Professional Documents
Culture Documents
EXPLORING DIFFERENCE
Theological Trends
The Catholic Church Subsists in the Catholic Church 79-93
Peter Knauer
One of Vatican IIs most creative teachings was the suggestion that the
Church of Christ is broader than the Roman Catholic Church; the two
are not simply to be identified. Peter Knauer suggests that the Church in
which we profess our belief in the Creed exists wherever people believe
in Christ as the Son of God.
FOR AUTHORS
The Way warmly invites readers to submit articles with a view to publication. They should normally be
about 4,000 words long, and be in keeping with the journals aims. The Editor is always ready to discuss
possible ideas. Further details can be found on The Ways website, www.theway.org.uk. In the second half
of 2007, we will be publishing a special issue entitled Spirituality and Social Transformation. Contributions to
this project will be especially welcome.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The article on the Tibhirine Monks was first published in Collectanea Cistercensia; Exile and Virtual Space
first appeared in Cahiers de spiritualit ignatienne (Quebec City); Mary, Daughter of Sion was originally in
Geist und Leben; the presentation on Ignatius and the Turks is based on material commissioned by
Christus. We are grateful to the editors and authors for permission to reproduce this material. Translations:
Philip Endean SJ. The scripture quotations herein are generally from the New Revised Standard Version
Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
FOREWORD
1
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, edited with an
introduction by Martin E. Marty (London: Penguin, 1982 [1902]), 507-508.
2
James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 31.
3
Rowan Williams, Balthasar and Rahner, in The Analogy of Beauty, edited by John Riches
(Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1986), 11-34, here 33.
The Spirit in Contemporary Culture
Ludovic Lado
1
Adrian Hastings, The Church and Mission in Modern Africa (London: Burns and Oates, 1967), 60.
2
Benjamin C. Ray, African Religions: Symbol, Ritual and Community (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, 1976), 3.
The Roman Catholic Church and African Religions 9
3
Jesse N. K. Mugambi, The African Heritage and Contemporary Christianity (Nairobi: Longman Kenya,
1989), 14.
4
Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second
Century and Modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books, 1992), 225.
10 Ludovic Lado
Spiritan Archives
Bishop Franz Xaver Vogt with the first indigenous Cameroonian priests, 1935
The point is clear: dialogue between the Catholic Church and other
religions is not a dialogue between equal religions.
To date, the most important document of the magisterium
featuring a statement about dialogue between Catholicism and African
The Roman Catholic Church and African Religions 11
5
Malcolm Ruel, Ritual and the Securing of Life: Reflexive Essays on a Bantu Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 57.
The Roman Catholic Church and African Religions 13
6
Adrian Hastings, African Catholicism (London: SCM Press, 1989), 90.
14 Ludovic Lado
I hope, then, that the Church can gradually accept the possibility
of acknowledging that Christians can invoke their ancestors too,
just as they invoke the Christian saints: having recourse to them as
mediators and intercessors with God at difficult moments, and this
without fear of possible excommunication on the Churchs part. I
have already stressed that the cult of ancestors is not idolatry, but
rather an expression of filial piety. It seems to me that if a good
catechesis about the mediation of saints and ancestors were to be
given to our Christians, and if for its part the Church could accept
the need to look more seriously into the cult of the ancestors in
order to capture better its spirit and actual function, then Christian
recourse to and invocation of the ancestors would be possible, just
7
as it is now for the Christian saints.
7
Dieudonn Watio, Le culte des anctres chez les Ngyemba (Ouest-Cameroun) et ses incidences
pastorales (dissertation: University of Paris-Sorbonne, 1986), 361-362.
8
See Charles Nyamiti, Christ as our Ancestor (Gweru: Mambo, 1984); Bnzet Bujo, The Ethical
Dimension of Community: The African Model and the Dialogue between North and South (Nairobi:
Pauline Publications Africa, 1998).
The Roman Catholic Church and African Religions 15
A newly ordained priest presiding at the Eucharist for the first time
in Ngyembaland, Cameroon. The horses tails that he and his
assistant are holding are symbols of honour in their indigenous
culture, as is the decorated awning behind them.
