FACING THE CRUCIFIED: THE DIALECTICS OF THE ANALOGY IN AN IGNATIAN THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS 1
2008; Wiley; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1468-2265.2008.00433.x
ISSN1468-2265
Autores Tópico(s)Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies
ResumoThis essay deals with the possibility of a Catholic theology of the Cross. The first problem which arises is whether it is theologically necessary or even legitimate to single out this question within the wider context of the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. Why should theology as a whole concentrate or seek to base itself on the specific form Jesus' death, assuming that a theology of the Cross could be understood as such, when today's mainstream theology emphasizes rather the inner unity of the salvific mystery of Jesus' earthly existence, rather than focusing on one isolated act – even if it be that of dying? Or should a theology of the Cross be understood simply as an attempt to illuminate the theological significance of the death of Jesus amongst the ‘nexus myteriorum’? Could this attempt result in the insight that the Cross of Jesus does (legitimately) represent a ‘pars pro toto’ for this nexus? But could this not also be said of the resurrection as well? We will see later that it is not the Cross itself (to avoid an improper species of a suffering mysticism), but the Crucified who should be regarded as the critico-theological centre in an indeed possible Catholic access to a theology of the Cross. Such a theology would be able to include more than just a theological reflection on the specific form of the death to which Jesus was subjected. In this article it will not be possible to draw historico-theological connections back to Paul's understanding of the Cross,2 2 Cf. M. Wolter, ‘Dumm und skandalös’. Die paulinische Kreuzestheologie und das Wirklichkeitsverständnis des christlichen Glaubens, in: R. Weth, ed., Das Kreuz Jesu. Gewalt – Opfer – Sühne, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001, 44–63. While according to Wolter the Pauline ‘word of the Cross’ shows a critical contextual emphasis of the central message of the Gospel, J. Becker recognizes in Paul's theology of the Cross only an intermediate stage in his theological development; J. Becker, Die Erwählung der Völker durch das Evangelium. Theologiegeschichtliche Erwägungen zum 1 Thess, in: Studien zum Text und zur Ethik des Neuen Testaments (FS Heinrich Greven) (BZNW 47), Berlin 1986, 82–101, 100; s. also Becker, Paulus. Der Apostel der Völker, Tübingen 31998, 295. although this would be fruitful for the question whether contemporary theological reflections on the Cross find a legitimate basis in Paul. We must leave open the question whether the reception of Paul's theology of the Cross has been historically and theologically justified. Specifically, it is not unambiguously clear that the Cross is central to Paul's theological thinking, or simply an intermediate stage within his theological development. Our question is different. It deals with the problem of whether there is sufficient and explorable ground within contemporary Catholic theological thinking for an approach to a theology of the Cross which takes into consideration not only the dialectics of salvation history (falsely considered as exclusively Protestant, especially Barthian), but in fact makes of it a structuring and guiding principle. We have to recognize the somewhat static framework of traditional Catholic thinking in the ontological analogy (analogia entis) between man and God, which implies a certain harmony between the two. The never-interrupted reception of Paul's understanding of the Cross can at least show how central the Cross has become in Christian spirituality - especially in Catholic theology, as well as in the liturgy of the church. Although the question whether Catholic theology can adopt dialectical thinking is not new,3 3 See e. g. the controversies between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth; B. Gertz, Glaubenswelt als Analogie. Die theologische Analogie-Lehre Erich Przywaras und ihr Ort in der Auseinandersetzung um die analogia fidei, Düsseldorf 1969. the hypothesis I wish to pursue focuses on the Ignatian influence on the Catholic Jesuit theologians Erich Przywara, Karl Rahner, Jon Sobrino and Hans Urs von Balthasar. This will demonstrate that dialectical theological thinking presupposes the basic form of analogy. At the same time, analogous thinking requires dialetics as a critical principle. Faced with the notion of the Cross, analogia entis enables theology to describe a relationship between the human being and the Cross (the Crucified) in a dialectical form that includes analogical thinking. Neo-Scholastic Catholic theology distanced itself from Protestant, and especially Barthian, dialectical thinking concerning the sovereign