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« Sermon by Craig Keen | Main | A Commentary on "Deus Caritas Est" -- #2 »
As part of my rest this afternoon, I began a commentary on Benedict XVI's encyclical of last week, "God is Love." It might surprise some to find a theologian and pastor in the Church of the Nazarene not only caring, yet positively endorsing, the writings of the contemporary bishop of Rome. I am convinced, however, that the commitment to holiness of heart and life in the tradition of the Church of the Nazarene must drive us to conversation and shared life with those within the Roman Catholic church, even or especially the bishop of Rome. We must because our Lord prayed that we be sancified in truth so that we might be one as the Father and the Son are One. Secondly, the message of holiness finds its most consistent teaching and embodiment in the Christian tradition within the teachings of the Catholic Church and the bodies of the saints. Thus I offer this series of essays, as I can get to them, in hope that the fragmented body of Christ may some day be healed so that the world may know the God who is Love.
Commentary on Benedict XVI Encyclical Letter “Deus Caritas Estâ€
by John W. Wright
In the introduction to his encyclical, Benedict XVI calmly states the core convictions of the Christian tradition, or, as he states, “the heart of the Christian faith.†Some might think such a claim pretentious – surely one cannot claim that the Christian faith has a single center. It is because the Christian faith has no “heart,†no center but only different, disconnected historical manifestations that get expressed in different ways. It is up to an individual to find a “center†for himself or herself, or the elite philosopher/theology to make this historical language relevant by translating it into the latest philosophical idiom. Benedict kindly defers from such modernist readings. There is a heart, a center, to the Christian faith. While the depths of this heart are unending, capable of enfolding the mightiest intellects into an explorations of its depths, this heart is extremely simple, summarily stated in 1 John 4:16: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.â€
We should not miss the significance of Benedict’s move here. He begins his first encyclical with a quote from Scripture. What follows is not to be understood merely as his idea, as solely his words. Benedict begins his papacy here as a witness, one whose job is to point to God in Christ via the Scriptures, not to his own experience or authority. We find the “heart of the Christian faith†already stated within the Holy Scriptures, presented to us by Benedict to take up and read. Without fanfare he uses the chair of St. Peter to direct believers and unbelievers to look simply at the Scriptures. The ease with which the encyclical flows from the verse masks the importance of this move theologically. There is a heart to the Christian faith, and it is found already attested to in the Scriptures.
We should read the whole encyclical as an exposition and meditation upon this Scriptural verse. It is a move that should please even a Southern Baptist, though curiously leave one formed by the canons of rationality of the Enlightenment wondering why he would start with the Scriptures to speak of God – why not start with reason, with philosophy or better, psychology, with a universal starting point to which any rational individual might assent. Benedict knows of no such universal reason. Benedict is speaking in the encyclical from faith for faith, a faith not contrary to reason, as he will make clear later in the encyclical, but a rationality that begins with faith nonetheless. Meet Benedict, the nonfoundationalist Pope, a pope genuinely writing subsequent to the modern.
Benedict begins with an exposition of the “heart†of the Christian faith. The word “heart†is carefully chosen. Of course, it corresponds with his theme of love. The word “heart†bears connotations as a seat of the affections in Western culture – his use of the term, however, might require some “translation†for different cultures! Yet the term also embeds the center of the Christian faith in a body, a human body. Benedict does not speak of an “essence of Christianity†as its core, but its heart. Earlier nineteenth and twentieth century Protestant theology (and some Catholic thought as well!) had searched for an “essence†of Christianity, a disembodied, foundational proposition that one could affirm or a universal experience to express. From this rational starting point, it was thought that one could build a theology that could coerce consent, provide a universal rational argument into faith – build “evidence that demands a verdict†or describe a core human “experience†into which the west might collapse all other ‘religions†as subspecies.
The result, of course, was a cultural colonialism of Western Europe imposed upon the world in which the church often has and continues to participate, a violence that continues to this day. The tie between Enlightenment rationality, the European nation-state, and this violence is not hard to see. If one will not “be reasonable,†then the state must use violence to restrain and coerce those who will refuse to assimilate to this universal reason. Similarly, if one will not consent that one must confine one’s “religion†to private experiences or values, obviously a secular state needs imposed, by violence if necessary, so that everyone in a society might understand themselves as “rational individuals†with personal “freedom†to their own chosen private experiences and/or personal values. In such a situation, the state will control the body by violence, threatened or implemented.
Given this setting, we should not miss the context in which Benedict places his encyclical. Benedict addresses a context of divinely justified violence with the teaching that “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.†Benedict understands the heart of the Christian faith to respond to the deepest socio-political and personal need of the world: “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.â€
Those in the United States and Western Europe will most likely think of radical Islamic jihad, what has come to be called “terrorism,†as the referent for the Pope’s statement. No doubt it is one of his references. Yet it is interesting that he places “vengeance†as the crucial point where people invoke God to legitimate their violence. One does not need to look far to see this as a not-so-subtle response to the God of America, invoked by the United States government and in churches often after September 11, 2001, and continually so in order to justify the United State’s preemptive war in Iraq. Benedict desires to distance God from the violence of the nation-state. He understands that love by its very nature cannot participate in the cycle of violence.
