Pilgrim Notes

Reflections along the way.

Tag: love (page 3 of 3)

Christian Action springs from a communion of love

October 8, 2007 / / 1 Comment

“Let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

Von Balthasar lays out a vision of Christian action based upon the revelation of Jesus and fully revealed in his self-emptying devotion on the cross. This action is rooted in a completely free communion of love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

Christian action outside this revelation of love becomes pure ethics and is drained of the relational content of love’s revelation. Without this relation, action can become subject to necessity because it is not free in love. Think of Jesus action in the cross. It proceeds from the love of the Father and returns to the love of the Father. His action is an incarnation of Lover and Beloved. Just as the Son lives in this pure relation of lover and beloved with the Father, He reveals this love to a world at enmity with God.

His incarnation reveals God’s intention to relate to His people as Lover and Beloved. Von Balthasar references the Song of Solomon to emphasize that Lover and Beloved are complete within their mutual reciprocation of love. This love is not dependent upon producing children but is free of necessity and complete in itself.

The love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit is a complete love that needs nothing outside the relation to bring completion. Creation does not make God’s love more real. God’s love does not necessitate creating. The love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit is complete (completely fulfilling and fulfilled).

There is no unmet longing within God. While human happiness necessitates a longing beyond ourselves, the love of God is free of necessity. This is difficult for us to grasp because we do not live in this reality. As result, without something new outside the circle of reciprocal love, we might tend to think this love, this relation will growing tiresome, boring. That reveals our own incapacity for complete love that is free of necessity.

With this idea of a completely fulfilled love within the relation of the Godhead, Von Balthasar continues to lay out a picture of love that has no motive, no unfulfilled eros, no longing beyond the mutual reciprocity of love. For images of this among humans, Von Balthasar turns to Mary when she pours out the costly vial on Jesus’s feet. Her act is pure response to love, thus it appears as useless to outside eyes. (This useless outpouring of love makes me think of Chuang Tzu’s useless tree.)

Christian action springs from the freedom of a loving communion between Lover and Beloved. Enveloped in the ongoing communion of lover and beloved, the Christian moves from love and toward love. Only now can Von Balthasar begin to discuss dogmatic theology and offer his definition that “Dogmatic theology is the articulation of the conditions of possibility of Christian action in light of revelation.”

Thus all Christian action is a secondary reaction to the primary action of God as Lover and Beloved. Taken up into this communion by the Holy Spirit, the Christian simply responds and acts in this self-emptying love as most fully revealed in the cross. In the cross, God reconciles his enemies. When the enemy is not even on speaking terms, God acts to bring reconciliation.

In Christ, He enters into the gulf of sin and suffering that ripples across our world. Entering into the very gulf of death created by such violations of love, God both both judges and offers complete rectitude by taking the division, the suffering, the separation into Himself. The cross is both historical (occurring at a fixed point in space and time) and ahistorical (anticipating the revelation of love’s ultimate triumph when all creation is reconciled to God).

Thus the Christian acts (incompletely and partially) in love at a fixed point in time and space while still anticipating the triumph of love in that action (complete and absolute). Von Balthasar calls this action parousial. The act of love that anticipates the sudden revealing of complete love in all creation.

The Christian also acts in faith. While not ignoring the faults of others in the world around him, the Christian is to look with eyes of faith at Jesus’ action in the cross. By the grace of the Spirit, the Christian is taken up into the communion of suffering found within the cross. Only in the place of the cross, does the Christian begin to behold the knowledge of the love of God. Thus loving action cannot be separated from a loving communion that is rooted in self-emptying love.

Von Balthasar offers many points for consideration and reflection: a love without necessity, loving action that is both universal and particular/historical and ahistorical, action rooted in the communion of self-emptying love, and a knowledge rooted in loving communion as revealed in the cross.

Dogmatic Theology and the World of Algebra

October 7, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Hans Urs Von Balthasar writes, “Dogmatic theology is the articulation of the conditions of possibility of Christian action in the light of revelation.” Reflecting on Balthasar’s idea, it seems to me that revelation is a lot like algebra. Unlike like the simple math of 2 + 2, which corresponds directly with the natural world, Algebra creates a seperate world of logic. Within this world formulas like a + b -c are used in a world that does not directly correspond to the natural world but has implications for the natural. As mathmatics continues to move further into theory and speculation, we discover a seperate world that becomes further and further abstracted from the natural.

