Church which witnesses to the apostolic faith, in communion with the other Churches witnessing to the same apostolic faith.24 A similar perspective is explored in the Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue. In the document, “Authority in the Church, I” we find this passage: The perception of God’s will for his Church does not belong only to the ordained ministry but is shared by all its members. All who live faithfully within the koinonia may become sensitive to the leading of the Spirit and be brought towards a deeper understanding of the gospel and of its implications in diverse cultures and changing situations. Ordained ministers commissioned to discern these insights and give authoritative expression to them, are part of the community, sharing its quest for understanding the gospel in obedience to Christ and receptive to the needs and concerns of all. The community, for its part, must respond to and assess the insights and teaching of the ordained ministers. Through this continuing process of discernment and response, in which the faith is expressed and the Gospel is pastorally applied, the Holy Spirit declares the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the faithful may live freely under the discipline of the Gospel.25
24 Joint International Commission, “The Mystery of the Church,” II: #4. 25 Anglican–Roman Catholic Joint Preparatory Commission, “Authority in the Church I,” #6. This document can be accessed at http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/ en/dialoghi/sezione-occidentale/comunione-anglicana/dialogo/arcic-i/testo-in-inglese5. html.
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We must note here the emphasis on shared learning and discernment on the part of bishops and people. This is further developed in the influential document of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, “The Gift of Authority.” There we find the interaction of bishops, theologians, and all the faithful sketched out within a dynamic account of tradition: The people of God as a whole is the bearer of the living Tradition. In changing situations producing fresh challenges to the Gospel, the discernment, actualisation and communication of the Word of God is the responsibility of the whole people of God. The Holy Spirit works through all members of the community, using the gifts he gives to each for the good of all. Theologians in particular serve the communion of the whole Church by exploring whether and how new insights should be integrated into the ongoing stream of Tradition. In each community there is an exchange, a mutual give-and-take, in which bishops, clergy and lay people receive from as well as give to others within the whole body.26 In these texts there is little emphasis on “sacred power” conferred upon some groups and withheld from others. Power is nothing less than the activity of the Holy Spirit manifested in the mutual gift exchange among the various component elements in the church, including, the witness of the whole Christian faithful, the normative witness of the bishops and the scholarly contributions of theologians. We find in these ecumenical statements a theological attention to the teaching ministry of the bishops that moves away from neoscholastic preoccupations with the distinctive powers conferred on the bishop through ordination and toward a consideration of episcopal ordination within a more relational, ecclesiological framework. This merits further discussion.
26 Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, “The Gift of Authority,” #28. http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-occidentale/ comunione-anglicana/dialogo/arcic-ii/fr.html.
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Episcopal Ordination Reconceived within a Trinitarian Schema The neo-scholastic theology of orders that predominated in the Catholic tradition in the decades prior to Vatican II was metaphysically underwritten by what we might call a “substance ontology” that attended primarily to those changes effected in a particular individual (whether through baptism or ordination). In much neo-scholastic sacramental theology, claims were made regarding the new ontological status of the individual conferred by baptism, confirmation, or holy orders. It is this reductive and reified sacramental theology that promoted the idea that episcopal ordination was, at its core, a conferral of special powers on the ordinand. I have argued elsewhere,27 influenced by the work of the Greek Orthodox theologian and Metropolitan of Pergamon, John Zizioulas, that what is required within Catholicism is not a rejection of ontology itself, as some would propose, but rather a shift to a “relational ontology” in which attention is drawn not to the isolated individual, but to the person-in-relation. In keeping with traditional Catholic theological reflection, we can affirm the ontological effects of sacramental ordination. However, any such “ontological change” is grounded not in the conferral of powers on an individual but on the reconfiguration of the person into a new ecclesial and therefore christological relationship. Ordination effects a fundamental “ecclesial re-positioning.” Within this relational framework, conferral of ministerial power at ordination takes on a different meaning entirely. Again, the OrthodoxRoman Catholic ecumenical dialogue indicates a helpful direction in the 1988 Valamo document that begins its treatment of ordination with a reference to the inseparability of the missions of Christ and the Holy Spirit.28 The dialogue explicitly ties sacramental empowerment with
27 Richard R. Gaillardetz, “The Ecclesiological Foundations of Ministry within an Ordered Communion” in Ordering of the Baptismal Priesthood, ed. Susan Wood, 26–51 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003). 28 The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, “The Sacrament of Order in the Sacramental Structure of the Church with Particular Reference to the Importance of Apostolic Succession for the Sanctification and Unity of the People of God,” #6. The document can be accessed at http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/
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ministerial function: “Through his ordination, the bishop receives all the powers necessary for fulfilling his function.”29 Put simply, it is not the conferral of power that makes the ordained minister; rather it is the reconfiguration of the person into a new ministerial and ecclesial relationship that requires that empowerment by the Holy Spirit necessary for that ministry. The pneumatic “empowerment” is a function of the new ministerial relationship. From a more Western perspective we might consider the observation of the German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, who contends that the ordained pastor must “have all the powers which necessarily belong to such a leader of a Church in a particular locality in the light of the theological nature of the Church as such.”30 The sacramental power conferred through ordination follows from ordination’s reconfiguration of the ordinand into a new ecclesial relationship. James Puglisi’s careful study of the ancient ordination rituals of the Western church confirms our analysis. In the conclusion of the first volume of his study he writes: Throughout this study we have seen that the process of ordination includes a complex of actions and roles which inaugurate new, personal, and enduring relationships between the new minister, his Christian brethren and God. Moreover, in the early church the ordained ministry was seen in the context of a sacramental and Trinitarian ecclesiology in which ordination is presented as one of the communal, liturgical, and juridical actions through which the Church is built up.31 Returning to the Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical dialogue, the 2007 Ravenna Statement insists that the authority of the bishop, as apostolic teacher, cannot be separated from the apostolic authority of the community, for both are empowered by the same Spirit: chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-inglese2.html. 29 Joint International Commission, “The Sacrament of Order,” #6, 29. 30 Karl Rahner, “Pastoral Ministries and Community Leadership,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 19 (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 75. 31 James Puglisi, The Process of Admission to Ordained Ministry: A Comparative Study, vol. 1 (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 205.
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The authority linked with the grace received in ordination is not the private possession of those who receive it nor something delegated from the community; rather, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit destined for the service (diakonia) of the community and never exercised outside of it. Its exercise includes the participation of the whole community, the bishop being in the Church and the Church in the bishop (cf. St. Cyprian, Ep. 66, 8).32 Within a developed trinitarian framework, the language of “power” is only intelligible as a participation in the life of the Spirit at work in the church. Remove the trinitarian framework and power is inevitably juridicized within a kind of “zero-sum” game in which some members of the church are given “power” at the expense of others. A trinitarian theology of ecclesial power does not exclude the need for canon law and the right ordering of the life of the church, but this necessary juridical element of the life of the church will always be in service of the activity of the Spirit in the pluriform relations and practices that comprise much of what the church is. Another way of foregrounding the need for an adequate trinitarian framework for our understanding of ecclesial power will attend to the operative theologies of grace in play in the life of the church. Whereas St. Thomas Aquinas saw grace primarily as a participation in the triune life of God,33 Baroque Catholic theologies of grace migrated to a more reified conception of grace as a transient force injected, as it were, into the field of ecclesial activity. This reified view of grace, the result of a deficient pneumatology, must be challenged. We shall return to this below. In this first section I have argued that one of the Second Vatican Council’s most significant contributions was the work of ressourcement in recovering the trinitarian foundations of the church. The 32 The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, “Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church: Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority,” #13. This document can be accessed at http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/ dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mistainternazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-inglese.html. 33 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, q.112, a.1.
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implications of this development have yet to be fully realized in the Catholic Church. For example, fifty years removed from the council we have still failed to acknowledge that the work of the Spirit in the teaching of the bishops must not be isolated from the Spirit active in the discernment of all God’s people.34 This isolation has haunted post-conciliar Catholicism. It is evident in the 1983 Code of Canon Law that offers a number of possibilities for the bishops to consult the faithful, but makes virtually none of them mandatory. As simply the most recent example, consider the reluctance of our own bishops’ conference to encourage the wide dissemination to all the faithful of a questionnaire on church teaching on marriage and family against the expressed wishes of the Holy Father. Only when structures of dialogue and conversation are treated, not as politically expedient, but as necessary contexts for the work of the Spirit in the church, will it be possible to speak of an authentic assistance of the Holy Spirit in the ministry of the bishop. I have also proposed that a properly trinitarian account of the church will lead us away from a theology of ordination as the conferral of sacred power on the ordinand in favor of ordination as an ecclesial re-positioning of the ordinand with its consequent ministerial empowerment.
THE COUNCIL’S TEACHING ON THE PILGRIM CHURCH AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EXERCISE OF EPISCOPAL TEACHING Let us now consider a second teaching of the council, its emphasis on the pilgrim nature of the church. This conciliar theme has received renewed attention under Pope Francis. In his remarkable apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium he insists that the church is “first and foremost a people advancing on its pilgrim way towards God” (111).35
34 One of the most helpful attempts at overcoming this failure is found in the recent International Theological Commission document, “Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria.” It can be accessed at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/ cti_documents/rc_cti_20120308_comunicato-theology-today_en.html. 35 This can be accessed at http://www.vatican.va/evangelii-gaudium/en/index.html
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The Historical Conditioning of the Pilgrim Church What does it mean for the people of God to live as pilgrim? It means, first of all, that the church lives in history. Grounded in the scandalous vulnerability of the incarnation in which God dared to “pitch his tent” with us in Jesus of Nazareth, it is no longer sufficient to attend exclusively to the church as a “perfect society” hovering above the vagaries of human history, waiting, as it were, for the world to catch up. As an historical reality, the church is subject to all the conditions of human history. It experiences the constraints of all human institutions: limited resources, systemic dysfunctions, human sinfulness, and yes, scandal. To acknowledge the pilgrim status of the church is to see the church as it really is, with all of its gifts and aspirations, fissures and wounds, and to love it all the same. The key moment in the council’s bold rediscovery of the historicity of the church came in the opening address of Pope John XXIII, Gaudet mater ecclesia,36 in which he offered his rationale for the council. He asserted that the church must be brought “up-to-date where required.” This simple admission was at odds with the dominant postTridentine view of the church as a societas perfecta, a “perfect society” hovering serenely above the turmoil of human history. The pope’s opening address set a distinctive ecclesial tone. The first document debated at the council, the liturgy schema, continued Pope John’s efforts to move the church beyond the societas perfecta ecclesiology to one more thoroughly rooted in history.37 For what marks out the church is that it is at once human and divine, visible and endowed with invisible realities, vigorously active and yet making space in its life for contemplation, present in the world and yet in pilgrimage (peregrinam) beyond.38 This passage first introduces into the conciliar corpus the theme of the church on pilgrimage. The theme receives further development 36 The English translation of the pope’s speech opening the council is taken from The Documents of Vatican II, vol. 1, ed. Walter Abbott (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 710–719. 37 Massimo Faggioli, True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2012), 83. 38 Vatican Council II, Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 4, 1963), 2.