otherness of God. It favoured instead the notion of a particular harmony between human nature and divine grace. Vatican II, however, has re-grounded Catholic theology in salvation history, stressing thereby as fundamental the Christocentric notion of mystery within a dynamic trinitarian matrix of God and the world.4 4 See Second Vatican Council, Dei verbum. This has led to a renewed consciousness in Catholic theology of the theological significance of the Cross, without diminishing or undermining other aspects of the salvific activity of God in Jesus Christ. Yet does this new Catholic awareness of the significance of salvation history not only allow for but make necessary an understanding of the Cross – one that finds in it a regulative and therefore critical principle for theology? This regained consciousness of salvation history does not necessarily imply an agreement on the importance and centrality of a theology of the Cross. This applies certainly to a traditional Catholic perspective, if the former means not only a fundamental salvific historical principle, but also a dialectical critical principle judging and forming theological contents. Even if Catholic theology admits a theological centrality to the notion of the Cross, this would not automatically lead to an exclusively dialectical approach to the relationship between God and the human. Although Catholic theology concurs with the necessity of a fundamental difference between God and the human, it does not typically contrast them as two radical opposites as Barthian theology does. Yet it is not only the Barthian approach that challenges Catholic theology to find an appropriate answer to the question of a possible dialectical (self-)critical and forming theological principle. There is also a suspicion from within as well as from outside Catholic theology, that the Catholic Church seeks to immunize itself against possible ecclesiological correction stemming from theological reasoning. To meet these challenges Catholic theology, having re-adopted the perspective of salvation history, should re-consider two longstanding theological insights. The first concerns the eschatological character of claiming that infinite divine reality finalizes the finite in and through earthly time and space, bringing it to an end by finally completing it. This eschatological perspective opens a way for a dialectical approach to the Cross in salvific historical thinking. The other important, more traditional Catholic insight, the notion of analogy, has typically been dismissed as ‘natural theology’ - implying a false harmony between the divine and human - by non-Catholic theologians; yet the classical analogy (analogia entis) in a Thomistic theological context represents the opposite. It is rather a way of thinking about the fundamental relationship between God and the human in terms of a related difference between two subjects related to each other by causal similitude or participation: God is his being, whereas the human has being to the degree of his participation in being, on the basis of God retaining his absolute priority in granting such participation.5 5 E. J. Ashworth, Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic. A Preface to Aqunias on Analogy (1991), in: Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 1, 39–67; the same, Analogy and Equivocation in Thirteenth-Century Logic (1992). Aquinas in Context, in: Medieval Studies, 54, 94–135. Both insights, therefore, the analogical and the eschatological, although having different provenance (one derives from an Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy of religion, the other from a history of salvation theological perspective) may merge in a renewed and heightened appreciation of the Cross. This article seeks to show that these two basic insights can help Catholic theology find in the Cross an (eschatological) dialectical critical principle that is both able and at the same time needs to encompass the notion of analogy. One could raise an objection, however, that one need not search for such a critico-theological principle, since it already exists in the form of ‘negative theology’. This has been traditionally associated with the denial of the possibility of affirming statements on the nature of God, retaining as a sole possibility of faithful reason to ‘define’ the divine by what it is not. However, the lack of a concrete, precise and binding notion of the ‘negative’ has arisen as a problem ever since, especially when associated with Dionysios Areopagita's claim of the radical transcendence of the unknowable.6 6 Even if this is the case, negative theology makes implicit use of ‘positive’ (very often Platonic) terminology to state its case; s. M. Striet, Offenbares Geheimnis. Zur Kritik der negativen Theologie (ratio fidei 14), Regensburg 2002. Such a claim eventually must call into question the fundamental salvific