9
See Paul Gifford, Ghanas New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy (London:
Hurst, 2004).
The Roman Catholic Church and African Religions 19
www.pbase.com
10
I have discussed this point further in Repenser linculturation en Afrique, tudes, 404 (2005), 452-
462.
20 Ludovic Lado
and cultural change will always be with us,11 the gospel message does
not change. Inculturation is indeed a difficult attempt to marry
culture, which is always in motion, with the message of Christ (Love
God and love your neighbour), which will never change. Given
cultures susceptibility to change, the product of any attempt at
inculturation is bound to be an unstable mixture.
Evangelization and Conflict
There is nothing new about the fact that Christian mission occurs in a
context of religious pluralism. Jesus himself carried out his mission in a
context of pluralism and nothing suggests that he was particularly
concerned about the existence of other religions. He simply went
around preaching the gospel, and loving both Jews and non-Jews; we
occasionally find him admiring the faith of the so-called pagans (Luke
7:9; Matthew 15:28). Moreover, there is no indication that the fact of
his being culturally Jewish made his message any less difficult for his
Jewish audience:
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this
man give us his flesh to eat? Many of his disciples turned back
and no longer went about with him. (John 6:52,66)
The fact that these people decided not to follow Jesus any more
obviously had nothing to do with some cultural gap between the
evangelizer and evangelized, for the message of Jesus could not have
been better inculturated. The breakdown in communication occurred
because Jesus Jewish audience found what he had to say senseless and
unacceptable. Jesus spent his public ministry witnessing to the Gods
love for humanity. This love reaches out to ones enemies and prays for
ones persecutors; it unsettles human selfishness and pride; it is
countercultural; it is love nailed on a cross:
11
Gerard J. Hughes, Matteo Ricci in Post-Christian Europe, The Way, 44/2 (April 2005), 71-82, here
82; the whole article is well worth consulting on issues regarding culture and evangelization.
The Roman Catholic Church and African Religions 21
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as
I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this
everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for
one another. (John 13:34-35)
Ludovic Lado SJ comes from Cameroon. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1992
and was ordained priest in 2002. His training took him to several African
countries and to the USA. He is currently studying at Campion Hall, Oxford, for
a doctorate in social anthropology, with a focus on the anthropology of culture
and religion.
Heythrop College
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
MA in Christian Spirituality
The MA in Christian Spirituality is an opportunity to
examine the spiritual traditions of Christianity, in their
historical and contemporary forms, and to develop
the ability to understand and evaluate the language,
ideas and forms of Christian spirituality. The focus
is on Christianity in its Western development, and
there is also attention to the direction that the study
of spirituality has taken in recent decades as a
university subject, outside the formal church context.
The topics covered include: historical figures and
traditions in Christian spirituality; patterns of spiritual
transformation; the theory and practice of spiritual
direction; spirituality in its social dimensions; and the
Christian mystical tradition.
There is one core module on the foundations for the
study of Christian spirituality, and a choice of a further
seven modules (see the website or prospectus for
details), of which you choose three (four including the
core module). Teaching is by way of small group seminars, normally of about 10-
15 students, with eleven, weekly, two-hour evening classes in each module. There
is also a 12000-15000 word dissertation. The emphasis in the modules is on giving
students the skills and resources to pursue their own interest and research within
the subject, with a 4000-word final essay for each module. The dissertation offers
the opportunity to pursue your interests in the field in detail. Individual tutorials are
offered on the essays and dissertation.
The MA in Christian Spirituality may be taken part-time over two years or three
years, or full-time in one year. It attracts students from a wide range of walks of life
and is open to all who are interested and able to undertake masters-level study.
Normally, this means possessing a Batchelors degree, preferably in an arts subject,
but equivalent qualifications, for instance through relevant experience, can be
considered.
