Bonaventure’s reduction of the arts to divine wisdom, with special emphasis on the seven days of creation and Hugh of S. Victor’s triad of divine attributes.

©TLOU, 2011

Let the Christian remain in the world, not because of the good gifts of creation, nor because of his responsibility for the course of the world, but for the sake of the Body of the incarnate Christ and for the sake of the Church. Let him remain in the world to engage in frontal assault on it, and let him live the life of his secular calling in order toe show himself as a stranger in this world all the more. But that is only possible if we are visible members of the Church. The antithesis between the world and the Church must be borne out in the world. That was the purpose of the incarnation. That is why Christ died among his enemies. That is the reason and the only reason why the slave must remain a slave and the Christian remain subject to the powers that be.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 264-5

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1. While preparing for a class on Christology, specifically Athanasius’ on the Incarnation, I re-discovered these beautiful passages.

Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death… prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape…. Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning?

…..

…the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for o part of created had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entere the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw the corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. he saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing…. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should erish the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own… He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men.

++++++++++

2. Aron doesn’t talk about his music much at all, not nearly as often as he ought to.

Good Dust – and death shall have no dominion

As far as “nothingness” goes, most would probably expect a chunk from the Mystical Theology, but I prefer to pull from The Divine Names for the more systematic questions. In ch 1, Denys lays out the theurgical nature of his project: all of this, he says, ultimately comes down to the incarnational call of the Trinity to us, that we “rise up to it.” So, all the ontology, the hermeneutics, the trinitarian theory, etc… is for the greater end of theosis. Sometimes I wonder if Denys thinks that the best thing to do is become a monk. Anyway, the theurgic end of all theology is important to keep in mind when trying to understand what Denys does next with the Trinity.

The short term goal of the Divine Names is to lay out the way in which our names for God actually do or do not refer (or cohere – whichever anachronistic hermeneutic you want to sock him with) to God. The problem is, we’re not actually referring to “some-thing”. There is no X that marks God’s spot, at least, not in any way that could be grasped by finite beings. And here is the great similarity to the discussion about Aron’s post. I’ll end with these quotes.

We leave behind us all notions of the divine. We call a halt to the activities of our minds and, to the extent that is proper, we approach the ray which transcends being. Here, in a manner no words can describe, preexisted all the goals of all knowledge and it is of a kind that neither intelligence nor speech can lay hold of it nor can it at all be contemplated since it surpasses everything and is wholly beyond our capacity to know it… And if all knowledge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcendsbeing must also transcend knowledge.

How then can we speak of the divine names? How can we do this is the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond the read of mind and of being…? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?….

…Since the union of divinized minds with the Light beyond all deity occurs in the cessation of all intelligent activity, [then] the godlike unified minds who imitate these angels as far as possible praise it most appropriately through the denial of all beings.¹

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1. from The Divine Names, Ch 1, PG 592D-593C, trans. Colm Luibheid (Paulist Press, 1987)

 St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality

Introduction

St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662 A.D.) understands the cosmos through a theological ontology of Love. All creatures in creation are unified through participation in the ecstatic Love that is the life of the Trinity. Participation in this Love unifies the difference of creatures into a harmony. As such this love is the “reason” or “logos” of creatures. With the fall of humanity this love is disrupted cosmically. The fall of humanity is key in this “cosmic tragedy” for humanity is the microcosm (micros-kosmos or “little cosmos”), which participates in the sensuous, creaturely dimension of being and the rational-spiritual dimension of the hierarchy of being. Humanity, the microcosm, is the center or crux of the hierarchy of being as it co-inheres in the second person of the Trinity, the Logos. It is the crossing of the divine and the sensuous dimensions of the hierarchy of being. Consequently, when humanity falls the harmony of creation is disrupted. This disruption or discord is healed or re-harmonized in the Incarnation of the Second person of the Trinity. In the Incarnation of the Logos in Christ the Love which orders the cosmos is shown or made concrete and the healing of humanity, the ‘microcosmic mediator,’ is accomplished; thus the goal (telos) of Creation, which the Triune God has desired from the beginning, is realized and made possible.

