06.30.08

Mediatrix of Salvation: The Role of Mary in the Covenant

Posted in Redemptive Suffering, Marian Apologetics, Theotokos at 12:39 pm by Brian Schuettler

By Seth Evangelho 

Divinization is the end for which all things were created. The Mother of the Redeemer, by a singular grace, effectively participates in the reacquisition of this providential vocation to the world when she is “crucified spiritually with her crucified son” (1). In humble submission to the will of the Creator, Mary fulfills her purpose, thus reflecting to the rest of humanity the image of her Divine Son—in whose imitation divinization rests.

In the excruciating agony of crucifixion, gasping for life and groaning to the Father, Jesus lowers his eyes from the dark horizon of the resurrection to behold in the flesh the plentiful fruit of his Passion already manifest. The pierced Virgin, sorrowing at the foot of a blood-soaked cross, mediates to her spiritual children the perfect model of Christian discipleship, the radiant perfection of what it means to be in covenant with God. She, in this perfect act of worship—this total self-emptying gesture of sacrifice—becomes a vessel of grace for humanity, the channel through which Jesus has deigned to bestow the redemptive power of his mercy. On the cross he reveals to the world the perfect human expression of Divine Love, and lo, at his feet, the perfect human response. Mary gives the abundance of what she has received back to the Father, thus uniting her will to the offering of her son.

Mary, the Virgin Mother of our Lord, bears within her maternity the manifest graces of the everlasting covenant. Within her dwells the presence of God and, as this heavenly ark, she now functions as the sole Mediatrix of that grace. In his providence, the Father willed for his only beloved Son to enter the world through a woman, and it is through this vessel of motherhood that he has deigned the world to enter the Godhead.

Introduction

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it (Is 55:10-11).

As the rain waters the earth, so too does the Word of God nourish the soul of every man. Not until the designated fruit has been harvested does that Word return to its heavenly source—the bosom of the Father. He has sent his only Son, the Word made flesh, to rescue a fallen world (cf. Jn 3:16); and in this self-emptying act creation itself is filled. This Logos is meant to nourish the soul of every man, as the rain penetrates the soil, and like the earth, the soul is made rich to bare abundant fruits. Unlike the earth, which makes an unconscious return, man is faced with a decision to surrender his securities—to trust in the providential cycle of Love.

The sin of our first parents had made it impossible for us to obtain the grace necessary for such a selfless offering, but the covenant opens for man a channel by which authentic freedom and trustful surrender become a realistic pursuit. Properly nourished, and by a free act of self-donation, we are made sons in the Son, and we offer the Word back to the Father.

It is true that the Virgin Mary mediates to us this Word-made-flesh, but she is not simply a material conduit through which God enters time. She mediates the return offering as well. The humble maiden of Nazareth is present at the foot of the Cross, and it is there that she receives her full status as Mediatrix of a New Covenant; she offers her very “flesh” back to the Father in complete and humble obedience to His will. It is in this “yes”—this free self-donation to the Father—that, for her part, the true meaning of worship is fulfilled.

The Son elevates this “act of worship” to its most perfect manifestation by submitting to the agonizing reality of crucifixion; but Mary, through her own sacrifice, offers true worship to the Father “in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23), thus achieving an authentic communion—the divinization desired by God for all creation. Mary goes before us in a singular way as the first to fulfill the purpose of her creation. She not only mediates to us the New and Everlasting Covenant by supplying the “flesh” to be sacrificed, but gives to us also the perfect example of what it means to imitate His Passion.

In this essay, I will explore the penetrating reality of God’s merciful love for his creation. Only through covenant can the depth of his aspiration be attained, and we will see why. In the midst of his plan has been revealed to us a woman. Her humility deflects the illuminating radiance of her perfection, but as we delve into the depths of the person of Mary, we shall discover her intimate relationship with both God and man.