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in Lumen Gentium, which draws on St. Augustine: “The church ‘proceeds on its pilgrim way amidst the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God,’ proclaiming the cross and death of the Lord until he comes.”39 If the church is pilgrim, then its official teachers must share in that pilgrim status. The Holy Spirit, to be sure, assists them in the exercise of their ministry, but always under the conditions and limitations of human history, finitude, and sin. Heribert Mühlen’s evocation of the kenosis of the Holy Spirit may be helpful here.40 Mühlen reminds us of the Pauline teaching that the Word embraced human limitation in Jesus of Nazareth as an act of kenosis, a divine self-emptying in which God in Christ embraced the full limitations of human history. Mühlen contends that we can also speak of a “self-emptying” of the Spirit in history such that it too must act within the constraints of human limitation. This kenosis of the Spirit suggests the Spirit’s consent, if you will, to act in the church in accord with the conditions and limits of human history.
The Call to Conversion for Leadership in the Pilgrim Church The kenosis of the Spirit in the church is subject to the effects not only of human finitude but also of human sin. Consequently, the Spirit’s work includes calling Christians to conversion. Bernard Lonergan’s account of conversion can be useful here. For Lonergan, conversion is oriented toward the transformation of horizons and the unending task of overcoming the various forms of bias that can impede our capacity for intellectual, moral and spiritual authenticity.41 Lonergan described four different forms of bias that call for our conversion: (1) dramatic bias, which inhibits our ability to enter into the drama of life fully; (2) individual bias, which is concerned with the 39 Lumen Gentium, 8. 40 Heribert Mühlen, Una Persona Mystica: Die Kirche als das Mysterium der heilsgeschichtlichen Identität des Heiligen Geistes in Christus und den Christen: eine Person in vielen Personen (Munich: Schöningh, 1968), 255ff. 41 See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 191–244; and Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1979), 231.
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dangers of egoism wherein a person will interpret a situation in the light of one’s own self-interest; (3) group bias, which is in play when we give undue deference to our membership in a particular group as we assess a situation or conflict; (4) common sense bias, in which we tend toward simplistic understandings that overlook the true complexity of a situation or issue. All humans are tempted by egotism, arrogance, pride, lust for power, and desire for control, and therefore all stand in need of conversion. Is there any reason to assume that church officeholders are somehow immune to these forms of bias and therefore exempt from the call to conversion? Surely not. Indeed, the rhetoric of many bishops today is filled with generally sincere professions of humility. What is lacking in these expressions of humility, however, is any connection between their ongoing need for personal repentance and conversion and the possibility that the impact of bias and the consequent need for conversion may extend to the exercise of their teaching office.
The Eschatological Conditioning of the Pilgrim Church The church, embedded in human history, is so constituted by the Word and the Spirit that it is always looking ahead toward its eschatological fulfillment. By conceiving of the church not just as a collection of individual pilgrims but also as itself pilgrim, the council asserted that the church lives as a people on the way who have the promise of God’s presence and guidance but who still await the consummation of God’s plan. Here we can recall the distinctive orientation of Eastern Christianity, reflected particularly in the work of Zizioulas that orients the church’s apostolicity toward its future eschatological fulfillment. If the church’s apostolicity orients us toward the future, how does this relate to our authentic appropriation of divine revelation? I suggest that, among other things, it calls the church to a form of “doctrinal humility.” Catherine Cornille notes that, in the Roman Catholic pre-conciliar tradition, any invocation of doctrinal humility would have been understood as an encouragement of individual docility in the face of church doctrine.42 Christians were reminded of the limits of 42 Catherine Cornille, The Im-possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (New York: Crossroad, 2008), 27–28.
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human reason and exhorted to adopt a humble posture of obedience before church doctrine. The tendency endures today. Whereas early Christian thought presented revelation as a divine pedagogy aimed at the transformation of humankind, an overly juridical and even mechanistic understanding of the exercise of ecclesiastical teaching authority has often reduced the richness of the Christian faith to a “digital genre,” as Juan Luis Segundo put it. This “digital” presentation of the Christian story purges dogma of its imaginative character within an eschatological horizon and renders it strictly informational—a collection of truths subject to mere intellectual assent.43 Yet, council teaching invites us to appropriate doctrinal humility in a quite different sense. Dei Verbum 8 presents a dynamic account of tradition’s development and then offers the remarkable admission that the church lives in history moving “towards the fullness of God’s truth.” This brief clause presents revealed truth as both historically conditioned and awaiting its future eschatological fulfillment. As is often noted in this regard, the church does not so much possess revelation as it is possessed by it. The church is guided by the Spirit to live into divine truth, as it were. We see evidence of this doctrinal humility in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: The church, as guardian of the deposit of God’s word, draws religious and moral principles from it, but it does not always have a ready answer to particular questions, wishing to combine the light of revelation with universal experience so that illumination can be forthcoming on the direction which humanity has recently begun to take.44 Are not all Christians, including the bishops, called to this doctrinal humility grounded in an acknowledgement of the inexhaustible nature of divine truth?
43 Juan Luis Segundo, The Liberation of Dogma: Faith, Revelation and Dogmatic Teaching Authority (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1992), 108. 44 Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), 33.
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Moving Beyond a “Mechanics of Grace” We must return now to consider the significance of an adequate theology of grace for our topic. Over the last four centuries Catholicism has too often treated the Spirit’s assistance to the bishops in a mechanistic fashion, as though the bishops were exempt from any real effort or preparation in their teaching ministry. Thomas O’Meara has observed that in this regard we are still under the thrall of a Baroque theology preoccupied with actual grace.45 Episcopal action is reduced to a weak instrumental causality within a crass “mechanics of grace,” as O’Meara puts it.46 One imagines the action of divine grace episodically influencing the apostolic officeholder in discrete teaching acts and with little consideration of a more comprehensive account of the learning and teaching process. We can recognize other examples of this reductive and transitory conception of a discrete moment of graced activity. It is evident in certain dictation theories of biblical inspiration and even in the tendency of many Catholics to imagine that there must be some precise “moment of consecration” when the bread and wine are supernaturally transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. Of course, Catholics affirm both biblical inspiration and Eucharistic real presence, but one need not imagine St. Paul being dramatically “zapped” when composing a letter to Corinth any more than one should fixate on a precise moment of Eucharistic consecration in preference to a sense of the work of grace in the entire Eucharistic action. The church needs to pay greater attention to the human processes necessary for authentic learning and teaching. O’Meara reminds us that “teaching always involves study, learning, and reflection. It seems unlikely that when those three are absent a divine power replaces them.”47 Karl Rahner warns of the danger of imagining that God’s grace takes over where human abilities reach their limit:
45 Thomas F. O’Meara, “Divine Grace and Human Nature as Sources for the Universal Magisterium of Bishops,” Theological Studies 64, no. 4 (2003): 683–706, here at 688. 46 O’Meara, 689. 47 O’Meara, 694.
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On this question there is a tendency tacitly to proceed from the assumption that there is a kind of “synergism” at work here, to point to forces that are extrinsic to human debate, and so to regard God’s intervention as commencing only at that point at which human efforts are suspended. In reality, however, God works precisely in and through these human efforts and his activity does not constitute a distinct factor apart from this. Precisely for this reason we should bring these human factors into the open. Instead of concealing them we should throw light upon them and make it possible to assess them at their true worth. For in themselves they constitute something more than merely a supplement to the divine activity, a prior condition for it, or an obscure residue, otherwise unaccounted for, in the exercise of the teaching office. Rather these human factors constitute an intrinsic element in the exercise of the teaching office itself.48 Richard McCormick argued that the divine assistance promised the bishops is only effective when conjoined with the proper engagement of basic human processes.49 McCormick divided the relevant human processes into two categories: evidence gathering and evidence assessing. Evidence gathering refers to the manifold ways in which the human person, in this case the bishop, inquires after the truth through study, consultation, debate, and investigation. With respect to the teaching ministry of the bishops, this would involve a study of Scripture and tradition, a consultation of scholars and theologians (representing diverse schools of thought and theological/ historical perspectives), a consideration of the insights of pertinent related fields (e.g., the contributions of the social sciences, genetics), and an attempt to discern the sensus fidelium, the sense of the faithful in and through whom the Spirit speaks. Insufficient attention to this evidence-gathering can hamper the activity of the Spirit in bringing forth wisdom and insight. Evidence assessing involves the proper 48 Karl Rahner, “The Teaching Office of the Church,” in Confrontations, Theological Investigations XII (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 3–30, here at 12. 49 See Richard A. McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology: 1965 through 1980 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1981), 261–266.
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consideration and assessment of the “evidence” gathered. Here again recourse to a diversity of theological scholarship will be important, but so will patient reflection and authentic conversation in contexts where the free exchange of views is clearly welcomed. We must recall the ancient conviction that a bishop must be rooted in an apostolic community of faith. This more comprehensive framework for grasping the action of the Spirit in episcopal teaching suggests the need for a form of ecclesiastical “due diligence.” The term “due diligence” of course comes from the legal profession and refers to the obligation to proper investigation before entering into a binding contract of some kind. We can import this term into an ecclesiastical context wherein it would now refer to the obligation of the bishops to engage in requisite prayer, consultation, dialogue, and study before exercising their teaching responsibilities. Again, this manifold engagement does not merely establish the conditions for the assistance of the Spirit—they are not mere “natural” processes necessary before the work of the Spirit can “kick in.” Rather, we must affirm the action of the Spirit in these human processes. In a 1996 address to the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), Margaret O’Gara and her husband, Michael Vertin, considered our topic from a Lonerganian perspective. They contended that most standard accounts of the assistance of the Holy Spirit presuppose a “classical cognitivist” framework in which God communicates a divine message through doctrines that are taught by the magisterium and passively received by the Christian faithful. A commitment to the epistemic objectivity of church doctrines overrides any concerns for subjective appropriation. The classical cognitivist perspective emphasizes a sharp distinction between the assistance of the Holy Spirit given to the bishops and the work of the Spirit in the life of the whole people of God. O’Gara and Vertin challenged the adequacy of this account and called for a shift toward an historical cognitivist framework in which the learning church takes priority over the teaching church, and in which normative doctrine is “authentically discovered by the church.” 50 50 Margaret O’Gara and Michael Vertin, “The Holy Spirit’s Assistance to the Magisterium in Teaching: Theological and Philosophical Issues,” CTSA Proceedings 51 (1996): 125–142,
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To see the church first and foremost as a learning community invites us back to the image of the church as a school of Christian discipleship. Communities of discipleship do need the ministry of episcopē but not in a form that reduces the bishops to purveyors of timeless certitudes. A community of discipleship requires ministers capable of guiding the community of faith in the quest for a deeper and more profound appropriation of the Christian kerygma. Nicholas Lash puts it well: The craft or process we call “teaching” is the art of helping people to understand. They have to do this for themselves, and it is a dangerous, exhilarating, fragile, never finished process . . . this achievement we call “understanding,” which each of us has to do for ourself, is done in us by God. . . . If “teaching” were a mere matter of declaration or instruction, of telling people what is the case, or what they ought to do, then indeed spreading knowledge would be as easy as spreading butter. But this is not the traditional Christian understanding of what “teaching” involves.51 The renewal of our church calls us to greater theological reflection on what John Henry Newman called the conspiratio fidelium ac pastorum, “the breathing together of the faithful and the pastors.”52 This theology refuses to think of the episcopal office as the privileged repository of sacred power and divine truth, but rather as a necessary element of a pneumatically charged ecclesial body in which the Spirit’s empowerment of the bishops is inextricably bound up in the Spirit’s work in the lives of all Christians. This pilgrim Church will be most faithful to its truest identity when all the baptized acknowledge the wisdom of listening before speaking, of learning before teaching, of praying before here at 128. On the distinction between classical and historical consciousness see Bernard Lonergan, “The Transition from a Classicist Worldview to Historical-Mindedness,” in Bernard Lonergan, A Second Collection: Papers, ed. William F. Ryan and Bernard Tyrrell (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1974), 1–9. 51 Nicholas Lash, “Authors, Authority, and Authorization” in Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Theory and Practice, ed. Bernard Hoose (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishers, 2002), 65. 52 John Henry Newman, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (1859; reprint, Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed & Ward, 1961), 71–72.