In this paper I want to show that for Maximus the Confessor the Cosmos (creation) is a creaturely mode of ecstatic love which participates in and reflects the Ecstatic Love that is the Life of the Triune God. I also want to show how, in this economy of ecstatic love, humankind is, for Maximus, what Lars Thunberg calls ‘microcosm and mediator.’[1] Humankind is a little cosmos who is a unity of body and soul as well as the one who is given the task of gathering in himself all the sensual and intelligible aspects of creation and, through the Logos, taking them and humanity itself toward its God-given telos of deification, which leads ultimately to a transfigured cosmos. Within the exploration of these two dimensions of Maximus’ vision I will show how his Doctrine of Christ is central to his theological symphony. Finally, throughout the process of this exploration I want to give a basic overview of some of the primary themes in the thought of Maximus Confessor. I will then connect the Maximus’ theology of deification with the Christian tradition of the practice of hospitality. In doing so I will show that there is a mutual enrichment which takes place. Maximus’ theology of deification is made more concrete by showing it as enacted by the welcoming of the other, while the tradition of hospitality is enriched by articulating it as a Maximian deifying practice which enables humans to participate in the very life of the Triune God.

I. Maximus’ Theological Ontology as the Mystery of Love[2]

At the heart of Maximus’ theological vision is his conception of love as both a cosmic or ontological reality and a theological virtue. This, in a nutshell, is the confessor’s crucial contribution to the present argument, which will be articulated in this essay. Maximus says as much as he begins his letter On Love to John the Cubicularius.

You, the God-protected ones, cleave through grace to holy love towards God as your neighbor and care about   appropriate ways of practicing it…For nothing is more truly Godlike than divine love, nothing more mysterious, nothing more apt to raise up human beings to deification. For it has gathered together in itself all good things that are recounted by the logos of truth in the form of virtue…[3]

In this letter Maximus briefly, but powerfully, delves into love, which is defined as the essence of the life of the Triune God and what the Confessor calls the logos or fundamental principle of the existence of creatures. According to Letter 2, when human beings live in harmony with love, and thus in accordance with the Trinity who is love and from whose love creation arises, they live virtuously. In other words, they participate in the divine life. In a way similar to Thomas Aquinas Maximus acknowledges love as both a theological virtue and the supreme theological virtue. The failure of human beings to live in accordance with love results in what Maximus calls tyranny (turannos). The introduction of this tyranny into the world sets in motion a history tied to oppressive power. For Maximus the exercise of this oppressive power of tyranny communicates phil-autia, or self-love, rather than the love of humankind, or phil-adelphia.[4] But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let us explore further the rudiments of the theological ontology of love.

As alluded to in the quote above, Maximus’ Letter 2: On Love considers the all-encompassing or cosmic nature of the virtue of love. All things fall within its scope and exist within and in relationship to love. This is true whether creatures live in accordance with it or in resistance to it. Living in accordance with love means creatures live in an orientation of reception of the world and the things of the world as gift. To live in resistance to love leaves creatures in a place of self-love in which, rather than reception of creation as gift, all is seen within the horizon of self and thus possessed. To be rendered intelligible all else must be possessed.

In either case, all things still exist in relationship to love (in accordance with it or in perversion from it). In a Maximian vein, one might therefore say that love grants being to all that exists. It is the proton and eschaton of all things and as such is the ultimate principle of existence.[5]

Everything, every good, insofar as it is good is but an inflection of love. God is Love and love is in a real sense the goal of everything. “Love is the fulfillment of these, wholly embraced as the final and last desire…”[6] So love is divine in character. Because of this divinity it elevates to the level of divinity or divinizes (deifies) whatever orients itself in harmony with it. Love is, for Maximus and the other ancient Greek theologians, the very principle of theosis or divinization. Thus love’s very character is transforming or divinizing.[7]

It should begin to become clear now that love is part and parcel of the locus of Maximus’ thought. It is so central that it is not only the core of his understanding of God, and therefore the touchstone of that intimate contemplation of God that is theology (theologia), it is also the fundamental basis of his anthropology.  He conceives his inquiry into the human as “theandric.” This means that the human is one for whom being oriented toward and united to God is appropriate and fitting to it. This fittingness arises out of love. Love is what causes the reality of God and God’s creation to fruitfully converge. Like Gregory of Nyssa, this convergence does not do away with the simultaneous dissimilarity between the creature and Creator at the level of nature. For Maximus the distinction of Creator and creature is not a violent division of a purely extrinsic or parallel relationship of competition. Rather, the love rendered concretely in Christ Jesus brings the modalities of being of the Creator and creature into the most intimate possible union.[8]

 And he does human things in a way transcending the human, showing, in accordance with the closest union, the human energy united without change to the divine power, since the [human] nature, united without confusion to [the divine] nature, is completely interpenetrated, and in no way annulled, nor separated from the Godhead hypostatically united to it.[9]