Heythrop College
/9"
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U1
UNIVERSITY LONDON
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Christian Salenson
During the night of 27-28 March 1996, seven monks of the Cistercian
Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas, near the village of Tibhirine in
Algeria, were abducted by Islamic fundamentalists. A radical faction of
the GIA (Groupe Islamique Arm) claimed responsibility, and on 23
May sent a further message announcing that the monks had been
executed on 21 May. They were buried in the cemetery of their
monastery at Tibhirine on 4 June 1996.
O VER THE PAST DECADES, monastic life has become more and more
sensitive to the theology and spirituality arising from the
encounter between religions. It has made its own distinctive and
precious contribution to some significant progress. Some twentieth-
century monastics were pioneers in this regard: one thinks of Thomas
Merton or Henri le Saux. And plenty of others who are less well
known, both living and dead, have all played a part. It is against this
background that one needs to situate the Tibhirine experience, an
experience that is quite distinctive, not least because of its having
occurred in a Muslim country.
The Church needs monastic life in order to sustain its engagement
in interreligious dialogue and to develop gradually a Christian theology
of religions, something which is still in its infancy. In its turn, religious
life is already receiving great benefit, and might receive a great deal
more, from opening up to other believers and other religious traditions.
Damien Boilley
The Tibhirine Monastery
One expression of this closeness was their relationship with their local
ordinaries: Cardinal Lon-Etienne Duval2 and later Archbishop Henri
Teissier. Both were very attached to the monastic life and showed a
great understanding of it.
What is being said here is all part of the same reality: the monks sit-
uation of dependenceon the country, on the political authorities, on
their neighbours, and on the local Church. They were living among
people who were poor and simple. Tibhirine and Fs were the only
Cistercian monasteries located in areas that were absolutely non-
1
Sept vies pour Dieu et lAlgrie, edited by Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 1996), 71.
2
Cardinal Duval died on 30 May 1996, a few days after the monks murder. His coffin was alongside
theirs at the funeral mass in the cathedral on Sunday 2 June.
Monastic Life and Interreligious Dialogue 27
Firstly, youre wasting your life in front of this Muslim world that is
asking nothing from you and is mocking you, while there is so
much to do elsewhere, so many peoples who are just waiting for
your witness so that they can approach the contemplative life and
come to expand your community . Secondly, you poor thing, our
Order really has no reason to make a foundation like yours. What a
dead weight!
3
Sept vies pour Dieu et lAlgrie, 83-84.
28 Christian Salenson
Even within the Tibhirine community itself, not all the monks had the
same sensitivity or the same degree of openness. All the same, there
were some basic conditions which had to be there for this experience,
which was fundamentally a community one, to take on life.
One of these conditions was a willingness to be haunted, at least to
some extent, by the question of the place of other religions
specifically Islamin the design of God. One possible answer to this
question involves saying that in a given religious tradition there are
certainly some good things, but that it nevertheless remains inferior: it
is no more than a preparation for the gospel. In that case, we are saying
that whatever good there may be in that tradition is already present in
our own. If, by contrast, we hold open the question about the place of
a given religion in Gods design, then we are opening ourselves up to
the possibility of encounter, and accepting the possibility that we
ourselves may become displaced:
4
Pierre Claverie, Lettres et messages dAlgrie (Paris: Karthala, 1997), 17.
5
Christian de Cherg, Lchelle mystique du dialogue: journes romaines de 1989, Islamochristiana,
17 (1997), 1-26, here 6.
Monastic Life and Interreligious Dialogue 29
6
Sept vies pour Dieu et lAlgrie, 88.
7
Vatican II, Nostra aetate, n. 2.
30 Christian Salenson
which it is said that one does not know where it is coming from or
where it is going, where it is descending from or to where it is
8
ascending? Its role is always to bring about birth from on high.
8
Christian de Cherg, Lchelle mystique, 11.
9
Christian de Cherg, Dialogue intermonastique et islam, 1995, in Linvincible esprance, edited by
Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 1996), 205-212.