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pronouncing. It raises the demand for not just a pastorally expedient “consultation” of the laity, but an essential ecclesial dialogue between bishops and people governed by the admonition of St. Paulinus of Nola: “Let us listen to what all the faithful say, because in every one of them the Spirit of God breathes.”53
53 St. Paulinus of Nola, Epistle, 23, 36.
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An Evangelizing Communion The Church, the Holy Spirit, and Vatican II Paul McPartlan
In his Apostolic Constitution formally convoking the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Pope St. John XXIII recalled how the early church was united in prayer after the ascension of Christ into heaven, and he invited the church to be united once again in prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit. He himself prayed to the Spirit: “Renew in this our time your marvels as if by a new Pentecost [per novam veluti Pentecosten], and grant to the holy church that persevering in earnest and heartfelt prayer with Mary, the Mother of God, and guided by St. Peter, she may extend the kingdom of her divine Savior, a kingdom of truth and justice, a kingdom of love and peace. Amen.”1 He wanted the council to be a powerful occasion of renewal for the church in her mission to the modern world. Commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the ending of Vatican II, the Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, called by Pope St. John Paul II in 1985, repeated Pope John’s prayer for a new Pentecost, for the salvation of the world.2 However, it also said that “the ecclesiology of communion is the central and fundamental 1 Pope St. John XXIII, Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis (December 25, 1961), 23. See also Pope John’s opening address to the Second Vatican Council, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia (October 11, 1962), 4. 2 Extraordinary Synod, Final Relatio (1985), II, D, 7.
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idea of the Council’s documents,”3 which seems to imply a sense of gathering and turning inward. Pneumatology is the essential key to holding these two seemingly contrasting ideas together: The Spirit of Pentecost and mission is also the Spirit of communion and fellowship. The Spirit breathed by Jesus upon the disciples on the evening of Easter day with the words, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21–22), is the same Spirit invoked by St. Paul when he prayed that the Corinthians might be blessed with the communion or koinonia of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 13:13). The gospel that the church is sent out to proclaim is precisely the good news of Jesus Christ who came “to gather into one the scattered children of God” (Jn 11:52). If the church itself is to be understood as “the universal sacrament of salvation,”4 in the words of Lumen Gentium (LG), the council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, we might well say that its own communion life is intrinsic to the sacramental sign. As the Synod said succinctly: “The Church as communion is a sacrament for the salvation of the world.”5 In short, it seems that the church in the power of the Spirit goes out to gather in, like a heartbeat; it is an evangelizing communion. Lumen Gentium spoke of “[the] apostolate which belongs to absolutely every Christian.” “Through Baptism and Confirmation,” it said, “all are appointed to this apostolate by the Lord himself.”6 But it also taught, in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), that “the goal of apostolic endeavor is that all who are made [children] of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of his church, to take part in the Sacrifice and to eat the Lord’s Supper.”7 Pope John Paul II once said that “the Church’s mystery” is “a mystery of Trinitarian communion in missionary tension.”8
3 Final Relatio, II, C, 1. 4 Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964), 48. Unless otherwise noted, all Vatican II quotations are from Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II, vol.1, The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, new revised ed. (Northport: Costello Publishing Company/Dominican Publications, 1996). 5 Final Relatio, II, D, 1. 6 Lumen Gentium, 33. 7 Vatican Council II, Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 4, 1963), 10. 8 Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992), 12.
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As part of the extended celebration of the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, currently underway, I would like to explore the council’s broad vision of the church, in the Spirit, as an evangelizing communion. I would like to do so by considering the four main constitutions of the council, the four key documents out of its total of sixteen documents, namely Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum (DV), and the final great Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (GS). In particular, I would like to consider some of the ways in which those four constitutions, respectively, speak of the Holy Spirit, and I would like ultimately to suggest how the four constitutions might be regarded as correlating with one another in an overall configuration that gives us, so to speak, the shape of the council itself. As a member of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church since 2005, I am aware that the idea of the church as an evangelizing communion has a particular value in bridging between the tendency of Catholics to emphasize mission and the tendency of Orthodox to emphasize liturgy and communion, and I would like to suggest that the focus on the Eucharist, indeed the eucharistic ecclesiology, that has characterized the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue since its first document in 1982,9 is absolutely in harmony with the idea of the church as an evangelizing communion, because the church gathers for the Eucharist, as we often say, but just as important is the fact that it is from the Eucharist that the church is regularly sent out: Ite missa est.10
SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM Let us begin by considering Sacrosanctum Concilium, the fruit of the liturgical movement, which can be traced back to the Abbey of Solesmes, re-founded in the 1830s by Prosper Guéranger, but which really gathered momentum under the influence of Lambert Beauduin after the National Congress on Catholic Works held at Malines, 9 See, Paul McPartlan, A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist, and Church Unity (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 6–13. 10 See Paul McPartlan, Sacrament of Salvation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 61–77.
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Belgium, in 1909. It has to be admitted that, at first sight, this constitution seems rather weak from the point of view of pneumatology. It has far fewer references to the Holy Spirit than the other three constitutions. However, those it does have are by no means insignificant. It refers to the liturgical movement itself as a distinctive sign of the Spirit’s activity in the church,11 a notable sign of the times, in the later terminology of Gaudium et Spes.12 More particularly, it says that the Son of God took flesh and was anointed by the Holy Spirit,13 that Christ in turn sent his apostles, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” to preach the Gospel,14 and that the liturgy builds up the members of the church into “a dwelling-place for God in the Spirit.”15 Most valuably, describing the liturgy as centered on the sacrifice of Christ and the sacraments, it says: “the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery,” reading the Scriptures, celebrating the Eucharist, and “‘giving thanks to God for his inexpressible gift’ in Christ Jesus . . . through the power of the Holy Spirit.”16 Implicitly, therefore, we should understand the Spirit as empowering all the aspects of liturgy that the constitution describes. Several of those few references to the Spirit were actually added to the draft after the first draft was criticized in the conciliar debate for its lack of references to the Trinity and particularly to the Holy Spirit, described by one council father as “the intimate agent of the entire liturgical life [totius vitae liturgicae intimus actor].”17 However, it would surely be mistaken to regard the additions as simply ornamental. Rather, the council was being pressed to be more explicit about the activity of the Spirit, and not simply to take the presence and the work of the Spirit for granted, in a rather vague and implicit way, 11 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 43 12 Cf. Gaudium et Spes, 4, 11, 44. 13 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 5. 14 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 6. 15 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 2. 16 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 6. 17 Cardinal Silva Henriquez, on the first day of debate on the schema on the liturgy, October 22, 1962; cf. Acta Synodalia I, I, 324. For the subsequent amendments, see the comments of Cardinal Lercaro (November 17, 1962, Acta Synodalia I, 3, 117, 4(b)), and Bishop Joseph Martin (November 29, 1962, Acta Synodalia I, 3, 703, 4). I am grateful to Rev Dr. Peter McGrail for drawing my attention to these interventions.
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which has been and still is a danger in Catholic theology. Happily, the danger is diminished now because the Spirit is much more mentioned in Catholic worship. At the time of the council and for many centuries beforehand, there was only one eucharistic prayer used in the Roman Catholic Mass, namely the Roman Canon, and that canon famously has no explicit reference to the Holy Spirit. If the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi applies, then that lack of a liturgical mention of the Spirit in the Roman Canon can surely be seen as a major factor in Western inattentiveness to the Spirit in theology and in the life of the church in general. Very soon after the council, however, and in closest connection to it, three new eucharistic prayers were introduced into the Roman rite, and that makes us recognize that there was much more going on in and around the council’s constitution on the liturgy than meets the eye. A renewed awareness of the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, and a corresponding awareness of the shortcomings of the Roman Canon, had been a significant aspect of the liturgical movement in the decades before the council.18 The conciliar constitution primarily gave simply the principles to guide a major revision of the liturgy, and the latter was immediately entrusted to a consilium, consisting of various working groups, one being coetus X, which worked on the Mass itself. At first, various revisions and reorderings of the Roman Canon itself were proposed, but Pope Paul VI directed in 1966 that the Roman Canon was to remain unchanged, because of its venerable character, and that additional eucharistic prayers, or anaphoras, could be introduced19 in order to satisfy the desire for more variety and for an explicit epiclesis of the Spirit, both of which were strong features of the Christian East. It can broadly be said that, in accordance with the Eastern pattern, the available prayers had a single epiclesis following the words of institution, and a centuries-old tension between East and West reared its head again, regarding whether the words of institution were themselves consecratory or whether the subsequent epiclesis 18 See Cipriano Vagaggini, The Canon of the Mass and Liturgical Reform, translation ed., Peter Coughlan (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House, 1967), 91–93, 98–101. 19 See Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1990), 450.
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was.20 The eventual solution was to adapt the additional anaphoras, now known as Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV, so as to include a double epiclesis: one over the elements of bread and wine before the words of institution, and one over the people afterward, thereby paradoxically both drawing from the East but also instituting a new difference from the East. Not everyone was happy with that solution. Aidan Kavanagh, for instance, expressed his misgivings “that the hallowing and unifying functions of the Spirit have been split, as it were, into two separate moments.” “The inclusion of a pneumatic epiclesis just before the institution account” he added, “interrupts the flow of sequence in narrating the divine mercies for which eucharistic prayer is made and sets the institution account off from this cursus.” He described it as “exasperating beyond words” that that structure had been adopted in all of the new eucharistic prayers.21 I would like to make two further points regarding Sacrosanctum Concilium, one of which connects it with Lumen Gentium, while the other connects it with Dei Verbum—some of the interconnections of the constitutions becoming apparent. First, Sacrosanctum Concilium is a highly ecclesiological document. It makes numerous statements linking the liturgy to the church which are echoed and further developed by Lumen Gentium, to such an extent that the latter text can almost be said to be a dogmatic commentary on the former. For instance, SC 2 says that it is especially through the liturgy that “the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church,” which it then describes as both human and divine, visible and invisible, a description that LG 8 subsequently developed, acknowledging the profound parallel between such a description of the church and the christological doctrine of the council of Chalcedon. Both SC 10 and LG 11 describe the Eucharist as the source and summit of the life of the church, and, with reference to the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch,
20 See John H. McKenna, The Eucharistic Epiclesis: A Detailed History from the Patristic to the Modern Era (Chicago/Mundelein: Hillenbrand Books, 2009), 42–92. 21 Aidan Kavanagh, “Thoughts on the New Eucharistic Prayers,” Worship 43, no. 1 (1969): 2–12, here at 6, 9, 11.