historical ground on which the eschatological insight rests. The assurance of God's revealing ultimate faithfulness to the human and to the world becomes undermined. Negative theology as such therefore remains ambiguous, if it is not encompassed within salvation history. But how can negative theology remain true to the ‘positive’ truth of salvation history and at the same time staying committed to the basic idea that God transcends all human utterances? Negative theology cannot answer this question on its own, because this is its own deepest question. Even if negative theology remains of formal relevance to theology as a whole, it lacks salvifico-theological precision unless it is at the same time bound within a basic ‘positive’ truth from the revelatory order. If a theology of the Cross perhaps offers such a truth, then such a theology would discover a formal confirmation, criterion, and analogue in ‘negative theology’. In turn, the Cross would function as the material confirmation, criterion and objective analogue for ‘negative theology’, keeping the latter from becoming absolute. This leads into a critical analysis of the theology of the Cross by examining those Catholic theologians in the late 20th century who made significant use of the salvation historical notion of the Cross from an Ignatian perspective, specifically insofar as they have contributed to the task of bringing analogical and dialectical thinking together. Although it is not possible to describe the theological implications of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola in detail in this paper, we must highlight a few of those that received significant attention in the writings of the 20th century Jesuits Erich Przywra, Karl Rahner, Jon Sobrino7 7 The South American (originally Spanish) Liberation theologian Jon Sobrino is still alive. and Hans Urs von Balthasar. By grounding a theology of the Cross on Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises through these 20th century theologians, it is possible to illuminate a theology that is not centred on the Cross as an instrument of martyrdom, but rather on the personal and existential encounter of the human with the living incarnate Crucified8 8 Whereas it is disputed among scholars whether the Exercises show an incarnational (and correspondingly ecclesiocentric) or staurocentric access to the person of Jesus and the ‘mysteries’ of his deeds or whether moments of both concepts revealing a certain uneased tension between each other can be found there; see for a primary staurocentric interpretation of the Exercises H. Rahner, Art. Exerzitien, II., in: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche [LThK]3 3 (1995) 1107; also S. Kiechle, Kreuzesnachfolge. Eine theologisch-anthropologische Studie zur ignatianischen Spiritualität (Studien zur systematischen und spirituellen Theologie 17), Würzburg 1996, 320ff; cf. K. H. Neufeld, Kirche und Jesuiten. Echtes Gespür und Kritik, in: ZKTh 128 (2006) 183–204; vor allem 190–194; according to A. Zahlauer, Karl Rahner und sein ‘produktives Vorbild’ Ignatius von Loyola (Innsbrucker theologische Studien 47), Innsbruck 1996, 60, the staurocentric structure of the Exercises are in a certain tension with the Ignatian logic of incarnation. . This encounter takes the form of an interpersonal dialogue9 9 ‘… que el mismo Criador y Senor se comunique a la su ánima devota’ [‘… that the Creator and Lord communicates himself to the devoted soul’]; s. Ex. spir. n. 15, in: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu 100, Rome 1969. between the ‘exercitant’ and Christ in the consciousness of the former.10 10 The basic Ignatian notion of an experience of a conscious encounter of Christ has to be distinguished from ideology as well as illusion. By locating the realised relationship between God and the human within the consciousness and conscience of a human being, and even formulating the relationship between God and the human as facing one another, Ignatius demonstrates an early modern thinking.11 11 Although there are still traces of a traditional view of the divinely given order of human beings and the world. This interior dialogue is mediated through an imaginative description of the life and works of the earthly Jesus as single, yet interrelated ‘mysteries’ of the divine self-emptying (kenosis), to be pondered as presented to the individual consciousness during the exercises. Their first intent is that the human gives up all originally disordered affections to reach a state of (affectionate) ‘indifference’ to worldly things, as a necessary precondition for the later formal ‘choice’ of the greater glory of God (‘ad maiorem Dei gloriam’), and not of an imitation of the situation of the Cross. This indifference is thus the basis for the ‘exercitant’ to discern and follow the will of Christ (God) in every concrete situation (including suffering and death). Thereby