Part One: The Love of the Father (2)

In communion creation finds its raison d’etre. From within the eternal completeness of Trinitarian life, God calls the whole of created reality into the eternal transcendence of divine existence. History becomes the actualization of this “event.” Our anxiety-stricken, fallen world will only find repose in the context of a covenant with its Creator, whereby it is set free from the bondage of sin and allowed to participate in the temporal experience of creation’s destiny.

The fall of Adam and Eve inaugurated the covenant between God and man—a familial bond that would untie the knot of disobedience. God reveals the profound reality of his fatherhood by using history itself as the dramatic stage upon which he would raise his children, ultimately drawing them back into his arms. The first ray of light appears immediately after man’s treacherous descent: the promise of enmity.

There was to be born a woman whom the devil could not touch, and it is her seed who would undo the curse brought on by our first parents (Gen 3:15). Of course this seed is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ; but he was to be mediated to the world through a humble Jewish maiden, Mary of Nazareth. She is the woman of Revelation, clothed with the sun, kept safe in the wilderness, and at enmity with the devil (cf. Rev 12:1-6).

The covenant grew out of a threefold promise to Abraham, slowly transitioning from one historical phase to the next; but ultimately, it was destined for fulfillment in the sacrifice of the Messiah on Calvary. Mary consents to this offering by her “fiat” at the Annunciation, whereby she mediates the blood of the New Covenant to the world, thus fulfilling the Protogospel of Genesis. Death has lost its sting, for—by the fathomless depths of Divine Love, and with the cooperation of one fair maiden—man encounters the Savior and finds atonement for his sin.

Before unpacking the relevance of our Spiritual Mother, it is first necessary to examine more closely the covenant itself. Let us now, with the help of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) peer into the pedagogy of the Father’s love.

Understanding the Covenant

The Old and New Covenants must not be seen as competing worldviews. Rather, they constitute the one covenant “issued in two main stages” (3). The title Testament is not arbitrary; the reality of the word (covenant) reveals the essence of the two-fold revelation, the unveiling of God’s sovereign decision to call man forth into personal communion. Unlike the equal partnership of human covenants, the implications of Scripture reveal salvation to be a covenantal “gift, a creative act of God’s love” (4).

This invitation into quasi-marital status with God is striking; never before had such a relationship been considered. The infinite God existing in personal relation to the finite world was a revelation that presented ancient thinkers with a logically irreconcilable gap, forcing “theology (to) look for a philosophy acceptable to it” (5). The Biblical notion of God, known through two relational terms, creation and revelation, suggests what was finally revealed as a Trinitarian existence within the Godhead (God-in-relation) (6). Pope Benedict XVI wishes to introduce this “new philosophical category—the concept of ‘person’” (7) as necessarily relevant to speech about God. If God is not Trinitarian, a being-in-relation, then any personal relationship with him amounts to a philosophical absurdity.

Allof salvation history unfolds within the context of the covenant, and therefore any discussion about the God of the Bible must begin with the creation of the cosmos. The revelation of God’s creating purpose is often overlooked, but nonetheless it is present within the Genesis account. The Sabbath rest might be thought of as the crowning moment of leisure in which the curtain is drawn, unveiling the masterpiece. When God’s chosen people are commanded to observe this day, the purpose of creation is illuminated. The worship of God in freedom and in love is the climactic fulfillment of the Creator’s design. The Sabbath rest points man to the eschatological completion of reality, to a time when God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

The principle notion of creation is that of an initiation into the eternal relationship of familial communion with God—a relationship shattered by the fall. For this reason, the covenant has become imperative for restoration, that the created world might finally be transformed by a participation in divine reality. This is the “cosmic liturgy” described in the book of Revelation, “the marriage supper of the lamb” (Rev 19:9), but it will not take place until the family has been gathered. The Creator of space and time has for this reason made himself known through historical stages culminating in the Word made Flesh, whereby he has revealed his saving plan to systematically draw humanity back into the dramatic tension of freedom and obedience, justice and mercy—his loving arms (8).