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both SC 41 and LG 26 teach that the principal gathering and manifestation of the church is the assembly of the local church with its bishop for the celebration of the Eucharist. LG 26 indeed states that it is from the Eucharist that “the Church ever derives its life.”22 In other words, as the famous principle coined by Henri de Lubac says, “the Eucharist makes the Church.”23 Secondly, Sacrosanctum Concilium makes it clear that the “two parts which in a sense go to make up the Mass, viz. the liturgy of the word and the eucharistic liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship,”24 and it speaks of the two-fold nourishment of the faithful in the Mass from “the table of God’s word” and “the table of the Lord’s body.”25 Dei Verbum subsequently drew those two tables together and taught that the church “never ceases, particularly in the sacred liturgy, to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from the one table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ.”26 It may be noted that another liturgical issue that had arisen concerned the correct terminology for the two parts of the Mass, and indeed the relationship between them. In his monumental work, The Mass of the Roman Rite, published in two volumes in 1950 and 1955, respectively, Joseph Jungmann actually referred to “the service of readings” within the “Mass-liturgy” as the “fore-Mass,” which seems to indicate some ambiguity as to whether “the Mass” is the whole service or just what takes place at the altar after the readings. “The reading of Holy Scripture represents the proper content of the fore-Mass,” he said, “in much the same way as the Sacrament forms the heart of the Mass proper; they are both precious treasures which the Church safeguards for mankind.”27 While 22 See also Lumen Gentium, 3, 7, 11, regarding the link between the Eucharist and the Church. 23 Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, trans. Gemma Simmonds with Richard Price (London: SCM, 2006), 88, 260 (French original, 1944 and 1949); cf. also, Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 152. 24 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 56. 25 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 51 and 48, respectively. 26 Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965), 21. 27 Joseph A. Jungmann, SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite, trans. Francis A. Brunner, vol. 1 (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1986), 391.
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the council definitely regarded both the readings and the sacrament as integral to the Mass, it nevertheless tended to use the term “Eucharist” just for the second main part of the Mass, and not as a synonym for the “Mass,”28 which in turn raises the interesting question as to whether de Lubac had both parts of the Mass or just the second part in mind when he said that “the Eucharist makes the Church.” So, as an interim conclusion, we can say that, if we were to depict the relationship between Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium, it would be appropriate to draw two circles, with the circle for the former inside the circle for the latter, and that, in turn, we would place the proclamation of the word within the circle representing Sacrosanctum Concilium, since in the teaching of the council the proclamation of the Word is an intrinsic part of the liturgy and especially of the Mass.
Plan of the Council Let us now turn to the relationship between the two great conciliar constitutions on the church, Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes. Clarifying the relationship between these two documents is very important for our purpose here. A draft of what was to become Lumen Gentium was in the hands of the bishops at the very start of the council, and it was duly refined through three years of hard work, being finally promulgated in 1964. No draft of Gaudium et Spes existed as the council began. The idea for such a document was conceived only at the council itself, and it took even longer to complete the text, Gaudium et Spes being the final conciliar document promulgated in 1965. However, I would like to suggest that that final text expressed the whole purpose of the council, in that it was the ultimate working out of Pope John’s prayer for a new Pentecost. Gaudium et Spes is sometimes treated as an appendix to Lumen Gentium, an afterword, a final message of goodwill toward the world. However, it is much more than that. In his book, Sources of Renewal, written in the 1970s to explain the council to his diocese of Krakow, Karol Wojtyła, said that GS complements and completes LG, which 28 See the apparent distinction between reading the Scriptures and celebrating the Eucharist in Sacrosanctum Concilium, 6, 106; also in the Vatican Council II, Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church Christus Dominus (October 28, 1965), 11.
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sounds as if indeed it should be regarded as the secondary text. However, he then explained in what way GS complements and completes LG, namely “because it reveals what the Church essentially is,” which suddenly reverses the priority. It is GS which expresses the very essence of the church. How might that be? Well, he explained: “The redemptive work of Jesus Christ which determines the inmost nature of the church is in fact the redemption of the world.”29 The clear implication is that the inmost nature of the church, which is what LG considers in great depth, is in fact determined by the church’s mission in the world, profoundly pondered in GS, which results from the redemption of the world by Christ, and that therefore it is GS that provides the essential context for LG. In order to know how the church should be structured, we have to know what purpose it is meant to fulfill. In short, as GS explains, the church is essentially outward going, on mission in the world, and LG explains the inner composition and structure of such a church. The clue is already there in the opening words of LG: Lumen gentium cum sit Christus;30 since Christ is the light of the world, it is the church’s task to transmit that light, and everything that follows serves that purpose. GS is like an extended commentary on those opening five words of LG, making sure that everyone understands the big picture. That twofold idea of the church in its inner and outer aspects was, in fact, a key organizing principle of the council, formulated by one of its leading figures, Cardinal Léon-Josef Suenens of Malines-Brussels, one of the pioneers of Catholic awareness of the Holy Spirit, in 1962. Suenens recalls that, early in 1962, Pope John asked him who was looking after the overall plan of the council. He replied frankly that no one was! Pope John asked him to draw up such a plan, not to be imposed on the council, but to be offered as and when necessary. By the end of December 1962, the need for some kind of programme was apparent to all, and Suenens presented his idea. He proposed that all the council’s texts should be grouped under two headings: first, those dealing with the church ad extra, “that is the Church as it faces 29 Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council (London: HarperCollins, 1980), 35, 80. 30 Lumen Gentium, 1.
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the world of today,” and secondly, those dealing with the church ad intra, namely with “the Church in itself,” but, as he said, “with the aim of helping it better to respond to its mission in the world.”31 So, there again is the idea that inner considerations are at the service of the church’s outward orientation. Suenens summarized his point very simply: “the central question for the whole Council,” he said, “could be this: How is the church of the twentieth century measuring up to the Master’s last command: Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you.”32 “To respond to the Savior’s command,” he said, “the whole Church must be put ‘on a mission footing.’” 33 It may be noted that Pope Francis’s recent urging, which he himself described as having “programmatic significance,” that the church “throughout the world” should be “permanently in a state of mission”34 strikingly echoes the programmatic proposal of Suenens, which was adopted by the council. So LG and GS should be seen as intimately united. The church examined in such detail in LG is a church in the modern world, called to work for the world’s salvation. Its nature cannot be separated from its mission, or, perhaps better, its nature is one of mission. Let us pursue that point. The idea of communion is fundamental both to LG and to GS. Quoting St. Cyprian, LG teaches that the church is “a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit;”35 it is “a communion of life, love and truth.”36 GS reiterates that point, saying that when Jesus prayed to the Father “that they may all be one . . . even as we are one” (Jn 17:21–22), he “opened up new horizons closed to human reason by implying that there is a
31 Cardinal Léon-Josef Suenens, “A Plan for the Whole Council,” in Vatican II by Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole, 88–105 (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), 92. 32 “A Plan for the Whole Council,” 97. 33 “A Plan for the Whole Council,” 98. 34 Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (November 24, 2013), 25. 35 Lumen Gentium, 4. See St. Cyprian, De Orat. Dom., 23 (Patrologia Latina [PL hereafter] 4, 556). 36 Lumen Gentium, 9.
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certain parallel between the union existing among the divine persons and the union of the [children] of God in truth and love.”37 God wants “everyone to be saved” (1Tm 2:4); “Christ died for all,” as GS says in its most famous section 22, to which we shall return, and salvation is to be found in a life of communion, participating in the very life of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the fact is that that very God has gone out of himself on mission, so to speak, by his whole purpose of creation and redemption, with immediate consequences for the church which participates in his life. On the penultimate day of the council, along with GS, the council promulgated its Decree on the Missionary Activity of the church, Ad Gentes (AG), in which it said: “The Church on earth is by its very nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Spirit.”38 We might therefore aptly say that the church is an evangelizing communion, a missionary communion, because the God whose life we share is a missionary communion. In its communion life, in other words, the church is forever looking outward to the world; it is a sacrament, sign and instrument, of communion. That idea—sacrament of unity, universal sacrament of salvation, sacrament of God’s love for humanity—ripples not only through LG (1, 9, 48) and GS (42, 45), but also through SC (5, 26), again uniting the great texts on the church, and now connecting them both with the constitution on the liturgy. The church is constituted as a missionary communion, and, as Joseph Ratzinger once said: “Its worship is its constitution,” since, as he explained, “of its nature it is itself the service of God and thus of men and women, the service of transforming the world.”39 Returning to our interim picture of the relationship between the council’s constitutions, therefore, we might say that the circle representing LG, which contains the circle for SC, is radiating outward to the world, GS being the expression of that radiance.
37 Gaudium et Spes, 24. 38 Vatican Council II, Ad Gentes (December 7, 1965), 1. 39 Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics (Slough: St. Paul Publications, 1988), 8.
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GAUDIUM ET SPES So, let us consider Gaudium et Spes and the big picture, and then work back inward, and let us pay particular attention, as we do so, to some further remarkable teachings of the council on the work of the Holy Spirit. There is great power and scope of the council’s statement in GS 11 that: “The people of God believes that it is led by the Spirit of the Lord who fills the whole world.” We see how the council understands the world at large; it is a world filled by the Spirit, who blows where he wills (cf. Jn 3:8). The Spirit blows everywhere, calling everyone to salvation in Christ, as GS 22 explains. This passage maps a vital middle ground between two well-known extremes, respectively known as exclusivism and pluralism, the first of which says that unless a person expressly acknowledges Jesus Christ as their God and savior they cannot be saved, which seems to be hard on those who have never even heard the holy name of Jesus, while the second says that there are many paths to God and that the way of Christ is only one of them, which contradicts the Christian conviction that Christ is the one savior of the world. The council carefully steered between those extremes, and said: “since Christ died for all, and since all . . . are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery.”40 Yes, there is only one way of salvation, namely through the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, and the church knows and celebrates that mystery regularly in its sacraments, as GS 22 says, incidentally echoing SC 6; but, in ways known only to God, every single human being is invited by the Spirit to participate in that same mystery and so to find salvation. It follows that only God can judge what the response of each one has been; but we might perhaps say that a certain likeness to Christ in terms of a life of love and selfsacrifice for others would be likely signs of a salvific response to the invitation of the Spirit, even if the person concerned had never even heard of Christ. So, once again, here with regard to the world at large, there is more going on than meets the eye! The Spirit is at work everywhere with an 40 Gaudium et Spes, 22.
