Pastor John Wright

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August 1, 2006

Communio within Creation

After various stops and starts, I finished David L. Schindler's book, Heart of the World, Center of the Church last night. Schindler develops a devastating intellectual and cultural critique of Christian accomodation to political liberalism from within the "Communio" movement. The book, written in 1996, draws deeply upon the interpretation of Vatican II given by John Paul II, and especially applies the thought of Hans Urs van Balthasar to an American context.

In its central Christological commitment and anti-liberalism, Schindler's work reminds me of the work of Stanley Hauerwas. Yet in its Catholic background, Schindler devotes much more time to speculative metaphysical arguments than Hauerwas and develops a doctrine of analogy in a way that softens some of Hauerwas' analysis, which is intentionally more polemic as the Hauerwas text comes from within mainline American Protestantism. A reader might find great benefit in reading the two theologians in tandem.

The Communio school of post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism also has a robust doctrine of holiness as the true end of the human being. It seeks to address the contemporary world from within the deepest convictions and insights afforded by the Christian tradition. It desires to reclaim culture, especially the claim that in that the Triune God is Love, love remains -- and must remain -- the fundamental background of all human cultural life. In so far as Western culture has left Love and substituted an instrumental rational control as fundamental, Schindler deepens our understanding of the ills that attend our society -- seen, for instance, in the refusal of the Bush administration to call for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon. Human life is instrumental to the need for social control. War and death are "birth pangs" to quote Condeleeza Rice, necessary to bring about a free market, liberal democratic MIddle East. This is the cultural of death.

Schindler ends his book with a very nicely written conclusion. I would like to leave this with you for your contemplation:

"Christian mission takes form from within Christ's mission. Christ emptied himself into the world in its entirety, in order that the world might be reconciled with the Father. This, then, is the heart of the spousal union brought about in the eucharist: Jesus Christ enters us, so that we might thereby enter Christ, taking on his form and being brought into communion with the Father . . .; and so that we might in turn carry this form into the world, and help bring the world into communion with the Father.

Thus we have the primary meaning of liberation. God in Jesus Christ entered into every aspect of human being, with its temptations, its fears, its joys and aspiractions, even its sin (without of course sinning himself), in order that all of human being might be liberated through spousal union: ever-deeper penetration of the form of Christ into our being, to the end of communion with the Father. The only way of this transforming liberaion, which is above all a conversion from sin, is the way of the cross. This liberation and transformation will be complete only in heaven. . . . .

'Let it be done according to your word' (Luke 1:38): the phrase indicates an inexhaustibly rich range of dispositions that must inform any Christian spirituality: a disposition of receptivity toward God, as the condition for giving birth to God; of contemplation and interiority ('taking within'), as the condition for creativity ('going out'); a disposition of prayer (making a home for God) and of poverty (emptying oneself before God); of wonder at the gift of being -- and thus of humility ('the Almighty has done great things for me' [Luke 1:49]; a suffering disposition that already anticipates a passion: a willingness to bear the other (Christ) for the other (Christ), unto death." pp.312-13

Posted by johnwright at August 1, 2006 8:24 AM

Comments

I'd "discovered" Schindler shortly before his book came out, and I was thrilled to find a book-length discussion of the issues he'd treated in various articles previously. It really is an outstanding work!

Regarding Hauerwas, I just completed Resident Aliens, and next plan on tackling The Hauerwas Reader. I agree: there's definitely a certain affinity between the two scholars. They certainly agree in their rejection of liberalism.

Posted by: Chris Burgwald at August 1, 2006 9:50 AM

I can't wait to finally meet you in the flesh! I shall be in CA in a few weeks. The fam. is already there...

Posted by: David at August 5, 2006 11:24 AM

Schindler teases out the implications for modern culture of a fully developed Balthasarian theology and its centerpiece in Christology. But
his basis in von Balthasar goes deeper than that, drawing on the Theologik to provide an ontology to support his conclusions. This ontology has neigh on revolutionary implications for aspects of Catholic teaching that go beyond cultural considerations alone. For one thing, it clearly suggests a basis for a wholesale rethinking of much of Catholic teaching respecting animals and the environment. And you are certainly right to find in it a deepening of our "understanding of the ills that attend our society -- seen, for instance, in the refusal of the Bush administration to call for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon". What that insane obstinance has had to do with Jesus Christ escapes all of us. Well, some of us anyway.

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