Within this speculative world, one does not abandon logical consistancy. There is a logic within the mathmatical world that is self-containted within the argument. In Balthasar’s statement above, I see at least two worlds. First, I see the natural world where Christian action takes place. Then there is the world of revelation that is not discovered through natural observation.

The gospel makes the audacious claim that Jesus is God in the flesh. Some people may like the story but refuse to listen to logical claims within the context of the world of revelation created by the Bible. There are actually two arguments to explore here: one, the logical continuity of this world of revelation, and two, whether this world of revelation corresponds to this natural world. In other other words, is the archetect of the moral universe with the gospel story, the same architect of the natural in which we live.

Obviously, for Balthasar this world of revelation does correspond to the natural world. Working from a theology of analogy, Balthasar is wrestling with the question of a transcendence and immanence. How can man who is limited by time and space speak of a Creator outside of time and space? Space doesn’t provide a place to work through his analogy of being here, but bascially man does learn of the transcendent God through analogy.

As author of time and space, God creates a world of analogy with pointers to his character in all of creation. Man himself is created as the image of God. Yet, at the point of analogical connection, creation’s dissimilarity with the Creator is greater than its similarity with God. Without expanding on this idea further here, I suggest this idea provides the basis for that this world of revelation directly corresponds with the natural world.

Using the Bible and the Tradition of the Church, Balthasar works through the logic of revelation, which ulimately suggests that Jesus’s self-emptying act in the cross is God’s absolute expression of love. The first question one asks when facing this world of revelation might be, “Is the story of revelation satisfactory?” Does the story work? When someone says that they like the story of Jesus or that they find the story appealing, they are on some level responding to the logic of this world.

While not all Christians work through the logic of this world, they do begin with a belief in the story. As faith seeks understanding, this belief may work through the logic of the world on some level. As one makes a connection between the world of revelation and the natural world, one begins to discover the historical claims of Christianity. Thus revelation is seen as historical. It is not reached through reason but through faith. Yet working from faith, reason wrestles with the claims of revelation and the implications of revelation for action.

So for Balthasar dogmatic theology articulates how this world of revelation both creates the possibility for action and the implications for that action within the natural world. This is where it becomes difficult. In wrestling with the claims of revelation, theology explains the implications for actions in ideal terms. For example, the Christian is called to love as Jesus loved. The self empyting act of the cross is the pattern for behavior.

Yet as real human beings seek to act out these implications, their adherence to the challenge of Christian action is always less than ideal. Some people outside the world of revelation look at Christians behavior. Seeing actions that fail to reflect the image of love, they reject or challenge the claims proceeding from the world of revelation.

How does a Christian respond to this unbelief, scorn and even strong rejection and even hatred of the world of revelation? I think we continue to listen to the claims of dogmatic theology. We continue to observe the pattern of the cross. We continue acting by the power of the Spirit who helps us to translate this revelation into the natural world. In spite of our flaws, we continue seeking to embody self-emptying love revealing in some small measure that claim of revelation that love alone is credible.

I'm poor, naked and helpless

July 5, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Listening to Sinead O’Connor‘s song “Something Beautiful” helped remind me why I am Christian. While I love to read and think and engage spirited discussions on the nature of faith and personhood and our postmodern milieu, I readily confess that I’m really poor, naked and helpless. Faith in Jesus has come to me as a gift in my own desperate weakness.

Sinead captures the voice of the aching soul encircled in God’s love,

I couldn’t thank you in ten thousand years
If I cried ten thousand rivers of tears
Ah but you know the soul and you know what makes it gold
You who give life through blood

Then she confesses her desperation in language that highlights for me my own faltering steps that stumble even when moving toward the love of Christ:

Oh I wanna make something
So lovely for you
‘Cus I promised that’s what I’d do for you
With the bible I stole
I know you forgave my soul
Because such was my need on a chronic Christmas Eve

The idea of encountering the loving grace of God through a “stolen bible” pictures the wonder of redeeming love for me. All of us are thieves seeking to steal the gift our sweet Savior so graciously offers in his broken body and shed blood.