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invitation to salvation, and the church, led by the same Spirit, exists in that context as the sacrament of salvation, the authorized presence of Christ and interpreter of the works of the Spirit in the midst of a world saved by Christ and full of the Spirit, the place where the God who is implicitly active everywhere is explicitly named and praised, the true home for those who respond to the Spirit. It is no surprise to see the famous quote from St. Augustine at the very end of GS 21, leading into the crucial teaching of GS 22: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”41 The Spirit responds to the restlessness in every human heart, and perhaps even kindles that restlessness. It is the natural restlessness for God in those who are made in the image of God, a restlessness fulfilled only through union with Christ, who is the true “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), as GS 22 says, citing St. Paul. In a memorable phrase, which echoes Henri de Lubac and perhaps has links with Pascal’s Pensées, the council says: “Christ the Lord . . . in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself, and brings to light his most high calling.”42 Since the Spirit is at work in the whole world, and the church has no monopoly on the Spirit, it follows that the church needs to be attentive to the world for possible signs of the Spirit’s activity, which will always be of relevance to the church. GS says that the church “tries to discern in the events, the needs, and the longings which it shares with other people of our time, what may be genuine signs of the presence or of the purpose of God.”43 The same Holy Spirit guides that very discernment, which is the task of all the faithful. “With the help of the Holy Spirit, it is the task of the whole people of God, particularly its pastors and theologians, to listen to and distinguish the many voices of our times and to interpret them in the light of the divine Word, in order that the revealed truth may be more deeply penetrated, better
41 St. Augustine, Confessions 1, 1, 1. 42 Gaudium et Spes, 22. See Henri de Lubac, Catholicism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 339: “By revealing the Father and by being revealed by him, Christ completes the revelation of man to himself.” Also, Pascal, Pensées, 547 (548): “Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ.” 43 Gaudium et Spes, 11.
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understood, and more suitably presented.”44 In short, while the world certainly has much to learn from the church, it is also true that the church learns from the world. In its document, Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria (2012), the International Theological Commission (ITC) emphasized the need for theologians to be in dialogue with the world, precisely because the Spirit is active there, too, and it pointed to a particular fruit of that dialogue: “the more acute understanding of the world that results,” it said, “cannot fail to prompt a more penetrating appreciation of Christ the Lord and of the Gospel, since Christ is the Saviour of the world.”45
LUMEN GENTIUM Having clarified the Spirit-filled context within which the Spiritfilled church exists, let us now move inward, so to speak, and return to LG. The idea of GS that with the help of the Holy Spirit the whole people of God has the responsibility of reading the signs of the times is closely related to the ground-breaking teaching of LG that, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the people of God as a whole shares in the prophetic office of Christ.46 That teaching, in turn, owes much to the influence of Yves Congar, who, along with others such as de Lubac, understood there to have been a major change in the understanding of the church in the West around the start of the second millennium, a change which contributed to the schism between West and East, Catholics and Orthodox, traditionally dated to 1054, a change which they sought to reverse through their own work, which exerted a major influence on Vatican II. Congar referred to it as a change from “an ecclesiology of the ecclesia” or of “communion” to “an ecclesiology of powers.”47 The powers he intended were twofold, power of order and power of jurisdiction, both of which were exercised in various ways by the church’s hierarchy of ordained ministers in a church pyramidally understood, the pope at 44 Gaudium et Spes, 44. 45 International Theological Commission, Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria (2012), 55. 46 Gaudium et Spes, 44 (cf. 4) and Lumen Gentium, 12, respectively. 47 Yves Congar, “L’« Ecclesia» sujet de l’action liturgique,” in La Liturgie après Vatican II: Bilans, études, prospective, ed. J.-P. Jossua & Y. Congar (Paris: Cerf, 1967), 261.
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the top of the pyramid having the fullness of power, plenitudo potestatis,48 and the laity at the bottom being powerless. Vatican II says nothing about those two powers, which had dominated scholastic discussion of the church until the twentieth century, and speaks instead of the three offices (munera) of Christ, as prophet, priest, and king, respectively, in which all of the baptized, and not just the ordained ministers, participate in their own proper ways.49 So, everyone has gifts that they are called to exercise for the benefit of the church and the world at large. Congar’s book, Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (1953, 1964), translated as Lay People in the Church (1957, 1965), played a large part in the recovery of the patristic idea of the three offices. The second half of LG 12 speaks broadly about the “special graces” distributed by the Holy Spirit “among the faithful of every rank” so as to make them “fit and ready to undertake various tasks and offices for the renewal and building up of the Church.” Congar himself saw that as a prime example of the council’s teaching on charisms, which was one of the most important ways in which the council had developed what he called a “pneumatological ecclesiology,” which had given the church “a new face . . . quite different from the one that the earlier pyramidal and clerical ecclesiology presented.”50 That new face was reflected in the revised ordering of the chapters in LG itself, whereby the chapter on the people of God as a whole, chapter two, which includes section 12, precedes rather than follows the chapter on the hierarchy, to show that the members of the hierarchy are themselves first baptized members of the people of God, whom they are then called to serve, rather than being superior to the people.51 The idea that the people of God as a whole participates in the prophetic office of Christ, presented in the first half of LG 12, probably needs to be distinguished from the subsequent discussion of charisms strictly speaking, since that participation is enjoyed by all the faithful, 48 See McPartlan, A Service of Love, 25, 29–35. 49 See Lumen Gentium, 31, 21, 28, 29, respectively, for the participation of the faithful, bishops, presbyters, and deacons in the three offices of Christ, each in their own way. 50 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith, vol. 1 (New York/London: Seabury Press/Geoffrey Chapman, 1983), 170. 51 See Yves Congar, “The Church: The People of God,” Concilium 1, no.1 (1965), 7–19.
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rather than being one of many specific gifts distributed to different members of the faithful. Nevertheless, the council places the two ideas in close proximity, and they are clearly related, as works of the Spirit. The council links the participation of all the faithful in Christ’s prophetic office, thanks to the anointing of the Spirit (cf. 1 Jn 2:20, 27), to the sensus fidei, namely the “supernatural appreciation of the faith” that all the baptized have, which in turn means, as it says, that “the whole body of the faithful . . . cannot err in matters of belief.”52 The sensus fidei, it says, is “aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth,” and thanks to it “the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (magisterium), and obeying it, receives not the mere word of men, but truly the word of God (cf. 1 Thes 2:13).”53 In its most recent document, the ITC gives considerable thought to the sensus fidei, traditionally understood as an instinct by which the faithful recognize the truth of the gospel and reject false teaching, rather as a music lover might react to false notes in a musical performance,54 and it suggests that while that reactive understanding of the sensus fidei is most familiar, just as important is the prospective and proactive aspect of the sensus fidei. The sensus fidei “gives an intuition of the right way forward” for the Christian and the church. “It animates the life of faith and guides authentic Christian action.’55 That fits with the council’s association of the sensus fidei with participation in the prophetic office of Christ, which presumably entails witness in word and action, and with the council’s teaching that, thanks to the sensus fidei, the people of God not only adhere to the faith and penetrate it more deeply, but also “[apply] it more fully in daily life.”56 That prospective and proactive aspect makes the sensus fidei “a vital resource for the new evangelization” to which Pope Francis,57 like Pope St. John Paul II,58 has committed the church. 52 Lumen Gentium, 12. 53 Lumen Gentium, 12. 54 International Theological Commission, Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church (2014), 49, 62. 55 Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church, 70. 56 Lumen Gentium, 12. 57 See Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 119–120. 58 See Pope St. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (January 6, 2001), 40.
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DEI VERBUM The relationship between the sensus fidei and the magisterium59 is a delicate and very topical issue.60 For a proper understanding of the relationship, both need to be recognized as manifestations of the Spirit’s work in the church, and that is helpfully clarified by the remaining constitution of Vatican II, Dei Verbum, to which I would like finally to turn. As Robert Murray says, Dei Verbum is “theologically the most fundamental of the documents of Vatican II,” and “the most theologically concentrated” of the four constitutions.61 It and LG are the only ones designated as “dogmatic” constitutions. The discussion of this particular draft extended over all four sessions of the council, from 1962–1965, and in some ways encapsulated the overall drama of the council itself. Ratzinger says that the discussion “took place in an atmosphere of restless theological ferment and sometimes almost risked being overwhelmed by it.”62 The story began when a schema or draft text entitled, “The Sources of Divine Revelation,” was rejected on November 20, 1962. Congar commented that that date and action would “be recognized in the history of the Church as marking the definitive close of the counter-Reformation, because on that day the Council Fathers by a majority vote rejected a document that was too little ecumenical and too inspired by anti-Protestant Catholicism.”63 Pope John directed that a new draft should be prepared by a new joint commission, co-chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office and Cardinal Bea, the president of the newly established Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity and a long-respected biblical scholar.
59 See ITC, Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church, 74–80. 60 See the recent Extraordinary Synod on “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization” (2014). 61 Robert Murray, SJ, “Revelation (Dei Verbum),” in Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After, ed. Adrian Hastings (London: SPCK, 1991), 74. 62 Joseph Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Origin and Background,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, vol.3 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 155. 63 Yves Congar, quoted in “La schéma sur la Révélation,” Documentation Catholique LXI (November 1, 1964), cols.1393–1394; quoted in turn in Gabriel Moran, Theology of Revelation (London: Search Press, 1973), 7.
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In the end, Dei Verbum resolved the polemic between Catholics and Protestants regarding whether there were two sources of revelation, namely Scripture and tradition, or only one, scriptura sola, by getting behind the issue, so to speak. Prior to both Scripture and tradition is the person of Christ, and DV proclaimed that he “himself [is] both the mediator and the sum total of Revelation.”64 His gospel is “the source [n.b., in the singular] of all saving truth and moral discipline.”65 “Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God,” it said, and then specified that that deposit is “entrusted to the Church,” that is, to “the entire holy people, united to its pastors,”66 a remarkable statement, indicating the responsibility of the church as a whole, and not just of the bishops, for maintaining and transmitting the gospel. The sensus fidei is again relevant here, and DV gives crucial teaching regarding the role of the faithful as a whole and the specific role of the magisterium, both being placed under the sign of the Holy Spirit. First of all, “the Tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit,”67 it says, and this happens primarily “through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts.” It happens thanks to what DV calls the “intimate knowledge [intelligentia] of spiritual realties which they experience,”68 implicitly recognizing, it would seem, the sensus fidei. But at that point the council also invokes the charisma veritatis certum, as St. Irenaeus called it,69 given by the Holy Spirit to the bishops. The tradition makes progress, it says, also “from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth,”70 and it specifies that “the task of giving an authentic [i.e. authoritative] interpretation of the Word of God . . . has been entrusted to the living Magisterium 64 Dei Verbum, 2. 65 Dei Verbum, 7. 66 Dei Verbum, 10. 67 Dei Verbum, 8. 68 Dei Verbum, 8. 69 See St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4, 26, 2. 70 Dei Verbum, 8.
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of the Church alone,” which it hastens to stress “is not superior to the Word of God, but its servant.”71 Thus it is that the church as a whole, as a communion, under the guidance of its pastors, is maintained in the truth by the Holy Spirit. Catholic biblical scholars describe Pope Pius XII’s encyclical letter, Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) as a magna carta. It permitted them to use “modern tools,” long suspected by the Catholic Church, in their exegesis.72 DV endorsed that permission and directed exegetes to pay attention among other things to “literary forms” so as to determine what each sacred writer, in his own time and culture, intended to express.73 However, it pointed out that while such techniques are necessary, they are not in themselves sufficient for a proper understanding of the biblical text. As the draft text developed, council fathers urged that attention should also be paid to the unity of Scripture as a whole, to the tradition of the church, and to the analogy of faith, but in the final text, probably thanks to a remarkable speech at the council by the Melkite Archbishop Edelby of Edessa in October 1964, a remarkable principle was stated to introduce those three extra conditions and to explain their profound rationale. They are important, it was said, “because sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the same Spirit [with a capital “S”] in whom [or “by whom”] it was written [cum Sacra Scriptura eodem Spiritu quo scripta est etiam legenda et interpretanda sit].”74 In his speech, offering an invaluable Eastern contribution to the council’s deliberations, Edelby promoted that basic principle of patristic exegesis: the Scriptures must be read in the Holy Spirit.75 Since the Spirit inspired the whole of Scripture, guided and guides the course of tradition, and gives the gift of faith with its interconnected fabric 71 Dei Verbum, 10. 72 See, Raymond Brown and Thomas Aquinas Collins, “Church Pronouncements,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Roland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990), §72.6 (1167–1168). 73 Dei Verbum, 12. 74 Dei Verbum, 12. Amended translation. 75 See Thomas J. McGovern, “The Interpretation of Scripture ‘in the Spirit’: The Edelby Intervention at Vatican II,” Irish Theological Quarterly 64 (1999): 245–259, here at 248–249, also 246. See also, Ignace de la Potterie, “Reading Holy Scripture ‘in the Spirit’: Is the Patristic Way of Reading the Bible Still Possible Today?,” Communio 13, no.4 (Winter 1986): 308–325.