he (she) is ‘to seek and find God in all things’, to whom honour should be given by the human as the primary task of being God's creature: ‘Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul'.12 12 According to J. E. Vercruysse, Ignatius means Christ with the terms ‘creator’ (cf. ‘created’) and ‘Lord’; Vercruysse, Ignatius von Loyola [Art.], in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 16 (1987) 45–55; here: 52. By locating the exercises within such a creational theological framework, Ignatius is able to tie the (only seemingly elitist) theological insights of his Christocentric spirituality to the universal creational order of human beings as such. Linking Christocentricity theologically back to creational universalism opens up the possibility and necessity for regarding the former as the free (non-causal) and fulfilling climax of the latter, and the latter as the universal basis for the former. Though Scotistic in arranging a soteriological continuation of creation and incarnation, Ignatius draws the fundamental notion of kenosis into this unity. The (process of) divine self-emptying in a retrospective from the point of view of the risen Christ begins already with creation; further, it does not halt in the incarnation as a single act, but finds its soteriological climax in the crucifixion. This theological structure of the Spiritual Exercises can be explained in more detail by using the traditional categories of nature and grace and by analysing the Cross in the works of Przywara, Rahner, Sobrino and Balthasar. In keeping with the basic conviction of Ignatius that grace does not destroy or diminish freedom (meaning the freedom that constitutes a human being as a creaturely person, and not the ability of the human to choose God or his grace), he holds that human freedom begins with the original desire (‘desear’) for God. This creational freedom is distorted, however, by wrong desires; it thus requires existential ‘indifference’ towards one's freedom as a creational (and not a soteriological) pre-condition (‘disposicion’) for an encounter with the sovereign grace of God, to be able to enter into a salvific exchange (‘commercium’) with God. Because of this gracious encounter, the human experiences the gift of soteriological freedom located in the ‘conscientia’ of the person. It is only this given responsive freedom that can will the greater will of Christ (God). Therefore the Exercises are Molinistic (grace does not destroy freedom, but has it as a pre-condition13 13 ‘Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty…’, in: Spiritual Exercises, no. 234. ) in tone, yet on a deeper level they reveal the strictly Augustinian conviction of the divine givenness of a truly human freedom that is different from creational freedom. Only a human freedom that is divinely given in the act of the divine-human encounter is soteriologically relevant for Ignatius. After having become ‘indifferent’ (of no soteriological value in itself), human nature is to passively respond by receiving grace, in order to be conformed by and to divine grace, as the first of three stages on the way to discerning and obeying the God's will. At this stage full assurance of the forgiveness of sins is immediately given by God, which Ignatius calls ‘consolation without (prior) cause’. This stage, which sees the divine integration of human nature into the order of grace, results in the gift of the renewal of free will and reason. At the second stage the renewed human nature must experience this assurance through utterances of his (her) conscience, by choosing God's will in concrete situations that make necessary a ‘discernment of minds’ as the criterion of truth. At this stage, however, human nature remains a mere ‘disposition’ for the sovereign grace and glory of God. According to Ignatius, therefore, there is no longer at this stage a relationship of contradiction between nature and grace, but one of the relatively independent standpoint of human nature facing grace within the order of sovereign grace. This divine sovereignty demands and graciously directs the service of the freed human nature towards God's will. At the last stage on the way to discerning and choosing the will of God concretely, the human has to rely entirely on his (her) own reasoning (‘raciocinacion’). This does not imply a total autonomy of the human in a theological sense, as if Ignatius envisaged the possibility and necessity of ([semi-]pelagiously) an individual relying on their own ‘natural’ strength apart from God's grace. According to Ignatius the human has to rely on the hidden work of God through the human act of reasoning within the enduring order of divine grace. God works his grace through the medium of human nature and not against or without it, once having been taken into the service of God's gracious will. This Ignatian insight into the relationship of nature and grace