As St. Augustine has so eloquently asserted, the New Covenant lies hidden in the Old—via real historical events with unexpected typological relevance—and the “types” of Old are revealed in the New to be a foreshadowing of heavenly realities. The Holy Father points out a distinction made in the letter to the Hebrews: rather than thinking in terms of the Old and the New, it is more proper to regard them as the “first” and the “eternal.” We will then avoid the common misconception in St. Paul’s writings of the positing of the Law against the Spirit. Instead, we will see with the eyes of faith that Our Lord has torn open our veiled intellects, giving us the spiritual insight to realize that “the Law itself becomes Spirit” (9).

Two forms of covenant can be identified with the Israelite experience of old. The first and fundamental covenant—that which through the cooperation of the Virgin Mary finds full expression in the Person of Christ—is the promise to Abraham: “the gift of friendship bestowed without conditions” (10). The other form acts as a temporary condition based on the transgressions of the Chosen People. We see this in the Levitical and Deuteronomic covenants mediated by Moses to the idolatrous Israelites in the desert. These legal stipulations reveal the patience and wisdom of a God who has covenanted himself only once; and his intent all along to fulfill his oath to Abraham in the God-man.

At the Last Supper, seen now in light of the Cross, the Old Covenant was drastically transfigured to “a totally unsuspected depth … (and man is introduced to) a new and profoundly transformed level of existence” (11). The prophetic notion of a time when the Law will be written upon the hearts of God’s people is physically manifested in Eucharistic Communion. Upon reception, our hearts are united to his, thus transforming our very flesh. All the while, he descends into the hell of our brokenness (the depth of covenant love by which he has forever bound himself to humanity).

The Paschal Mystery, made present in the Holy Sacrifice, is perpetuated in time, making us witnesses to the truth of the one covenant. Just as the Israelites required constant renewal, we now experience the fulfilled, eternally unchanging “event” through which the relationship of humanity with God is constantly made new (cf. Rev 21:5). The Old Testament—given flesh in the womb of Mary—has been glorified in Christ, restored and transformed in the blood of the true Paschal Lamb.

Through the grace of Divine Love, we begin to understand how God has turned his “testament” to us into a “covenant” with us. God is truly with us in the Incarnation. His spousal desire for man is fully revealed when he binds his existence to our nature; and in the consumption of his human (albeit resurrected) flesh, we become “partakers in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). In Christ, the covenant relationship is final. A two-sided communion, with Christ (the Head) as Mediator with the Father, and humanity as his Body and Bride, now orients humanity within the inner Trinitarian dialogue of Love.

Any attempt to grasp the profound revelation of covenant love is futile if it is unable to relate two fundamental dimensions. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI suggests that these dimensions are not only inseparable, but when properly understood, they are indistinguishably one in action. The two dimensions of covenant to which he refers are that of worship and sacrifice. Let us now reflect upon these theological insights of the Holy Father—windows into the covenant that might not have otherwise been opened.

Proper Worship…True Sacrifice

The covenant calls man forth from the bondage of sin, reacquainting him with truth and presenting him with the opportunity to love. Through covenant man realizes that to know God is to love God, and that any resistance to submission can only result in a return to slavery. It was to love God and to give him proper worship for which we were created; and thus we find true freedom only within the limits of his precepts.

The central event of God’s revelation to Israel is mediated through Moses in the Exodus. The Israelites do not “escape” slavery to the Egyptians; they are set free through divine intervention. The reason for such an action is revealed in the tumultuous journey of the Chosen People into the Promised Land. Yahweh had destined them to have a land of their own; but first they had to learn in the wilderness what it meant to serve him. The land into which they would enter carried no meaning apart from its intended use. The Promised Land was “to be a place for the worship of the true God” (12), and this represented the purpose of creation itself. Man, a spiritual being fashioned out of material elements, finds freedom only in worship—and therefore needs a “place” in which to offer it.