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of belief, all of those must be taken into account when the meaning of any particular passage, inspired by the same Spirit, is sought. By the same logic, it may be said that the Scriptures must also be interpreted under the guidance of the pastors whom the same Spirit has given to the church. The necessary role of the magisterium is thereby readily acknowledged and integrated into the overall framework of a truly spiritual exegesis, which can likewise be described as a truly ecclesial exegesis, since the Spirit is the Spirit of communion and koinonia. The manifold works of the Spirit thus constitute the necessary matrix for the authentic interpretation of Scripture. Edelby believed that just as the Spirit was invoked in the eucharistic epiclesis to transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, an epiclesis was likewise needed so that the written word might become the living Word of God. “Sacred Tradition” was that epiclesis, “the theophany of the Holy Spirit, without which the history of the world is incomprehensible, and Scripture a dead letter.” Moreover, he believed that the primary place for such a proclamation of the word was in the celebration of the Eucharist. Scripture is “the testimony of the Holy Spirit about the Christ event,” and the “privileged moment” of that testimony is “the Eucharistic celebration.”76
CONCLUSION That conviction takes us back to the Constitution on the Liturgy, the first of the council’s constitutions, where the various presences of Christ in the liturgy were identified. The council repeated the teaching of Pope Pius XII in another major encyclical letter, Mediator Dei (1947), but with a notable addition. Pope Pius had said that Christ was present in the sacrifice of the altar, in the person of his minister, and especially “under the Eucharistic species”; also, that he was present in the sacraments and finally in the community at prayer, in accordance with his promise: “When two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20).77 SC 7 repeated 76 McGovern, “The Interpretation of Scripture ‘in the Spirit,’” 249. See also, Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 137, 174. 77 Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Mediator Dei (November 20, 1947), 19 (DS 3840).
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that teaching, but added mention of another presence: “He is present in his word since it is he himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church.” That teaching, I would like to suggest, can provide a key to the synthesis of the council’s teaching that I have been developing here. It gives us good grounds for locating DV within the circle for SC in the diagram I have been constructing to show the relationship between the council’s four constitutions. At the very center of the whole diagram stands Christ himself, and DV describes how we should understand him within the whole saving purpose of God. “It pleased God,” says DV, “in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (Eph 1:9).” “His will was that [human beings] should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph 2:18; 2 Pt 1:4). By this revelation, then, the invisible God (cf. Col 1:15; 1 Tm 1:17), from the fullness of his love, addresses men [and women] as his friends (cf. Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14–15), and moves among them (cf. Bar 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company.”78 That dramatic and compelling idea of God sending his only Son to dialogue with humanity and to draw us into communion with him and with one another in the Holy Spirit can indeed serve as the unifying motif for the teaching of the council as a whole. In the liturgy, most of all, Christ comes among us and dialogues with his people, drawing us into an ever deeper union with him, as the liturgy of the word progresses into the liturgy of the Eucharist and we receive the body and blood of the Lord, the effect of which, as LG says, quoting Pope St. Leo the Great, is “to accomplish our transformation into that which we receive.”79 Transformed into Christ, the Church itself is then sent out, Ite missa est, so that in and through its members Christ may continue the dialogue of salvation with the people of today. On October 19, 1964, in the midst of the third session of the council, Vatican radio broadcast a talk in Polish by Archbishop Karol Wojtyła of Krakow, in which he said: “Although none of the completed 78 Dei Verbum, 2; cf. 21, 25. 79 Lumen Gentium, 26. St. Leo, Serm. 63, 7 (PL 54, 357C).
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constitutions or directives has the human person as its specific topic, the person lies deep within the entire conciliar teaching that is slowly emerging from our labors.” Properly to understand the work of the Church in relation to the human person, he said, “will be an enormous contribution, as far as the pastoral aim of the Council is concerned.”80 That is a most interesting interpretation of what it means to call Vatican II a “pastoral council,” indicating that it has to do with understanding the saving purpose of God as being personal, focused on the person of his Son, the Word of God, who took flesh by the power of the Spirit to dialogue with human persons and to draw us and the whole of creation to himself and so to God in the power of the same Spirit. Suddenly we see that the four constitutions all have that personal key. Christ himself is “both the mediator and the sum total of revelation,” says DV 2. Christ himself is “the light of humanity,” says LG 1, and “by his incarnation” he has united himself with every single human being, revealing not only God to man, but “man to man himself,” says GS 22.81 In a way known to God, all are invited by the Holy Spirit to participate in his paschal mystery and so to find salvation,82 and the purpose of all the Church’s apostolic endeavors, as SC teaches, is that those who are made children of God by faith and baptism should “come together to praise God in the midst of his Church,” taking part in the Lord’s Supper and the sacrifice of Christ,83 because that is what the liturgy is, Christ’s own act of praise and worship, in which he “always associates the Church with himself.”84 In other words, as the circles of the diagram show (see Figure 1), representing the four constitutions of Vatican II, the life and work of the church ripple outward from the person of Christ at the center, the Word made flesh, most powerfully present in the liturgy, and especially in the Eucharist, which makes the Church, gathering it, but then sending it back out into the world—so the arrows point outward. But 80 “On the Dignity of the Human Person,” in Karol Wojtyła, Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 177–180, here at 177. 81 Amended translation. 82 Gaudium et Spes, 22. 83 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10. 84 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7.
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CHURCH
LI T U R GY
GS E WORLD H T IN
WORD
CHRIST X DV SC
IN T
GS HE WORLD
LG Figure 1: Four Constitutions of Vatican II
ultimately all is gathered back to him. The purpose of our going out is precisely to gather in, and that is why the dotted arrows turn back inward, so that, in the words of the council, we and all creation might ultimately give thanks to God “‘for his inexpressible gift’ (2 Cor 9:15) in Christ Jesus, . . . through the power of the Holy Spirit.”85
85 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 6.
Suggested Further Reading Alison, James. The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes. New York: Crossroad, 1998. ———. Knowing Jesus. London: SPCK, 1998. Allchin, A. M. “Martyrdom.” Sobornost 6 (1984): 19–29. Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, “The Gift of Authority.” http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/ it/dialoghi/sezione-occidentale/comunione-anglicana/dialogo/ arcic-ii/1999-il-dono-dell-autorita-autorita-nella-chiesa-iii/ fr.html. Arendt, Hannah. “Irreversibility and the Power to Forgive” and “Unpredictability and the Power of Promise.” In The Human Condition, 236–243; 243–247. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Augustine of Hippo. The Trinity. Edited by John E. Rotelle. Translated by Edmund Hill. Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1991. ———. “Sermon 267 (On the Day of Pentecost).” In Sermons. Edited by John E. Rotelle. Translated by Edmund Hill. Vol. 3, 274–276. New Rochelle, N.Y.: New City Press, 1993. Basil of Caesaraea. On the Holy Spirit. Translated by Stephen M. Hildebrand. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980. Baumeister, Theofried. “Martyrdom and Persecution in Early Christianity.” Concilium 163 (1983): 3–8.
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Bianchi, Enzo. “The Centrality of the Word of God.” In The Reception of Vatican II, edited by G. Alberigo, J.-P. Jossua, and J. Komonchak, 115–36. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987. Boff, Leonardo. “Martyrdom: An Attempt at Systematic Reflection.” Concilium 163 (1983): 12–16. Bonner, Gerald. “Martyrdom: Its Place in the Church.” Sobornost 5 (1983): 6–21. Bulgakov, Sergius. The Comforter. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004. Chenu, Bruno, et al. The Book of Christian Martyrs. Translated by John Bowden. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Chryssavgis, John. “The World of the Icon and Creation: An Orthodox Perspective on Ecology and Pneumatology.” In Christianity and Ecology, edited by D. Hessel and R. Ruether, 83–96. Cambridge, Mass: Center for the Study of World Religions, 2000. Clifford, Anne. “Feminist Perspectives on Science: Implications for an Ecological Theology of Creation.” In Readings in Ecology and Feminist Theology, edited by Mary Heather MacKinnon and Moni McIntyre, 334–360. Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed & Ward, 1995. Coakley, Sarah. God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay on the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Congar, Yves. I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Vols. 1–3. New York: Seabury Press, 1983. Denaux, A., D. Donnelly, and J. Famerée ed. The Holy Spirit, the Church, and Christian Unity: Proceedings of the Consultation Held at the Monastery of Bose, Italy (14–20 October 2002). Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005. Edinger, Edward F. “Encounter with the Self.” In Ego and Archetype: Individuation and Religious Function of the Psyche, 62–104. Boston: Shambhala, 1992. Edwards, Denis. Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2004.
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Eichrodt, Walther. Theology of the Old Testament. Translated by John A. Baker. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967. Faith and Order (WCC). “Witness unto Death.” In Sharing in One Hope: Reports and Documents from the Meeting of the Faith and Order Commission at Bangalore 1978. Paper No. 92. 195–202. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1978. Florensky, Pavel. The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Translated by Boris Jakim. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Gnanadason, Aruna. “Toward a Feminist Eco-Theology for India.” In Women Healing Earth, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether, 74–81. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996. Gregory Nazianzen. “Fifth Theological Oration (On the Holy Spirit).” In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, edited by Philip Schaff. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Gregory of Nyssa. Homilies on the Song of Songs. Translated by Richard Norris Jr. Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2012. Gregory Palamas. “Topics of Natural and Theological Science.” In Philokalia, translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, Vol. 4, 358–371. London: Faber, 1995. Groupe des Dombes. “One Teacher”: Doctrinal Authority in the Church. Translated by Catherine E. Clifford. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. Habets, Myk. “Getting Beyond the Filioque with Third Article Theology.” In Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the Twentyfirst Century, edited by Myk Habets. 211–230. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Haught, John. “Ecology and Eschatology.” In And God Saw That It Was Good: Catholic Theology and the Environment, edited by Drew Christiansen and Walter Grazer, 47–64. Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1996. Hughes, Robert D. “The Historic Ought-to-Be and the Spirit of Hope.” In A Heart for the Future: Writings on Christian Hope, edited by Robert B. Slocum, 109–120. New York: Church Publishing, 2004.