Monastic Life and Interreligious Dialogue 31
10
Christian de Cherg, Testament, in Linvincible esprance, 223this version draws on the English
translation in Jean Olwen Maynard, Christian de Cherg and the Atlas Martyrs (London: Catholic
Truth Society, 2003).
11
Compare the 1991 document from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Dialogue and
Proclamation, n. 28: First comes the fact that the whole of humankind forms one family, due to the
common origin of all men and women, created by God in His own image. Correspondingly, all are
called to a common destiny, the fullness of life in God. Moreover, there is but one plan of salvation for
humankind, with its centre in Jesus Christ, who in his incarnation has united himself in a certain
manner to every person (Redemptor hominis n. 13; see Gaudium et spes, n. 22). Finally, there needs to
be mentioned the active presence of the Holy Spirit in the religious life of the members of the other
religious traditions. From all this the Pope concludes to a mystery of unity which was manifested
clearly at Assisi, in spite of the differences between religious professions.
32 Christian Salenson
If a monk thinks he has anything to say here, its less in the role of
an efficient builder of the human city (even though he might do
much on this level ) than as a resolute adherent of a way of
being in the world that is senseless apart from what we call the
12
ultimate endsthe eschatologyof hope.
One will notice that Christian de Cherg is speaking here not just
of the ultimate ends, but the ultimate ends of hope: in other words,
the ultimate ends in so far as they are already latently present. It is the
ultimate ends of hope that shape a way of life in the worlda sign
which everyone can see, whether or not they believe in heaven.
Monastic life makes no sense apart from the hope which grounds it.
The monastic community is a sign of the Kingdom, a sacrament of
the ultimate, eschatological reality that it anticipates and of which it is
the seed. It bears witness to the heavenly Jerusalem. It signifies the
communion of saints. The monastic communitys vocation is not just
to be a sign of the visible Churchs unity; it also signifies a communion
of saints that transcends frontiers and religious affiliations. A
community of consecrated life is, by virtue of its vocation, a sign of
communion: the communion of the Church, the communion of all
Gods people, dedicated in Christ to show itself as a mystery that is still
coming to be, the mystery of the communion of saints, in which the
community will dissolve just as the stream loses itself in the ocean.
12
Christian de Cherg, Lchelle mystique, 3.
Monastic Life and Interreligious Dialogue 33
And the communion of saints is the redeemed people as such, not just
the gathered Church:
From this mystery of unity it follows that all men and women who
are saved share, though differently, in the same mystery of salvation
in Jesus Christ through his Spirit. Christians know this through
their faith, while others remain unaware that Jesus Christ is the
source of their salvation. The mystery of salvation reaches out to
them, in a way known to God, through the invisible action of the
Spirit of Christ. Concretely, it will be in the sincere practice of what
is good in their own religious traditions and by following the
dictates of their conscience that the members of other religions
respond positively to Gods invitation and receive salvation in Jesus
Christ, even while they do not recognise or acknowledge him as
13
their saviour.
13
Dialogue and Proclamation, n. 29, referring to Vatican IIs Ad gentes, nn. 3, 9, 11.
34 Christian Salenson
All this obviously becomes the more vivid when the diversity of
religions impinges on community life. So it was in Tibhirine, which was
in Muslim territory. The monks regularly heard the muezzins call to
prayer; they met regularly with the Alawis, a Sufi confraternity; they
lived on a daily basis with Muslim neighbours. But in monasteries at
large, the reality can also be lived out in many other ways, perhaps less
radical in form but none the less significant for that.
The Mystery of Unity
A monastic community lives out this mystery of unity in and through
its very existence. On 27 December 1994, four Missionaries of Africa
were murdered in the Algerian city of Tizi-Ouzou. What Christian said
to the community shortly after that occasion applies also to a monastic
community:
What if difference takes its meaning from the revelation that God
makes us of what He Himself is? Nothing then could prevent us
from accepting difference in the way we accept faith, that is as a
15
gift from God.
14
Christian de Cherg, Dieu pour tout jour (published privately by the Notre Dame dAiguebelle
Monastery, 2004), 429. The source is a chapter talk given on 18 February 1995.