Although God freed the Israelites from slavery, they received a shallow liberty until they understood that he freed them for worship. This required that they learn to sacrifice. In their desert wanderings, the people were introduced to genuine worship—that they might one day be able to share in the life of God. But since they were so distanced from the ways of the Lord, it was necessary to learn (as humans do) in stages. The sacrifice desired was nothing less than a complete self-offering on the part of every man; but this required a love so refined that the Israelites had to first be stripped of their idolatrous attachments. The animal sacrifices served as pedagogy, but remained a temporary arrangement; for the true purpose of sacrifice assumes an interior fulfillment: “for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos 6:6). The essence of worship (and with it the covenant) is lost without the true meaning of sacrifice.

The sin of Adam was a failure to keep safe the garden, but his stewardship was limited and he failed to love sacrificially. The mystery of sacrifice is fully revealed in the one sacrifice of Christ and Mary (13)—the pouring out of divine (now hypostatic) love. This is the perfect historical manifestation of an eternal reality; the only worship worthy of communion with God. Unlike Adam, Christ gives himself over completely for his Bride, going before us to illuminate his ineffable message of agape: “…he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). The gift of our very lives back to the Creator is returned a hundredfold, and we discover the abundant freedom for which we are destined.

Our Lady goes before us as the only creature to respond perfectly to the Creator. Her “fiat” constituted a completely selfless surrender to the will of God. It is through the imitation of Mary, the embodiment of creaturely perfection, that we learn to offer our lives (in sacrifice) entirely to God and obtain (by true worship) the fulfillment of our most inexpressible hopes; for “the goal of worship and the goal of creation are one and the same—divinization, a world of freedom and love” (14).

Divinization—Liturgical Consummation

When the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity put on human nature, he did this so that his total gift of self (on the altar of the Cross) might unite all of humanity, with himself, to God. The crucifixion of the God-man has proved acceptable; and “the prayer of the man Jesus is now united with the dialogue of eternal love within the Trinity” (15). The unitive force of Christ’s love is manifested in a real, substantial manner in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. At Mass we transcend the limits of the old creation and enter into the transformed reality of the Sabbath rest.

The covenant is a catalyst for restoration. Man is reintroduced to the authentic order of creation; he realizes that as the rain descends from the heavens and makes its way back, so have all things been designed in God. The truth of our wounded existence requires submission that we might be healed; and in wholeness we are to be elevated to the heights of divine life. God has not created the world to be absorbed back into him; for one will lose nothing of his unique expression of personhood. Rather, the distinction between us and God will be crowned by an even greater comprehension, unveiling man to himself (16), and all that it truly means to be created.

Creation is God’s gift of freedom to man, “a space for worship” (17) consummated by a bond of covenant love, whereby the true act of love becomes indistinguishable from the true act of worship. This reality is actualized at every Catholic mass as the faithful enter into the one sacrifice of Christ. Through sacramental grace we grow in the knowledge and love of the Trinity. The liturgy, from the beginning, has been the doorway to the covenant; the way in which we offer our lives in true worship, and as his children, come to the Father.

In the consummate liturgy of the last days, we enter into the Paschal Mystery, the culmination of “the loving plan that guides all of history” (18). The Eucharist is a sharing in the eternal moment of the life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ—the temporal expression of divine love, whereby the covenant consummation of the Last Supper is perpetuated in time. We receive from the hands of a priest that sacred host, and its nourishing power is absorbed into our flesh; and taking his Body and Blood into our own, we are united to his. This is the climax of covenant communion, the Divine act by which the Savior brings us home to God (19)

Read the entire article at Mother Of All Peoples :   http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1382&Itemid=80

05.08.08

whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things

Posted in Someone To Pray For, Redemptive Suffering, the concrete reality of a being, The Suffering Poor at 10:31 am by Brian Schuettler

“There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of what Aquinas calls secondary causality — in nature or history — is governed not only by a transcendent providence, but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of — but entirely by way of — every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines. It seems a strange thing to find peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome. Better, it seems to me, the view of the ancient Gnostics: however ludicrous their beliefs, they at least, when they concluded that suffering and death were essential aspects of the creator’s design, had the good sense to yearn to know a higher God.