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———. Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in Christian Life. New York: Continuum, 2008. International Theological Commission. Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria. 2011. ———. Sensus fidei in the life of the Church. 2014. John of the Cross. “The Living Flame of Love.” In The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, 704–715. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991. Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad, 1992. Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. “The Sacrament of Order in the Sacramental Structure of the Church with Particular Reference to the Importance of Apostolic Succession for Sanctification and Unity of the People of God.” [The Valamo Statement (1988)]. http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-ditradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-ildialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-inglese2. html. Kilmartin, Edward J. The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2004. Kraybill, Donald B., Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher. “The Surprise” and “Amish Grace and the Rest of Us.” In Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, 43–52; 173–83. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Lampe, G. W. H. “Martyrdom and Inspiration.” In Suffering and Martyrdom in the New Testament, edited by W. Horbury and B. McNeil, 118–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Lash, Ephrem (ed.). The Divine Liturgy of Our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom. Oxford: Oxford University Press/Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, 1995.
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Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997. Maximus the Confessor. “Centuries on Love.” In Philokalia, translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, Vol. 2, 60–67. London: Faber, 1981. McDonnell, Kilian. The Other Hand of God: The Holy Spirit as the Universal Touch and Goal. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003. McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. McGovern, Thomas J. “The Interpretation of Scripture ‘in the Spirit’: the Edelby Intervention at Vatican II.” Irish Theological Quarterly 64, no. 3 (1999): 245–259. Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985. ———. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Montague, George T. The Holy Spirit: The Growth of a Biblical Tradition. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1976. North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, “The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue? An Agreed Statement of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation. Saint Paul’s College, Washington, D.C. October 25, 2003.” In The Journey Toward Unity: The Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue Statements, Vol. 1, edited by Ronald Roberson, Thomas FitzGerald, and J. Figel, 153–183. Fairfax, Va.: Eastern Christian Publications, 2016. O’Gara, Margaret and Michael Vertin. “The Holy Spirit’s Assistance to the Magisterium in Teaching.” In Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 51 (1996): 125–142.
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O’Meara, Thomas F. “Divine Grace and Human Nature as Sources for the Universal Magisterium of Bishops.” Theological Studies 64, no. 4 (2003): 683–706. Peacocke, Arthur. “The Cost of New Life.” In The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, edited by John Polkinghorne, 21–42. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001. Pope Francis. Evangelii Gaudium. Apostolic Exhortation. November 13, 2013. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, “Divine Names.” In PseudoDionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, 71–96. The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1987. Rahner, Karl. “The Teaching Office of the Church in the PresentDay Crisis of Authority.” In Confrontations, translated by David Bourke, 3–30. Theological Investigations 12. New York: Seabury, 1974. ———. “Dimensions of Martyrdom: A Plea for the Broadening of a Classical Concept.” Concilium 163 (1983): 9–11. Roberts, J. Deotis. Black Theology in Dialogue. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987. Rogers, Eugene F. After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “Eco-Feminism and Theology.” In Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, edited by David Hallman, 179–185. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994. Rush, Ormond. The Eyes of Faith: Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Ruysbroeck, Jan van. The Book of the Twelve Béguines. Translated by John Francis. London: John Watkins, 1913.
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Rynne, Terrence J. “Rethinking Christian Salvation in the Light of Gandhi’s Satagraha.” In Gandhi and Jesus: The Saving Power of Nonviolence. 133–184. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2008. Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988. Schneiders, Sandra M. “The Raising of the New Temple: John 20.19–23 and Johannine Ecclesiology.” New Testament Studies 52, no. 3 (July 2006): 337–355. Staniloae, Dumitru. Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar. Translated by Archimandrite Jerome (Newville) and Otilia Kloos. South Canaan, Pa.: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002. Teresa of Avila. “The Interior Castle.” In The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, Vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1980. 427–451. Vatican Council II. Sacrosanctum Concilium. Constitution. December 4, 1963. ———. Lumen Gentium. Dogmatic Constitution. November 21, 1964. ———. Dei Verbum. Dogmatic Constitution. November 18, 1965. ———. Gaudium et Spes. Pastoral Constitution. December 7, 1965. Wainwright, Geoffrey. “The Holy Spirit.” In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, edited by C. Gunton, 273–295. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Wallace, Mark. “The Wounded Spirit as the Basis for Hope in an Age of Radical Ecology.” In Christianity and Ecology, edited by Dieter Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, 51–72. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Ware, Kallistos. “The Holy Spirit in the Personal Life of the Christian.” In Unity of the Spirit—Diversity in the Churches, 139–169. The Report of the Conference of European Churches’ Assembly VIII, 18–25 October 1979, Crete.
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———. “What Is a Martyr?” Sobornost 5 (1983): 7–18. Weinandy, Thomas. “The Filioque: Beyond Athanasius and Thomas Aquinas: An Ecumenical Proposal.” In Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Myk Habets, 185–197. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. William of St. Thierry. Exposition on the Song of Songs. Translated by Columba Hart. Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970. ———. The Golden Epistle. Translated by Theodore Berkeley. Spencer, Mass: Cistercian Publications, 1971. ———. On Contemplating God. Translated by Sister Penelope. Spencer, Mass: Cistercian Publications, 1971. Williams, Rowan. “The Theological World of the Philokalia.” In The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, edited by Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, 102–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Yannaras, Christos. “The Holy Spirit as Liberating Power.” In Unity of the Spirit—Diversity in the Churches. The Report of the Conference of European Churches’ Assembly VIII, 18–25 October 1979, Crete. Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985. ———. “The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox Tradition.” One in Christ 24 (1988): 294–303.
Contributor Biographies Sarah Coakley Sarah Coakley, FBA, is the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity Emerita, Cambridge University, and currently Honorary Professor at the Logos Institute, St. Andrews University, and Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne and Rome). She is also an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Earlier in her career she was Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr., Professor of Divinity at Harvard University Divinity School (1995–2007), Tutorial Fellow and University Lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford (1991–1993), and Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Lancaster (1976–1991). Sarah Coakley’s work encompasses the fields of systematic theology and philosophy of religion, and interdisciplinarity is a consistent feature of her work, especially in relation to the social sciences and natural sciences. She is at work on a systematic theology, the first volume of which was published as God, Sexuality and the Self (2013). Her Gifford lectures on evolutionary cooperation and theology were given at Aberdeen in 2012.
Brian E. Daley Brian E. Daley, SJ, is the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) and a Senior Jesuit Scholar at Georgetown University. A 1961 graduate of Fordham University (New York), he studied ancient history and philosophy at Merton College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, from 1961 to 1964, then entered
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the Society of Jesus. After theological studies in Frankfurt, Germany, and ordination to the priesthood in 1970, he returned to Oxford to do a DPhil in the Faculty of Theology, from 1972 until 1978. He then taught historical theology for eighteen years at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before moving to Notre Dame in 1996. He was awarded the Ratzinger Prize in Theology by Pope Benedict XVI in November 2012, the first American to receive that honor.
Richard R. Gaillardetz Richard R. Gaillardetz is the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College. He received an MA and PhD in systematic theology from the University of Notre Dame. He has published over 170 articles and authored or edited 14 books. Most recently, he is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II, released in 2020. Gaillardetz is the recipient of the Sophia Award from the Washington Theological Union for theological excellence in service of ministry (2000) and the Yves Congar Award for theological excellence from Barry University (2018). He is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
Robert D. Hughes III Robert Hughes is a priest serving the Episcopal Church. He grew up in Dayton, Ohio, attending Oakwood schools, as well as Cranbrook School, Michigan, and Wellington College, Crowthorne, Berkshire. He received a BA from Yale, an MDiv from what is now the Episcopal Divinity School in Union Seminary, and, after serving congregations in Southern Ohio, he earned an MA and PhD in Theology from the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. In 1977 he was appointed to teach Systematic Theology and Christian Spirituality at the School of Theology, Sewanee: The University of the South, from which he retired in 2016 as Norma and Olan Mills Professor of Divinity, Emeritus. He and his wife, Barbara, served on the faculty of Msalato Theological College, St. John’s University, Dodoma, Tanzania, in 2010, 2012, and 2014. He was elected to the American Theological Society
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in 2010. Since retiring in 2016, Fr. Bob and Barbara have moved near family, to Oak Park, Illinois, where he now serves as “Theologian in Residence (retired)” at Grace Episcopal Church.
Elizabeth A. Johnson Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ, Distinguished Professor Emerita at Fordham University, has authored numerous books and articles translated into multiple languages, including She Who Is (on feminist God-talk), Ask the Beasts (on evolution), and Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril. Past president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Society, Dr. Johnson loves to teach and received the Fordham Teaching Award and Graduate Professor of the Year Award. She has mentored dozens of doctoral students who are now themselves professors. The recipient of fifteen honorary doctorates, she has been deeply involved in the life of the church, including serving on the national U.S. Lutheran–Catholic Dialogue and the Vatican-sponsored dialogue between science and religion.
Cardinal Walter Kasper Cardinal Kasper is President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which guides and serves the ecumenical activities of the Catholic Church, President Emeritus of the Catholic Church’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and past member of the International Theological Commission. Having taught at the University of Münster, the University of Tübingen, and the Catholic University of America, he has received numerous honorary doctorates and prestigious awards. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Faith and History (1970), Sacrament of Unity: Eucharist and Church (2004), Paths to Unity: Perspectives for Ecumenism (2005), Pope Francis: Revolution of Tenderness and Love (2015), and Jesus the Christ: The Collected Works of Walter Kasper (Revised Editon, 2018).
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John R. (Jack) Levison John R. (Jack) Levison holds the W. J. A. Power Chair of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Dr. Levison has done research at St. Andrews University, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, LudwigMaximilians-Universität München, and Oxford Brookes University. He has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the International Catacomb Society, the Louisville Institute, the Lilly Endowment, and the Rotary Foundation. His books on ancient pneumatology include Filled with the Spirit (2009), The Holy Spirit before Christianity (2020), and A Boundless God: The Spirit according to the Old Testament (2019), which received the 2020 CT Award of Merit. He and Priscilla Pope-Levison live in SMU’s Boaz Commons, where they are faculty-in-residence.
Paul G. McPartlan Paul G. McPartlan is a priest of the diocese of Westminster (UK) and Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism at the Catholic University of America. He has been a member of the international Roman Catholic–Orthodox theological dialogue since 2005 and was also a member of the international Roman Catholic–Methodist dialogue from 2002–2012. He served two terms on the Catholic Church’s International Theological Commission (2004–2009, 2009–2014). He is the author of The Eucharist Makes the Church (1993, 2006), Sacrament of Salvation (1995), A Service of Love (2013, 2016), and many articles on ecclesiology and ecumenism. He edited John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness (2006), and recently co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies (2021).
Sandra M. Schneiders Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, STD, was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1936 and has been a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary since 1955. She received a BA in philosophy from the University of Detroit in 1968, an STL in patristics from Institut
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Catholique (Paris) in 1971, and an STD in New Testament and Spirituality from Gregorian University (Rome) in 1975. She spent her professional career (1976–2021) on the faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley (now Santa Clara University) and the Graduate Theological Union, during which time she received six honorary doctorates; authored 17 books and over 200 chapters in books, articles in scholarly and pastoral journals, and encyclopedia; and received the John Courtney Murray Award in Theology, among numerous other awards in theology, spirituality, and biblical studies. She continues her lecturing, writing, and teaching from her current location in Monroe, Michigan.