15
Christian de Cherg, Linvincible esprance, 112. Subsequent pages references to this book are given
in the main text.
Monastic Life and Interreligious Dialogue 35
In this perspective:
YYYKIPC\KCPCKV
YYYVJGYC[QTIWMKIPC\KCPC
CPGYKPVGTPCVKQPCNYGDLQWTPCN
HQTURGEKCNKUV+IPCVKCPUVWFKGU
EXILE AND VIRTUAL SPACE
The New Frontiers in
Interreligious Dialogue
Benot Vermander
1
See my Le Dieu partag: sur la route de Franois Xavier, Supplment a Vie chrtienne, 478 (2002).
and religions actually occurring today? What are the means, the
channels enabling it to take place? These issues are not often
discussed, but they nevertheless affect profoundly what happens in any
encounter. To put the point slightly differently: this attempt to ask
about what is conditioning and influencing interreligious exchange
today is an exercise in investigating the material conditions enabling
spiritual awareness. It may be that this focus on material conditions is
something we need in order to begin to understand how God might be
making Himself known today.
2
See Genesis 12: 10-20. Abrampresumably for fear of the Egyptians lust or jealousytells Sarai to
pretend she is his sister. When a plague afflicts Egypt, the truth is discovered. Nevertheless, the
episode ends with a kind of reconciliation pointing Abram forward on his way: Pharaoh gave his men
orders concerning him, and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.
42 Benot Vermander
3
Xavier to John III, King of Portugal, 26 January 1549, in The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier,
edited and translated by M. Joseph Costelloe (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 237-239.
Exile and Virtual Space 43
St Francis Xavier
4
For a general presentation of globalisation by a sociologist, see Malcolm Waters, Globalisation (New
York: Routledge, 1995).
Exile and Virtual Space 45
A Virtual Religion?
Virtual reality, then, has become a significant and influential part of
our everyday lives. And now that we have started spending significant
proportions of our time in virtual environments structured by the
internet and by multimedia, these settings have their effects on our
social relations and our inner worlds.5 Of course, virtual reality does
not impinge to the same degree on every aspect of our lived existence.
But what is striking is the remarkable extent to which it has penetrated
into the world of religion, to the point that we can talk of a new
phenomenon, the birth of virtual religion on the internet, both for
believers and for those who are searching.
Virtual religion is now becoming well established as an expression,
but the realities it denotes are diverse and complex. Let us try to see
what it might mean. We can start simply by noting that religious
groups have been among the most active in making what they have to
offer available on the internet or in other interactive media. Many
major religious texts are freely available online. The Churches now
present their convictions and their offerings on a wide variety of
websites. Then other sites denounce religious groups that they find
dangerous, and it reaches the point that the internet becomes a
battlefield in wars of religion. In Taiwan there is a museum of world
religions that presents the different spiritual traditions through
interactive media. Obviously one can find similar phenomena in any
sphere of activity. Nevertheless, the desire to share convictions is one
of the forces motivating the construction of websites, perhaps even
more than economic gain. And this desire is especially powerful once
religious groups have entered the field. So it is that the internet has
become one of the chief media of religious expression, more effectively
and more rapidly than newspapers, the radio or television did when
they were in their infancy. Perhaps the only comparable transformation
came with the invention of the printing press, which helped to fuel the
Protestant Reformation. Might the rise of information technology be
the occasion of another Reformation?
Another dimension of this phenomenon is the development of
virtual religious communities. There are Churches with an online
5
Think, for example, of how the use of virtual reality can help us in learning to drive a vehicle or fly
an aeroplane.
Exile and Virtual Space 47
liturgy; retreats are being given online; there are even virtual shrines
being developed on screen. In China today, tombs take up too much
landbut Chinese people can now light a lamp for their deceased
loved ones on their computer screens, and this serves as a substitute
for the ritual on the day for cleansing the tombs in real space. Such a
development exemplifies a more general social tendency: communal
interaction goes hand in hand with a concern to stay behind ones own
screen. One can reveal oneself and at the same time protect oneself;
one can interact without endangering ones independence. A new way
of living religious affiliation is coming into being which is communal
but nevertheless also shaped by the quest for personal identity and for
its reinforcement.