I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

David B. Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and author of The Beauty of the Infinite.

Taken from David B. Hart’s essay from the March 2005 issue of First Things, written in light of the tsunami that devastated the South Asian coastline in December 2004.

http://www.firstthings.com/

02.07.08

Does God Suffer?

Posted in Redemptive Suffering at 1:52 pm by Brian Schuettler

by Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy

Some readers may think this an odd article to be published by “a journal of religion and public life.” It is an exercise in theology, philosophy, and the history of ideas on a question that may seem far removed from anything that might be called public life. In fact, however, it is pressingly pertinent to the Church’s most important public task: communicating the gospel, and doing so in a culture whose dominant virtues are compassion, empathy, and, as it is sometimes put, feeling one another’s pain. In such a culture, it is very tempting to speak of God as compassionate, empathic, and, therefore, suffering as we suffer. I believe that temptation should be resisted. Understanding why it should calls for a careful examination of relevant considerations in theology, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

From the dawn of the Patristic period Christian theology has held as axiomatic that God is impassible-that is, He does not undergo emotional changes of state, and so cannot suffer. Toward the end of the nineteenth century a sea change began to occur within Christian theology such that at present many, if not most, Christian theologians hold as axiomatic that God is passible, that He does undergo emotional changes of states, and so can suffer. Historically this change was inaugurated by such Anglican theologians as Andrew M. Fairbairn and Bertrand R. Brasnett. Within contemporary Protestant theology some of the better known theologians who espouse the passibility of God are Karl Barth, Richard Bauckham, John Cone, Paul Fiddes, Robert Jenson, Eberhard Jüngel, Kazoh Kitamori, Jung Young Lee, John Macquarrie, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Richard Swinburne, Alan Torrance, Thomas F. Torrance, Keith Ward, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.

Among Catholic theologians, while they may differ as to the exact manner and extent of God’s passibility, one nonetheless finds a strange mix of theological bedfellows. They include, among others, Raniero Cantalamessa, Jean Galot, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Roger Haight, Elizabeth Johnson, Hans Küng, Michael Sarot, and Jon Sobrino. Of course one must add the host of Process Theologians who, following the lead of Albert North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, hold, by the very character of their philosophical position, that God is by nature passible and so can suffer. This theological shift has been so overwhelming, so thorough, and has been achieved with such unquestioned assurance that Ronald Goetz has simply, and in a sense rightly, dubbed it the “new orthodoxy.”

What has brought about such a radical reconception of God? How, in only one hundred years, has the Christian theological tradition of almost two thousand years, so readily and so assuredly, seemingly been overturned? There are basically three factors that have contributed to this change: the prevailing social and cultural milieu, modern interpretation of biblical revelation, and contemporary trends in philosophy.

It was originally human suffering that became the catalyst for espousing a passible and thus suffering God. Surely, God must suffer in solidarity with those who suffer. This was first expressed within the context of the social ills of industrial Britain in the late-nineteenth century. However, the icon that has come to embody this assumption is Auschwitz. Jürgen Moltmann, in The Crucified God, was the first to employ Elie Wiesel’s graphic and horrific story (which has subsequently appeared in over thirty books and articles) of a Jewish boy hung by the Nazis along with two men in the camp at Buna (Moltmann wrongly places it in Auschwitz). It took half an hour for the youth to die and, as the men of the camp watched his torment, one asked: “Where is God now?” Wiesel heard a voice within him answer: “Where is He? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.” While Wiesel interpreted his inner voice as expressing what has now become disbelief in a loving and just God, Moltmann exploited the story to argue for a God who suffers in union with those who suffer. In the midst of the Holocaust and hundreds of other contemporary occurrences of horrendous human suffering, this argument, often expressed with passionate sentiment and emotion, continues to win theological adherents. How can God be an immutable, impassible, idle, and indifferent bystander in the midst of such unspeakable suffering? If God is a loving and compassionate God, as He surely is, He must not only be aware of human suffering, but He must also Himself be an “active” victim of such suffering. He, too, must suffer.