It seems that for Maximus it is precisely the distinction between Creator and creature which love guarantees. The unity between God and creatures realized through the incarnation of God as a human is actualized precisely by bringing about the union that simultaneously draws creation and God evermore closer together while yet always maintaining the distinction between the two. A collapsing of the one into the other would no longer be a union, but rather an absorption, which would of course do away with union. The purpose of the union is to perfect humans as humans and the creation as creation. So the preservation of the enduring difference in union by the Trinity’s love is the modus operandi and heart of deification. This deification in love is rooted in the Incarnation of God in Christ. The love that is concretized in Christ, therefore, is the locus of creaturely identity, particularly human identity and this identity is such that when it is conceived theologically can only be comprehended properly in relationship to God.[10

At this point we may profitably ask, along with J. Kameron Carter, what sort of vision of human identity and divine identity is being articulated by the Confessor? Carter helpfully addresses this when he claims, for Maximus, it is an ecstatic understanding of identity. That is, love names a twofold ecstasy (ekstasis) for him. On the one hand, it names the "ecstatic" relationship that God as the Creator has with creation. The "ecstasy" within God or the"ecstasy" constitutive of both the Triune relations and the divine nature, which the relations enact though they are not reducible to it, produces an ecstasy beyond the divine nature.[11]

Put differently, the ecstasy of Love of the Triune relations produces the many, the difference which has contained within it the potential or possibility of all other differences. The primary ecstasy that is God gives rise to the secondary “ecstasy of creation, the ecstasy of the many.”[12]

On the other hand, the love concretized in Jesus Christ also names the ecstatic, transcendent relationship that creation reciprocally has with its Creator. This second understanding of ecstasy is an image of the first ecstasy. The Confessor claims that the unity of these two aspects of ecstasy occurs in Jesus Christ. In other words the loving ecstasy which is proper to God and that is causative of its imaging ecstasy, creation, occurs in the incarnate Logos. So, ecstasy is finally another way of talking about how incarnation is a phenomenon particularly specific to Jesus Christ and, for exactly this reason, is a phenomenon which is indicative of creation as such. Incarnation is not simply a foreign entry of either a distant or competitive deity (competitive with our creaturely existence, as if creatures and God both lived under a common category of Being), but is indicative of creation as such. It indeed communicates to us the destiny of humanity.[13]

[11] Carter, 349. Carter’s reading of Maximus here is crucial for appropriating the (broadly) poststructuralist notion of “the other” in contemporary theology. It is crucial in that Maximus, in the Christian theological tradition, offers an ontology or metaphysic which makes such language ultimate coherent. Often poststructural renditions of “otherness” seem to disavow metaphysics while assuming an unsaid metaphysics in which the “other” and the speaking subject are seen to be in a situation of irreducible violence, in which we can only be the least violent possible. But surely such a notion requires on to make overarching statements which look an awful lot like a universal metaphysic. For a Christian critique of postmodern “ontological violence” see John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) and David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). Both these works follow a similar line of argument (Hart relies upon Milbank’s earlier version of his aforementioned work), though perhaps Hart offers a more accurate reading of individual “postmodern” philosophers. For a work that seeks to not only critique but dialogue with and affirm aspects of contemporary philosophy and its nihilism see Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and the Difference of Theology (London: Routledge, 2002). Maximus gives a Trinitarian ontology which allows for peaceful difference and sees violence in the midst of difference as ultimately the rejection of the gift of creation from the gifting Trinity.

[12] Cater, 350.

[13] Carter, 350.

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The problem is how to conceive of the relationship between the Christian faith and philosophy. Lubac early on dismissed grounding the language of faith in Philosophy. He was also uncomfortable with the idea that philosophy can retain autonomy, yet all the while receiving contributions from the Faith. Rather, it is in the very essence of thought and reason to be open, not closed, constantly drawn forward and refreshed by faith. Philosophy can not help but be indelibly altered by its interaction with faith. Indeed, as Lubac affirms at the end of the article, within the deep structure of reason is the tectonic movement of the supernatural. But, Christian philosophy as it was then conceived was so constituted by an image of a reason hermetically sealed that there was no place for the mystery of the supernatural. The mystery could not be allowed to “fertilize” the soil of reason. Philosophers maintained the sphere of pure nature as the ground of philosophy.