Recognising a third aspect of virtual religion takes us across an
important threshold. The medium of communication is never
insignificant, never itself content-neutral. The channels of virtual
reality thus convey a diffused religious message in themselves, or at
least favour a certain type of content. The use of the internet is just
one instance of the virtual media promoting synthetic belief systems or
worlds; other instances include the growing popularity of New Age
doctrines, the success of science-fiction films such as Star Wars, and
the constantly increasing numbers of people playing interactive video
games. These last are particularly revealing. They take their
enthusiasts into a world beyond the mere game, and thus acquire an
almost sacred value. Individuals come to redefine their identities in
terms of a virtual reality that thus becomes a higher, transcendent
reality. For devotees, it all feels as if a virtual god is working through
the virtual reality.
It may not be too much to say that a virtual god is arising in this
new virtualised economy, transcending not only the frontiers between
the different religions, but also the opposition between theism and
atheism. There are plenty of indicators pointing in this direction. Some
people use the slogan, the internet is God; others speak in more
developed terms of the communications network as a God in the
course of emergence. If Spinoza spoke of nature as God, now we have
the screen as God. Old-style pantheism has been replaced by a religion
of artifice, of autonomous human production. God is no longer the
great watchmaker, but rather the watch itself, holding together in one
system the times and spaces of the universe.
48 Benot Vermander
Towards a Cybertheology
These ideas do not take us beyond the confines of religious sociology.
Can we bring these observations together, to see if there is any real
meaning in all of this?
Teilhard de Chardin spoke of a noosphere, surrounding the
biosphere as a kind of thinking envelope. This idea is enough to justify
our accepting what some say about his being a prophet of
globalisation.6 If we think of the noosphere as a virtual reality, this is
not to make it any less real; as Gilles Deleuze repeatedly puts it, the
virtual possesses a full reality as virtual. But it is to give Teilhards idea
a new relevance. We need to have the courage to say that
virtualisation is in itself a process of emancipation, a process of
becoming free from the constraints of space, time and matter. Of
course in one sense virtualisation is neutral; it is the content conveyed
by the medium which determines whether it is being used well or
badly. Nevertheless, the growth of virtual reality impressively fulfils
Teilhards prophetic vision of the earth enveloped in a kind of layer of
thought, a sphere of the felt union of souls.7 But we must modify
Teilhards vision in two ways. Firstly, we need to recognise that in the
layer of thought it is not so easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The gleam from the noosphere also reflects the darker products of
human thought, and our shared complicity in evil. Secondly, we need
to qualify Teilhards vision of unification in such a way as to do justice
to the reality of dissonance, difference, a harmony that is always
postponed. To express the point slightly differently: the music of the
thinking spheres is serial music, not the resounding series of major
chords often imagined in the past.
This analysis is in no sense intended as a condemnation or
lamentation. It is clear that the virtual media provide a valuable
resource for understanding religions and the communities that live
them. They help believers grow in mutual respect; they facilitate
interreligious discussions. Nor do we need to see the recreational side
of the internet and the religious knowledge it enables as distractions.
Play has always been an important aspect of religious activity; our
festivals, feasts and processions remind us of this. That Gods own self
6
See Bernard Ses, Teilhard, prophte de la mondialisation? tudes, 396 (2002), 483-494.
7
Claude Cunot, Nouveau lexique Teilhard de Chardin (Paris: Seuil, 1968), 137-138.
Exile and Virtual Space 49
Benot Vermander SJ entered the Society of Jesus in 1988, and has lived in
Taiwan since 1992. He was ordained priest in 1996, and since then has been
director of the Ricci Institute in Taipei. He is also the founding editor of Renlai,
the Chinese Jesuits cultural journal.
MARY, DAUGHTER OF SION
The Mother of Jesus in the Scriptures
Dieter Bhler
Private Privileges?