Benedictine Spirituality

May 9, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Reading through the Rule of St. Benedict with thoughts from Joan Chittister. She challenges that spiritual life is not only inner but outer. We live out love in the midst of others. Here’s a few excerpts from yesterday:

Spiritual life “is not a set of daily exercises; it’s a way of life, an attitude of mind, an orientation of soul. And it is gotten by being schooled until no rules are necessary.”

Among the the anceints there is a story told that confrims this insight to this day:

“What action shall I perform to attain God?” the disciple asked the elder.

“If you wish to attain God, the elder said, there are two things you must know. The first is that all efforts to attain God are of no avail.”

“And the second?” the disciple insisted.

“The second is that you must act as if you did not know the first,” the elder said.

Clearly, great pursuers of the spiritual life know that the secret of the spiritual  life is to live it until it becomes real.

….

It is much easier to go to daily Mass and feel good about it than it is to serve soup at a soup kitchen. It is so much more comfortable to say bedtime prayers than it is to speak peace in a warring world. It is so much more satisfying to contribute to the building of a new church than it is to advocate welfare legislation. It is so much more heroic to fast than to be patient with a noisy neighbor. It is so much easier to give the handshake of peace in church than to speak gently in the family. And yet one without the other is surely fraud if life with God in community is truly the essence of real spiritual growth.

Loving Freely

May 8, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I posted some thoughts on love over at scribd.

I quit trying to be great. Once I had aspirations of making a name for myself, becoming a famous person. Now I just want to learn to be a person. I dreamed of speaking before thousands of people frozen under the spell of my voice. I was going to change the world. Now I realize: I cannot even change myself.

read more.

Anna Nicole Smith Dies

February 8, 2007 / / 2 Comments

annanicole.jpg

I never followed the life of Anna Nicole Smith, but news of her sudden death hits me with a deep sadness. In spite of any flaws or struggles magnified by the absurdity of a fame driven culture, a human person whose life seemed so tragic has died. Death mocks the arrogance of human accomplishment. So many of us strive and struggle and long for the things Ms. Smith enjoyed like wealth and fame.

Do these bring loving relationships? Can these repair the wounds of a broken heart? More often, they magnify the flaws and fragilities of the person. Regardless of IQ, wealth, power, and all human achievements, death wins. And the wonders of our majesty fade faster than the fresh grave grows grass.

My hope is in a love that cannot be stopped–even by death. The resurrecting love of Christ does not make me other-worldly, hoping for some escape from this miserable planet, but rather it reveals that vindication is real, justice is true and love really does conquor the absurdity of death. This love of Jesus reveals a pattern to me of self-giving love that lets go of everything and is free to embrace, to sacrifice, to trust. I rest in the love of living Savior and am free to love those around me. And I hope in a love that will ultimately renew this whole world.

As I reflect on the faithful love of Christ, my heart aches for the pain of Ms. Smith. Lord have mercy upon her. And Lord have mercy upon the aching souls starved for love wandering in the desert of life-sucking, relationship killing abundance.

Dick and Rick Hoyt

November 8, 2006 / / 1 Comment

You may have seen this but I finally saw it today. Wow! Powerful. Hope you enjoy!

Thomas Merton and the Election

November 8, 2006 / / 0 Comments

The Merton Center for Contemplation sent out this wonderful quote today that fits perfect for our political frenzy.

“Meditation does not necessarily give us a privileged insight into the meaning of isolated historical events. These can remain for the Christian as much of an agonizing mystery as they do for anyone else. But for us the mystery contains, within its own darkness and its own silences, a presence and a meaning which we apprehend without fully understanding them. And by this spiritual contact, this act of faith, we are ourselves properly situated in the events around us, even though we may not quite see where they are going.

One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences—by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task—will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history. Politicians may indeed make history, but the meaning of what they are making turns out, inexorably, to have been something in a language they will never understand, which contradicts their own programs and turns all their achievements into an absurd parody of their promises and ideals.

Of course, it is true that religion on a superficial level, religion that is untrue to itself and God, easily comes to serve as the “opium of the people.” And this takes place whenever religion and prayer invoke the name of God for reasons and ends that have nothing to do with Him. When religion becomes a mere artificial façade to justify a social or economic system—when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate. It deadens the spirit enough to permit the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for the truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and love, and becomes the law of might-makes-right:  established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo.”
– Thomas Merton

From Contemplative Prayer. New York: Doubleday, 1996 edition

 

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