As his predecessor Benedict XV, Benedict XVI calls Christians and the world to peace where vengeance is the Lord’s, not ours. Instead of a response of violence with violence, “the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others,†even our enemies, becomes the Christian response to the world of violence controlled by the contemporary nation-state. As the second half of the encyclical will show, this is not liberal sentimentality, but a concrete response of believers in the world grounded in God’s very revelation of God’s own Being in Christ by the Spirit. Benedict offers a world of violence a concrete God of Love.
Where does this Love become known and concrete? In perhaps his most profound statement in the encyclical, Benedict writes, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.†Of course, this event, the person that we encounter is the person of Jesus Christ.†In one deft sentence Benedict distinguishes the Christian life from its Kantian (“ethical choiceâ€) and Hegelian (“loft ideaâ€) modernist distortions. The precise language has echoes with the work of Karl Barth, an overlap found elsewhere in Cardinal Ratzinger’s textual corpus (particular in his use of Christ as God’s Yes! to humanity). In Church Dogmatics 1.1, Barth writes, “the experience of God’s Word involves a relation of man as person to another person, naturally the person of God . . . Jesus Christ Himself lives in the message of his witnesses, lives in the proclamation of His Church on the basis of this message, strides forward as the Lord of grace and judgment to meet the existence of the hearer of the Word. Experience of God’s Word, then, must at least be also experience of His presence, and because this presence does not rest on man’s act of recollection but on God’s making Himself present in the life of man, it is acknowledgement of His presence†(p. 205-06). Encounter with a person, an event, the experience of the God who is love in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit becomes fundamental. God meets us in the particularity of our own history by becoming particular in history in Jesus Christ so that we might participate in an encounter with an event, a person.
The observant reader will see here the real fruition of Vatican II coming to bear. Barth supposedly was a “reformed†theologian – how could his work, especially 1.1 with its constant references to Luther and Calvin, find echoes with the Roman pontiff in the early 21st century? The answer is found in Vatican II’s return to sources, particularly the Christological center of the Christian faith, the God of love seen in the sacred heart of Jesus as the heart of the Christian faith – a heart of love that beckons for human beings to participate within. In the event of Christ according to 1 John 4:16, we literally participate in God as we participate in the Love that is Christ. Christ is with us – Christ is the Love that is God in whom we live and move and have our being. A good and true and beautiful ontology of Love emerges under girding Benedict XVI’s encyclical. In response to the violent nihilism that the secular world, the world in denial that it results from the Love of the God who created it from nothing through God’s Word, Benedict offers the good news that God is Love.
Posted by johnwright at January 29, 2006 6:01 PM
Pastor!
I stumbled upon this accidentally. I'm a youth of a Catholic father and Nazerene mother which has not always been overly plesant. To see a pastor of my mother's Church with such a great appreciation for our Pope fills me with joy. God bless you.
Posted by: Mike McColgan at February 22, 2006 6:02 PM
Hi, Pastor,
To be fully honest, I couldn't read all this comment on Benedict XVI's "God is Love", for I'm pretty tired at this time. But I'm saving the link for a future--and careful--reading, I hope.
I just stopped by to say hello... for I was very surprised to know you're a Nazarene. I'm Roman Catholic, and I met a girl from the Church of the Nazarene some time ago. So I began to get interested in protestant faith. I thought that all the members of the Church of the Nazarene were opposite to Catholic Church. I'm glad to see that there are objective people among them. So I congratulate you and I'm very happy.
Also I wanted to ask for a special favor. I saw this guy commenting before me, Mike McColgan. Actually, he left his commentary on February... also it's possible that you don't know him. But, just in case you do know him, please, tell him that I would appreciate a lot if he could write me to the address I gave here when leaving this commentary. I'm very interested in his family experience as a son of a Catholic father and a Nazarene mother.
Thank you very much.
Posted by: Enrique at October 6, 2006 1:11 AM
I am struck that neither pope Benedikt nor you dear Mr. Wright mention the necessity to identify our sinfulness and the need for having God's wrath averted through faith in Christ... The pope simply mentions love as the light of the world, instead of pointing to Jesus incarnate as light of the world embodied.
Besides neglecting to refer to our sin nature and presenting only love / loving as hope and light, he also presents a different God by stating that God has a passionate love (eros), while the Bible ascribes to God only 'agape'.
It is those faulty observations that lead him to arrive at such a horrendous conclusion that God (in His passionate love for mankind) turns against himself (and His justice).