corresponds to the understanding of the act of atonement in the Spiritual Exercises. The vicarious act of Christ's atonement incorporates both an exclusive and an inclusive (participatory) moment. The first moment points to the sole role of Christ mediating God's salvation to the human who is passively to receive God's saving grace. The inclusive moment, however, implies the idea of a participatory integration of the reconciled human into the salvific work of Christ14 14 In the secondary literature on the Spiritual Exercises it is argued whether that participation means a prolongation in the sense of a coredemption by the believer and thus a human completion of Christ's Cross; cf. Kiechle, Kreuzesnachfolge, 140f. The exclusive moment of the individual atonement is, however, clearly shown in the Spanish term of ‘por’ as in ‘for me’ or ‘for you’ (Spiritual Exercises, n. 116, n. 193 and n. 203). None the less, according to Ignatius the inclusive moment of atonement does belong to a comprehensive understanding of it. , in the sense of a concrete instrumental discipleship15 15 Although the meditations of the Spiritual Exercises on the concrete circumstances of Christ's suffering and death suggest the imperative of an imitation of these circumstances by the exercitant, the main aim of the Exercises is learning to discern the will of God in concrete situations, transcending the single act of crucifixion. in the service of (Christ) God. Thus this integration into God's work does not entail a spiritualistic escape from the world, but, quite the reverse, a ‘mysticism of service’16 16 H. Rahner, Art. Ignatius von Loyola, in: LThK2 5 (1960) 613–615; here: 614: ‘Mystik des Dienstes’. However, E. Przywara, Majestas Divina. Ignatianische Frömmigkeit, Augsburg 1925, 73, as well as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, Eine theologische Ästhetik. Vol. III, 1: Im Raum der Metaphysik. Part 2: Neuzeit (Auswirkungen), Einsiedeln2 1965, 466, warn of a mysticism of service to be ultimately misinterpreted as contempt for the world through the practised distance from it and from experiencing it. to the church and the world. The reconciled human has been integrated into the kenotic movement of God into the world in the form of a participation in Christ's crucified love. Such a movement runs counter to a straightforward mystical unification of God and the human, in a worldless spiritualistic sense. This divine-human unification rather finds its appropriate expression in the human engagement in the world. Atonement can therefore only be recognised in its hiddenness, as faith finds itself consoled by God's rising glory even or especially when confronted with phenomena contrary to God's basic and original salvific will, such as earthly suffering and death. Ignatian spiritual theology knows of the basic significance of the enduring analogy between God as glorious creator and the human as a creature intending to reflect God's glory. The notion of analogy is thus, according to Ignatian thinking, a possible and necessary corrective to a dialectical (meaning simply ‘contradictory’17 17 It is the close theological connection between God's glorious presence on earth and the church which leads Ignatius to develop the notion of a possible contradiction between the reasoning of an individual and the church pronouncing a judgement on any matter. This possible contradiction results in the request to accept the opposite of one's own judgement, not because of a seemingly theological value of accepting irrationalities, but because of the divine basis of the church's judgement on a certain matter. Thus the Ignatian notion of divine hiddenness in contrary appearances finds a theological grounding different from that of Martin Luther's ‘sub contraria specie’. ) understanding of the relationship between God and the human, however soteriological its contents may be when claiming an exaggerated self-absoluteness to one's judgement. It is mainly this insight that has inspired the four Jesuits Przywara, Rahner, Sobrino and Balthasar in their respective theological programmes. It is helpful to start with analysing Erich Przywara's understanding of the Cross, as Rahner and Balthasar have regarded him as their ‘theological teacher’.18 18 Karl Rahner, Gnade als Freiheit. Kleine theologische Beiträge, Freiburg i. Br. 1968, 273; H. U. von Balthasar, Rechenschaft 1965, Einsiedeln 1965, 34f. The Silesian Jesuit Erich Przywara (1889–1972)19 19 See as an introduction to Przywara, e. g., Th. F. O'Meara, Erich Przywara, S. J. His Theology and His World. Foreword by Michael A. Fahey, Notre Dame 2002. is a philosopher and theologian who was interwoven inseparably with his work in the political and social upheavals of the 20th century.20 20 See M. Zechmeister, Gottes-Nacht. Erich Przywaras Weg negativer Theologie (Religion – Geschichte – Gesellschaft. Fundamentaltheologische Studien 