The last third of Lubac’s article deals with re-conceiving the model of philosophy, a “philosophy of insufficiency”, as a fecund environment for Supernatural, one which fosters a “sense of the sacred.” Before laying out his own solution, Lubac first offers a kind of typology of the then current alternatives to what Balthasar called the dry and dusty Scholasticism of the seminaries, which some have characterized as rehashed Suarezianism¹. In the middle, the thomistic scholar, Jacques Maritain, rejects the idea of a “Christian” philosophy, insisting instead that consanguinities between Christianity and philosophy are merely felicitous, but not necessary. Philosophy’s purview is the natural order, as it appears to the philosopher “before” Revelation proper. To Maritain’s side is Gilson’s model: “Revelation is the generator of reason”, and therefore philosophy is by nature post-Christian. On the other side, Blondel thinks philosophy is pre-Christian, holding on to pure-rationality, not yet acknowledging the supernatural, not yet opening itself to Christianity. But all three, Lubac points out, would wish just as well to be done with the question of Christian philosophy as there’s not unified whole for one to point to and call THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY, “if one means by this… a system of though, born of the roots and of the essence of the fundamental Christian experience…”²

Philosophy is:
Blondel: pre-Christian: philosophy will in the end open itself to the supernatural
Maritain: not Christian at all: similarities are not indications of identity
Gilson: post-Christian: philosophy proceeds from what it receives by Revelation

Lubac asks, “Isn’t there nevertheless some other way of defining Christian philosophy, some way which does not reflect the ways we have just described, but which would instead establish itself in their wake, thus coming closer to the unity we seek?”³ One approach, the traditional one, says Lubac, presents itself: Christian philosophy as “the synthesis of all knowledge, operating in the light of faith”. However, the difficulty here is in both articulating philosophy as a primal wonder at being and/or returning philosophy to some pre-Thomistic state, in which Christian philosophers would reject the modern tenet of reason’s necessary independence from faith. Sertillanges objects that this can not and should not be done, for it would result in philosophy removing itself from the world.

Lubac goes further than Sertillages and questions whether or not understanding the essence of philosophy requires an autonomous reason at all. As Blondel has demonstrated, there is within the structure of reason a telos, a necessity to indict itself as insufficient to complete the task and adopt the monastic habit, devote itself to prayer and reflection on the supernatural. Yet, Lubac pushes further and declares that the monastery is not enough. Reason, in turning to the supernatural gains an ally and is “reborn” into a “heteronomy…[which] gives it more than it ever had alone.”⁴

Reason, thus newly equipped by faith, begins a “renaissance.” In the words of Rousselott, reason now re-approaches the world with the Yeux de la foi to “interpret” not only the “truths of the superatural order”, but also “the visible world and natural being.”⁴ Lubac perceives that some will ask here if Rousselot is not describing philosophy but theology. Indeed, theology as some would ideally conceive of it would carry on such a task. But theology as it is,

and especially since the sixteenth century, [has] evoked a more specialized knowledge, having its own life, object, and proper methodology often on the fringes of philosophical currents. It is no longer exactly the understanding of faith (an expression whose sense has itself evolved), and it is still much less an understanding by faith, an intellectual synthesis operating under faith’s light… Today, in fact, ‘theology’ is the science of revealed truths; it is not (or only very little, and then by external intervention) the science of all things in their final reasons under the light of faith. If we do not have a special word to designate this final science, is it not because it no longer corresponds to much of our thought? In drawing our attention, the debate on Christian philosophy does us an extraordinary service.

Lubac concludes by demonstrating his proposal for philosophy and includes an examination of Gabriel Marcel’s own philosophical project. As philosophy examines that which is given, it surely examines experience. One way in which Revelation contributes to reason is by deepening the very category of experience. “And through this, at once, nova sunt onmia [sic]… It is no longer only a question of a certain number of revealed truths that reason will bit by bit rationalize… it is now a question of mystery… which above all plunges into the human spirit to illuminate certain unperceived depths.”⁵ Lubac delves further into the character of the supernatural’s illumination of the spirit. The first aspect or end of the supernatural in the human spirit is the development of dogma. The second aspect is the development “of human thought” in history. “In the image of God himself, truth is instead a spring which makes other springs gush forth…”⁶