Yet, God "cannot deny Himself" (2. Tim. 2:13) -He cannot deny His justice upon which death is required for sin-, which is the reason why "He sent Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God IN Him" (2. Cor 5:21). This is His 'agape'-love: that He sent His son as a propitiation for us. He died, so that we might not have to die!
Posted by: Stefan at May 23, 2007 8:12 AM
Stefan:
You are correct in your observation that Benedict takes a certain rhetorical strategy that does not emphasize human sinfulness. That may be a weakness of the encyclical. But I find it difficult to see how you think that Benedict does not point to "Jesus incarnate as the light of the world embodied." Benedict is one of the most Christocentric contemporary theologian.
Perhaps underneath is a distinction. For Benedict justification takes place "in Christ" -- we participate in this righteousness by our participation in Him by faith. Justification does not take place "by our faith." The place of our salvation is in God, not in us, in God's faithfulness, not ours. Justification is not merely what God declares, but what God does in us as we participate in God through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks for your imput!
John
Posted by: John Wright at May 23, 2007 8:27 PM
Hello John,
thanks for your prompt reply!
Pointing to Jesus certainly is the commission of every believing Christian; yet, what does pointing to Jesus mean? What Jesus? I would agree with your statement that justification takes place "in Christ", which is emphasised in 2. Cor. 5:21 "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him". The question is, though, how does the righteousness which is "in Christ" (get into us to) justify us before the all-holy God?
First, you state justification is "in Christ", which you then complement by saying that justification is "what God does in us as we participate in God through the Son...". So, God in us and we in God... But which one first? Do we first come to God who then does something in us as a response, or does God first do something in us, so that we can then respond to Him?? It can hardly be a simultaneous interaction.
In the light of what the Scriptures declare in Colossians 2 and Ephesians 2 that "we were dead in our transgresssions and sins" (Eph. 2:1) I'd like to know how a spiritually dead man can "participate" in a salvific step out of his own resources and capacity? If man in himself has the ability to know, want and do the good, why then was there a need for Christ to come and die?
There is another common ground which is your statement: "Justification does not take place by OUR faith"; I agree with that and would move on to the positive statement "we are justified by FAITH", i.e. the faith that God grants by grace.
As mentioned above, there is nothing in us that is good enough to provide for any salvific means; we are dead in sins; thus, we can't even muster (our) faith in a holy God.
Paul says: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8)
We are saved by faith, which is not OUR faith, but it is the gift of God.
What does Jesus say? If one believes Pauline doctrine to be too spurious, let's see what the Lord points to. In response to the question what people must do to be doing the works of God, Jesus answers: "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom he has sent" (John 6:29).
It is God's work that we can believe in Jesus.
Even in response to Peter's famous confession of Christ, Jesus remarks that Peter was blessed because "this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven" (Matt. 16:17).
Peter did not arrive at that profession by himself, but he needed to be blessed first by the Heavenly Father in order to see clearly who Jesus was.
What am I saying? In short, the idea of cooperatio as far as our salvation is concerned, in my opinion, does not hold, because a dead man cannot participate in righteous deeds.
If you do not mind my citing another Bible text, another one just came to mind: "he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5).
I guess the reason why I am not convinced of statement "Benedict was one of the most Christocentric contemporary theologians" is that I am asking myself how does that Christ harmonize with what Paul was so eager to defend, which he called "the Gospel of Christ" (Galatians 1:7)? Maybe he is one of the most Christocentric of all Roman catholic theologians; or he is the most Christocentric of all contemporaries? Yet, if he believes that the fundamental and unchanging truths about Christ can be altered, then he is not much of a Christocentric - because as such one's propositional statements about Christ and salvation have to be in line with God's propositional revelations about the same.
Whether or not one is a Christocentric is not determined by the superficial use of a name, but by the essence of a statement with which one fills the meaning of a specific word.
Thanks again for your response. Kind greeting from Heidelberg, Germany
Posted by: Stefan at May 28, 2007 2:17 PM
God's love is the precious gift among the people.As i have read dues caritas est of pope benedict XVI i understand what love is and to know the good things that God teaches me and show to me.I really feel the presence of God in myself;He's blessings, guidance, taking care of me and answered my prayers.Thank you Lord for all the good things you done to me.And sorry for the sins that I've done to you and to other people.
Posted by: Mark Ellan G. Vicente at September 2, 2007 8:42 PM
I am a white female born again christain. I am Middle class and I am going under with all the poor in America with Bush in office. It is only going to get worst with NcCain. Jesus is on my side. I have given away everything I can and I am helping my neighbors who are middle class and going under too. Jeaus said sell all you have a give to the poor or you will not see the Kingdoom of Heaven he also said to Love God with all your heart and soul and love you neighbor as yourself. That includes the middle class and poor that are going under unless Obama wins. How many house to you have? You are on TV and the Internet reaching the world. Selling books know one can buy. Why is this all not free to the poor? You are leading christain the wrong way and some day your going to face Jesus and God.
God Bless you,
Cheryl Moore
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