Geoffrey Wainwright The late Geoffrey Wainwright, the Robert Earl Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University, was a prominent figure in ecumenical relations. He served as co-chair of the International Commission between the World Methodist Conference and the Roman Catholic Church. As a member of the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission, he was one of the primary contributors to the drafting of the convergence document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM). Dr. Wainwright was the author and editor of numerous books, including Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life (1997), Embracing Purpose: Essays on God, the World and the Church (2007), and Faith, Hope, and Love: The Ecumenical Trios of Virtues (2014). He was the president of Societas Liturgica and the American Theological Society.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware Born Timothy Ware, Metropolitan Kallistos was the Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford from 1966 to 2001. He is one of the founders and is President of the board of directors of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge. He established the Oxford parish of the Holy Trinity and was ordained to the episcopacy as Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, to serve as Auxiliary Bishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and
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Great Britain. Metropolitan Kallistos is a well-known lecturer and the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books, including The Orthodox Church (1963 and with several editions thereafter), The Orthodox Way (1979), How Are We Saved? The Understanding of Salvation in the Orthodox Tradition (1996), The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (2000), and Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century (2012), and is a co-translator of The Festal Menaion (1977), The Lenten Triodion (1978), and The Philokalia: The Complete Text (4 of 5 vols., 1979–1999; volume 5 is completed and with the publishers).
Index Abba, xvii, 23, 123, 159, 160, 243 Adoption, 165, 203, 242 Angels, x, 6, 7, 9–15, 19, 30, 45n37, 80, 118, 134, 138n49, 147 Anointed one, 47, 116, 276 Aquinas, Thomas, 34, 151n77, 154n1, 166, 207, 262, 291n72 Athanasius of Alexandria, xiv, 41, 134–36, 138, 154n1 Augustine of Hippo, xiv, 33, 42, 44, 97n20, 143–48, 162, 163, 165, 166, 170, 203, 219, 221, 232, 242, 265, 285 Baptism, xi, 33, 34, 42n27, 54n2, 57n7, 94, 95, 96, 105, 113, 114n46, 115, 120, 122, 135, 141, 147, 148, 160, 182–84, 226, 230, 248, 254, 260, 274 Basil of Caesarea, xiv, 16, 91, 92, 93, 109, 118, 120, 137, 138, 139, 141, 148, 161 Body: of Christ, 34, 64, 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108–11, 113, 114, 150, 225, 236, 238, 251, 257, 268, 279, 292; human, 26, 37, 39, 51, 59, 123, 178, 206, 229, 230, 231 Breath, xvi, 3, 4, 8, 53, 54, 57, 58, 63–65, 79, 90, 108, 127, 168, 199, 202, 213, 231, 232, 243, 249, 271, 272, 274 Cappadocians, 16, 17, 92, 94, 141 Charism/charisms, xvii, xix, 141, 186, 254, 255, 256, 287, 290
Charismatic, xiv, xv, 123, 124, 137, 151, 178, 180, 182–87, 190, 256 Christ: as the anointed one, 47, 116, 276; ascension of, 95, 236, 273; baptism of, 33, 95, 147, 160, 230; death of, 23, 31, 32, 33, 47, 66, 73, 84, 178. See also Body Church: and Christ, xv, 38, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 83, 113, 120, 121, 178, 214, 236, 251, 252, 255, 274, 276, 278, 281, 293, 294; and the Spirit, ix, xv, xvii, xviii, xix, 44, 58, 91n3, 102, 113, 121, 123, 125, 135, 137, 138, 150, 160, 178, 211, 214, 237–38, 248, 250, 252, 256, 257, 262, 263, 265, 267, 273–76, 285, 286, 289; and the Trinity, 99, 126n13, 150 Cloud, Spirit as, xi, xiii, xiv, xvi, 4, 17, 18, 135, 136, 140, 150, 153, 154, 160, 165, 179, 201, 207, 218, 219, 224, 231, 236, 237, 240, 242, 251, 275 Communion (or koinonia): in the Church, xviii, 49, 83, 98, 102, 114, 177–79, 192, 193, 236, 238, 258, 275, 282, 283, 286, 291, 293; in the Trinity, 98, 99, 150, 165, 241, 274, 292 Congar, Yves, 123n5, 178, 250, 251, 286, 287, 289 Cross, xvi, 26, 32, 33, 36, 38, 58, 60, 64, 66, 71n23, 77, 95, 149, 204, 226, 238, 265 Cyril of Alexandria, xiv, 34, 97n19, 142, 155
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Deification: divinization, 69, 135, 145, 150; theosis, 231, 238 Discernment of spirits, xviii, 186, 190, 258, 263, 285 Energy/energies, 68, 90, 127, 163, 197, 203, 225, 232, 233, 245, 246 Ephrem the Syrian, 111, 112n41, 113n43 Eschatology/eschatological, 23, 24, 43, 60, 90, 95, 151, 216, 231, 235, 238, 239, 250, 266, 267 Eucharist/eucharistic, xi, xii, xiii, xviii, 29, 33, 34, 47, 81, 91n3, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100–9, 110–12, 114–18, 120, 121, 151, 154, 252, 257, 258, 268, 275–80, 292–94 Father: relationship to Son, 79, 108, 125, 126, 133, 140, 141, 150, 160, 201; relationship to Spirit, 108, 125, 126, 133, 140, 141, 146, 148, 160, 201 Filioque, xiv, xviii, 91n3, 124, 146, 153–55, 164, 171, 219, 241, 242, 246 Fire, xiv, 6, 9, 44, 45, 75, 111, 112, 113, 149, 202, 207, 213, 248 Freedom and the Spirit, 104, 111, 123, 151, 152, 182, 196, 210
Heart, xvi, 24, 35, 41, 48, 50, 75, 85, 90, 120, 124, 162, 167, 189, 190, 204, 211, 212, 213, 215, 248, 254, 285, 290 Hypostasis/hypostases, 4, 15, 16, 17, 94, 115, 130, 144, 148. See also Person Illumination, 111n41, 132, 147, 157, 267 Incarnation, 225–28, 241, 247, 251, 264, 294 Inspiration, 23n1, 30, 31, 38, 117, 244, 268 Irenaeus of Lyon, 94, 219, 224, 254, 290 Kingdom of God, xi, 25, 42, 122 Logos, xvii, 114, 128, 131–33, 136, 138n49, 142n61, 145, 170, 204, 216, 218, 219, 221–25, 227–34, 236, 237, 240, 243–46, 250, 253, 257, 265, 266, 285. See also Word
Mary, 32, 101, 108, 190, 227–30, 234, 240, 243, 273 Maximus the Confessor, 146n71, 170 Mediator, 113, 218, 246, 290, 294 Messiah, 47, 72, 122, 205, 226, 240 Mystic/mystics/mystical/mysticism, xiv, xv, 89, 92, 155, 157, 158, 164, 213, 251 Gender, xiv, 55n4, 140, 158, 173, 174, 231 Gifts of the Spirit, 42, 110, 113, 123, 124, Ousia, 16, 17, 161 179, 183, 186, 256, 259, 287 Girard, René, xii, 55, 65, 66 Pentecost, xiii, xv, 30, 44, 91n3, 96, 98, Grace, xiv, xviii, xix, 20, 22, 26, 27, 35, 115, 121, 124, 147, 179, 183, 200, 214, 37n13, 43, 48, 49, 51, 78, 98, 99, 100, 226, 237, 273, 274, 280 101, 102, 110, 113, 133, 134, 144, 147, 151n77, 169, 179, 210, 217, 230, 236, Pentecostal/Pentecostals/Pentecostal237, 238, 243, 244, 262, 268, 287 ism, 20, 96, 98, 101, 110, 112, 114, 115, 154, 177, 180–85, 187–91, 193 Gregory of Nazianzus (and alternative spellings), ix, xiii, 16, 126–29, 138, Person, xvii, 4, 15, 16, 17, 91, 93, 94, 139, 147, 149 96, 98, 99, 100, 108, 115, 130, 133, 144, 148, 150, 155, 160, 161, 162, 164, Gregory of Nyssa, xiv, 16, 94, 139, 161, 168, 171, 173, 201, 218, 224, 227, 240, 163, 165 243, 251, 283. See also Hypostasis/ hypostases Healing, xiii, 50, 61n12, 74, 79, 119, 183, Pneuma, 23, 215n3 187, 189, 212
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Prayer, in relationship to Spirit, xiv, xviii, 23, 29, 89, 93, 95, 99, 100–2, 107, 109, 110, 111, 138, 148, 159, 166, 171, 172, 179, 273, 277
Taxis, 136, 149, 160, 224, 232, 244, 245, 246 Teresa of Avila, xiv, 164, 168 Tongues, 42, 96, 149, 248
Redemption, 24, 43, 51, 65, 102, 106, 157, 281, 283 Resurrection, xvi, 30, 31, 47, 52, 56n6, 59, 61, 62, 63, 72, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 94, 95, 160, 204, 225–27, 231, 236 Ruah, x, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 199, 202
Vatican II, xvii, xviii, 46, 178, 179, 180, 186, 190, 251, 252, 260, 262, 273, 280, 286, 287, 289, 294, 295
Water, 32, 33, 34, 42n27, 58, 60, 61, 64, 73, 95, 96, 105, 111, 113, 127, 133, 199, 201, 202, 210 Wind, 3, 4, 58, 64, 91, 124, 149, 199, 202 Sacrifice, xi, 26, 30, 34, 35, 36, 49, 58, Word: as Logos, 114, 128, 132, 136, 59, 60, 62–65, 67–69, 72, 73, 75–78, 138n49, 142n61, 170, 236, 237, 240, 80, 81, 97n18, 100, 102, 110, 113, 115, 243–46, 257, 285; as the Son of God, 274, 276, 284, 292, 294 xvii, 131, 133, 145, 204, 216, 218, 219, Salvation, xv, 11, 19, 23, 24, 28, 35, 37, 221–25, 227–34, 250, 253, 265, 266 43, 49, 66, 72, 74, 79, 113, 119, 128, 134, 135, 136, 137, 143, 148, 150, 156, 231, 234, 236, 240n50, 246, 252, 255, 257, 273, 274, 282–85, 293 Sanctification, 28, 112, 147, 182, 231, 260n28 Second Vatican Council. See Vatican II Sin, xii, xviii, 24, 28, 31, 34, 36, 53–57, 62, 63, 65, 72–76, 78, 79, 81–85, 102, 104, 109, 111, 112, 114, 178, 200, 204, 229, 230, 231, 238, 265 Spirit: angelic, 6, 7, 10, 12–15, 19, 138n49; and baptism, 33, 34, 94–96, 105, 113, 135, 141, 147, 148, 160, 182–84, 226, 230, 254; of Christ, xv, 179, 186, 242n53, 252; -Christology, xvi, 216n5, 217, 224, 228, 231, 240, 241, 243; in creation, xvi, xvii, 24, 58, 142, 149, 199, 202–3, 204, 210, 216, 228, 230; of God, x, 4, 5, 8, 16, 29, 43, 96, 109, 127, 130, 134, 147, 148, 150, 187, 199, 200, 203, 210, 272; of Jesus, 64, 85, 212; of Truth, 28, 57, 62, 74, 90, 100, 109, 135, 254, 288 Spirituality, xiv, 18, 151, 169, 189, 190, 216, 256 Substance, 99, 125, 126n13, 128, 131, 132, 137, 138, 139, 141–44, 148, 168, 224, 229, 260. See also Ousia