4), Münster 1997. The linguistic ‘turmoil’ of his works21 21 His works are full of neologism, complex redundancy and staccato sentences. The latter are more associatively than logically connected. reflects his perception of the tormented world of this period. A constant, earnest search for the truth of Catholicism led him to write prodigiously towards the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Weimar Republic. His main work Analogia entis (1932) constitutes a sustained reflection on the paradoxical unity of God and the world, using the notion of ‘analogia entis’ from the IV Lateran Council, notably as provoked by the recent increase in self-estrangement in the world. Turning to face the growing turmoil in the social and political spheres, Przywara found himself, however, less and less successful in conceiving God and the world as one employing this traditional concept of the analogy of being. At this stage, partly under the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita and Karl Barth, Przywara fell back on radical dialectical thinking to appreciate God's ‘ever greater’ (‘je größere’) transcendence, without forsaking the underlying truth of salvation. He resorted to this approach to maintain a theological ‘bridge’ that could communicate the theological truth of God's hidden presence within every prospect and ‘movement’ in the world.22 22 H. U. v. Balthasar's statement that Przywara's talk of an analogical ‘tanta’ (the ‘ever’ in ‘ever greater’), stressing the dissimiliarity between God and the human within the order of revelation, has resulted in his inability to construct a Christology (Balthasar, Theodramatik II,2, Einsiedeln 1978, 202, footnote 1) misses Przywara's kenotic soteriological understanding of ‘tanta’; s. below. For Przywara it was imperative to affirm the salvific and kenotic activity of the ‘ever greater’ transcendent God, even and especially in the most radical spheres of worldly reality, by denying their absoluteness while recognizing their relative truth. During and after the Second World War, Przywara approached desperation. He could not see any way of holding together theologically the increasingly-diverging realities, the risen Crucified in his kenosis and the crucifying world. Towards the end of his life, consequently, he was afflicted with radical (self-) disillusionment.23 23 For the different creative periods in Przywara's life, see K.-H. Wiesemann, Zerspringender Akkord. Das Zusammenspiel von Theologie und Mystik bei Karl Adam, Romano Guardini und Erich Przywara (Studien zur systematischen und spirituellen Theologie 26), Würzburg 2000, 287ff. The theologian M. Zechmeister calls this last phase of Przywara's life ‘God's night’ (‘Gottes-Nacht’)24 24 M. Zechmeister, Gottes-Nacht (see above). in which his notion of analogy stretches and strains until it resembles a ‘bursting chord’ (‘zerspringender Akkord’).25 25 Wiesemann, Zerspringender Akkord (see above). Przywara's famous work on the Spiritual Exercises, his three volume Deus Semper maior (1938–1940)26 26 Deus Semper Maior. Theologie der Exerzitien. 3 Bde, Freiburg i. Br. 1938–1940. , presents the nucleus for his thinking around which the diverging movements circulated. Deus Semper Maior, particularly, illustrates Przywara's switch from exclusive reliance on analogy towards dialectics, without abandoning the former. Fighting off despair in this commentary on the Ignatian Exercises, Przywara sees a possibility of combining at their deepest foundation dialectical thinking and the analogy of being in the notion of the Cross. The Cross is the foundational motive and the centre of Przywara's theology, which turns out to have the shape of a Trinitarian soteriology. The dialectical use of the Cross as primary rationale (‘Leitmotiv’), however, is not only present within his explicitly theological work; it lies already hidden and effective in his Analogia entis. Przywara points here to the analogical difference between ‘being’ and ‘nothingness’: God is his being, whereas the creature's participation is ‘becoming’, which is a ‘nothing’between‘being’ and ‘nothing’ (with a negative meaning), before ‘God [who is] beyond nothing’. The basis for the analogy does not therefore lie in the human‘being’, but in the ‘is’ of God being himself, granting participation.27 27 ‘Das ist analogia entis im Grundbegriff: das innergeschöpfliche ‘ist …’ ist so sehr … ein ‘ist im nicht’…, daß es … sich als ‘Nichts’ zum ‘Schöpfer aus dem Nichts’ verhält', in: Analogia entis. Metaphysik. Ur-Struktur und All-Rhythmus, in: Ders., Schriften. Bd. III, H. U. von Balthasar, Hg., Einsiedeln 1962, 141. What does this mean for the Cross? The Cross according to Przywara represents a ‘rift’ (‘Riß’). Through and with this rift the two dimensions of the divine single dialectical foundational ‘movement’ may be detected: God transcends all human conceptions of himself, yet his re
Referência(s)