This contemporary experience of human suffering, which seemed to demand a passible God, found a ready ally and firm warrant, it appeared, within the biblical revelation of God. The Old Testament seems to give ample proof that He not only is passible but that He also indeed suffers. God revealed Himself to be a personal, loving, and compassionate God who has freely engaged Himself in, and so ensconced Himself within, human history. He mercifully heard the cry of His enslaved people in Egypt and determined to rescue them. Moreover, God revealed Himself, especially in the prophets, to be a God who grieved over the sins of His people. He was distressed by their unfaithfulness, and suffered over their sinful plight. So disheartened was God by their hard-heartedness that He actually became angry. However, “my heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not mortal; the Holy One in your midst and I will not come in wrath” (Hosea 11:8-9). Thus God in the Old Testament suffers on account of, with, and on behalf of His people. Ultimately it is the revelation of His love that demands that God suffer. Expressing the sentiment of many, Moltmann writes: “Were God incapable of suffering in any respect, and therefore in an absolute sense, then He would also be incapable of love.”

Moreover, the heart of the Christian kerygma is that the Son of God became man and lived an authentic human life. Within that human life the Son’s death on the cross stands as the consummate event. From the Incarnation and the cross theologians argue for God’s passibility on three interconnected levels. First, it is because God has always suffered with those He loved that He sent His Son into the world. The cross then expresses fully God’s eternal divine nature and thus is the paradigm of a suffering God. Second, while the Christian Christological tradition has always upheld the truth that the Son of God suffered as man, though not as God, contemporary theologians find such a distinction illogical and therefore unacceptable. If the Son of God actually became man, then He not only suffered as man but such suffering must have washed into His very divinity as well. Third, the Son, on the cross, did not then merely experience the abandonment of the Father as man but equally as God. Moreover, such abandonment simultaneously pertains to the Father’s own experience. The Father suffered the loss of His Son. Thus the suffering cry of dereliction was a cry being experienced within the very depths of God’s passible nature.

Now, the world was not immune from human suffering until the last two centuries, nor had Christians ceased consulting the Bible. Why, then, did what now seems so obviously true only become evident after nearly two thousand years of Christian theology? According to many contemporary theologians, Greek philosophical thought, especially Platonism, had hijacked biblical revelation. The static, inert, self-sufficient, immutable, and impassible God of Platonic thought usurped, via Philo and the early Church Fathers, the living, personal, active, loving, and so passible God of the Bible. This philosophical and theological deformity, having entered into the very genetic make-up of the Christian gospel, bred its mature distorted offspring within Scholasticism, especially in the writings of Aquinas. Only relatively recently, especially in the wake of Hegel and the rise of Process Philosophy, have theologians perceived the extent of the deformity and so been able therapeutically to redesign the authentic genetic structure of the gospel. Actually, the curative procedure is easily done. One only needs to hold that God is neither immutable nor impassible, but is both mutable and passible, and so He suffers. Presto, the gospel is once more, philosophically and theologically, its vibrant self.

I would acknowledge that the above arguments are, even in the brief summary form that I have presented them, intellectually and emotionally powerful, though often the emotional sentiment appears to far outweigh reasoned argument. Nonetheless, I believe that the entire project on behalf of a passible and so suffering God is utterly misconceived, philosophically and theologically. It wreaks total havoc upon the authentic Christian gospel.

In considering this matter, the first issue that must be addressed is the nature of God as revealed within the biblical narrative, for ultimately the question of His impassibility or passibility must be in conformity with it.