Here Lubac finds felicity with Marcel’s project. Marcel defines a Christian philosophy as one that begins with the givenness of the Incarnation and draws from, meditates on, and “embraces” it “with a boundless gratitude and without restraint.”⁷ Marcel rejects the idea, popular with some, that philosophy must begin with that, and only with that, which is universally given directly to human experience. This is an “illusion” and a “castration” of experience. There is no “philosophy without presupposition.”⁷ Lubac is quick to point out that Marcel is not here denying the category of the universal, or worse embracing a relativism. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the historical character of thought not as a barrier to truth but as a “creative force”.⁸ Indeed, precisely because thought is characterized by “duration” and “obligation” one cannot ignore the 2 millennia behind Christian thought. Neither can one ignore “that within his reason itself the philosopher is no longer the same as he was before.” And here, Lubac poses a very interesting question from Marcel: “…the most important problem… will be ‘to seek how this fertilization by dogma [in the thought of the philosopher] is possible.’”⁸

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1. bear in mind that by this point Thomism and generally all of Catholic philosophy and theology has been evacuated from the university
2. Lubac, 497
3. Ibid.
4. 498
5. 500
6. 501
7. 502
8. 503

I didn’t have the best experience with the first Balthasar book I read, so [the recent series of posts on The Land of Unlikeness] convinced me to give him another chance.
I was surprised that when I was about half halfway through Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible, I started to feel something like a heaviness of suffering in the text. I was flipping to the title page to see the publication date for its proximity to WWII, when I noticed the description of the cover photograph. The cover of my edition has a picture of an etching from a wall at a cell in Auschwitz of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I was almost relieved that I wasn’t the only one who saw in Balthasar’s slim book something absolutely ludicrous. Because just as scratching Jesus into a Nazi death camp cell wall is ludicrous, so is maintaining a belief that we remain ordered toward love, and that we are welcomed into that love, despite being absolutely aware of the enormity of human suffering today.

Here in DC, I ride the bus or metro every day. The images of the two mothers you describe are all too common, and the clear image of love is far too rare. And for me, it’s tempting to see a direct cause and effect between the detached, unaffected parenting and the criminal cases I see at my work.

But on some days, a part of me believes Balthasar when he writes that “if we view creation with the eyes of love, then we will understand it, despite all the evidence that seems to point to the absence of love in the world.” (143).
On other days, such a statement just sounds obscene. Just last week, I was talking to a friend of mine who works with juveniles on probation here in DC who said, “The hard thing is, when we get them at 8, it’s already too late.”

Here’s I’m writing about something that I really do not understand, and I’m afraid of either sentimentalizing love or romanticizing suffering. But I wonder about Balthasar’s illustration of the mother and her child – that returned smile – and whether too much focus on that illustration distorts what Balthasar is saying about love.

Maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on Balthasar’s Ignatian background, but I think that Balthasar would see God’s glory and invitation in all three of the images of parenthood you describe. Early in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the retreatants are invited to meditate on the incarnation. Ignatius asks us to “image” the moment right before the incarnation, to see “those in the face of the earth, so diverse in dress and behavior, some white and others black, some in peace and others at war, some weeping and others laughing, some healthy and others sick, some being born and others dying, and so forth.” The rest of the exercises is, in a way, finding the incarnation; finding the love of God, through the incarnation, on the face of the earth, in all of its suffering and in all of its joy.

From what little I’ve read by Balthasar, I tend to think he’s making a similar movement – we are invited to an “indirect” God, a God who not only “appears only in man,” but “moreover appears in that dimension of man that is most dissimilar to God.” (87) Even when I know Balthasar’s right, it’s almost too much to watch the daily, trudging sadness that I see on the bus and in the courthouse where I work. Cycles of failure are everywhere. On the court’s computer system, too many times I’ve typed in a defendant’s name and see a list of cases. You see a child’s first contact with the court system where he’s listed as RESP – meaning he was the respondent, or subject, in a neglect proceeding. Then you have all of his criminal matters where he’s DEFT – for defendant. Then, stuck in there, is a case where he’s listed as NATDAD – for natural father in the next generation’s neglect proceeding. It feels wrong to go to that child, now father, and tell him that God’s love was, and is, there. Or to go up to the crying boy in South Philly or on the metro and tell him that God’s love is there in over-abundance. But as Christians, don’t we gather together to remember a death “that manifests the power of God and the wisdom of God . . . precisely in its ultimate impotence”? (85).

We have a paradoxical confidence in that love, and a humility in our knowledge of how little we understand that love. Like I said, there is so little of this that I understand, but sometimes when I see a mother on a bus make a weak gesture toward giving her son a bottle, I wonder whether earlier that day I was involved in a process that put her boyfriend and her son’s father in jail, and that, who knows, maybe that gesture, for her, was a heroic act of love.

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