Undeniably the Old Testament speaks of God as though He did undergo, at different times and in diverse situations, emotional changes of state, including that of suffering. However, I believe that such passages must be understood and interpreted within the deeper and broader revelation of who God is. While the Old Testament does not philosophically or theologically address the issue of God’s impassibility or passibility, it does provide the revelational context from which it must be examined. This context consists in rightly discerning the biblical notion of God’s transcendence and immanence. The manner in which God both transcends the created order and is present to and immanently acts within the created order will ultimately control whether He is passible or impassible. Now, within the Old Testament, it is precisely the very immanent actions of God that reveal the character of His transcendence. What then do these immanent actions reveal about the transcendent God?

God, in initiating the covenant and acting within it, manifested that He possessed at least four fundamental characteristics that set Him apart as God. First, He is the One God. While the Old Testament never treats the philosophical issue of “the One and the Many,” the fact is that the more the unique oneness of God matured within the biblical faith the more God was differentiated from everything else-the many. Thus, to say that God is one not only specified that there is numerically only one God, but also that, being one, He is distinct from all else. His oneness speaks His transcendence.

Second, God is the Savior. As Savior His will and actions are not frustrated by worldly power or might, or by the vicissitudes of history, or even by the limitations of the natural physical order. Thus, the very same immanent salvific actions of God that manifested His relationship to His people equally identified His complete otherness. God could be the mighty Savior only because He transcended all this-worldly and cosmic forces.

Third, the mighty God who saves is the powerful God who creates. As Creator, God is intimately related to and cares for His good creation, particularly His chosen people, and yet, as Creator, He is not one of the things created, and is thus completely other than all else that exists.

Fourth, God is All Holy. God sanctified the Israelites for they were covenanted to Him as the All Holy God. God’s holiness distinguished Him (the root of the Semitic word “holiness” means “to cut off”) from all that was profane and sinful. Even when the Israelites defiled themselves by sin and infidelity, God Himself was not defiled. Rather it is specifically because He is the transcendent (the “cut-off”) Holy One, and so incapable of being defiled, that He could restore them to holiness.

For God, then, to be transcendent does not mean that there are certain aspects of His being that are distinct from those aspects of His being that allow Him to be immanent. For the Old Testament, that which makes God truly divine and thus transcendent is that which equally allows Him to be active within the created order and so be immanent. To say that God is the One All Holy Creator and Savior is to express His immanent activity within the created order as the one who is not a member of that created order. This is the great Judeo-Christian mystery, which finds its ultimate expression in the Incarnation: He who is completely other than the created order can be present to and active within the created order without losing His complete otherness in so doing.

To undermine the transcendent otherness of God in order to make God seemingly more immanent undermines the very significance of His immanence. The importance of God’s immanent activity is predicated in direct proportion to His transcendence. It is precisely because God transcends the whole created order of time and history that His immanent actions within time and history acquire singular significance. The one who is in the midst of His people is “The Lord [who] is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, His understanding is unsearchable” (Isaiah 40:28, see also the whole of chapters 40-45).

From within this biblical context of the immanent activity of the totally transcendent God, God is said to undergo emotional changes of state or even to change His mind. While such statements say something literally true about God, they are, I believe, not to be taken literally. Such statements do wish to inform us that God is truly compassionate and forgiving. He does grieve over sin and is angry with His people. However, such emotional states, firstly, are predicated not upon a change in God but upon a change within the others involved. God is sorry that He created human beings (Genesis 6:6-7) and that He appointed Saul king (1 Samuel 15:11,35) because they have become sinful. He relents of His anger and threatened punishment of the Ninevites (Jonah 4:2) and of the Israelites because they have repented (Exodus 32:14). Such reactions or changes predicated of God actually express a deeper truth-that of God’s unchanging and unalterable love and justice as the transcendent other.

Continue at Catholic Culture: http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=7966

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