The theology of Mary that developed from this ecclesiastical
christology starts from Marys divine motherhood, and revolves around
this idea. All the other mariological themes, such as perpetual virginity,
sinlessness, and the assumption into heaven, are interpreted on the
basis of her being the Mother of God. All of which is fine, but this way
of thinking has some intrinsic limits. All too often Marys privileges
appear in this sort of mariology as personal, and indeed private,
privileges for the Mother of God. The suggestion is that her
immaculate conception happened because of who she was as the
potential mother of God, and that her assumption into heaven was just
a matter of her personal privilege. But a question arises. Why would
the Church teach these doctrines and make them binding if they were
just about Mary herself, and had nothing in particular to do with us,
with the Church?
What follows is an attempt to bring out another aspect of Marian
doctrine: its connections with the theology of the Church. For this is
how the New Testament thinks about Mary. The christology developed
later by the Church talks about Christs divinity and humanity, about
natures. But the New Testament just assumes that Jesus is God and
human; it does not explain the matter.1 The New Testaments
understanding of Christ is couched in quite different terms: not
natures, but functions. The key words are words such as Messiah,
Son of David, King, Son of Man.2 Now, one cannot have a king
without a kingdom; hence talk of the Messiah, of the anointed King,
generates talk of his kingdom, of his people: the kingdom of God, the
people of God, Israel, the Church. It is for these realities that Jesus is
the Christ, the King. For the New Testament, the central title for
Christ is the one that stands over the Cross: King of the Jews.
Now, if the New Testament understanding of Jesus as Messiah is
not set forth in terms of Christs natures, and is centred rather on his
kingship for Israel, then it should not surprise us that the New
Testament understanding of Mary is not so much concerned with her
being the mother of God. What matters, rather, is that she is an
Israelite, a daughter of Abraham. Hence the title of this piece: Mary,
Daughter of Sion.
1
The word divinity turns up once (Colossians 2: 9); divine nature occurs only in 2 Peter 1: 4, and
then not in connection with Jesus.
2
Even the title Son of God once was just a royal epithet (2 Samuel 7: 14), though in Johns Gospel it
of course means more.
Mary, Daughter of Sion 55
texts of both Testaments, and take the whole Bible into account. Let
us begin with the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation:
Who is this woman, whom John the seer beholds in his vision?
Some will reply, Marywho else could it be? And, of course, she is
presented just like this in many pictures and statues: the woman
clothed with the sun, with a crown of twelve stars and the moon at her
feet. But obviously no one seriously thinks that the mother of Jesus has
ever stood on the moon. What we have here is obviously not meant to
be a realistic picture, but a symbolic one. John sees a figure whothis
much is truebrings the child Messiah into the world, but who is not
simply the historical mother of Jesus.
If we read further in the book of Revelation, we find another
female figure, in chapter 17:
Art Serve
The Woman Crowned with Stars
from the Bamberg Apocalypse
Here it is said quite clearly that the woman is not simply an individual
figure. She is the whore of Babylon, the great she-enemy of the people
of God. And now it becomes clear who the woman of the stars actually
is: the other city, Jerusalem, the Daughter of Sion. She stands for the
people in their twelve tribes. After all, Michael the Archangel has
fought on her behalf, and we know from Daniel 12:1 that he is the
guardian of Israel.
The visionary beholds the people of God, the twelve tribes of
Israel, in the form of the Daughter of Sion, who is crying out in birth
pangs. In Scripture, birth pangs are a symbol of severe need and
pressure.3 The ancient covenant people is in serious difficulty, and
under attack from the enemy. But in this situation of distress, it brings
3
See Jeremiah 4: 31, Micah 4: 9.
Mary, Daughter of Sion 57
forth the Messiah. He too is threatened by the dragon. But God carries
him away; the messianic people of God must flee from the dragon into
the desert. And the woman, who before the Messiahs birth was Israel,
has now become, as a result of the Messiah, the Church. Through the
Messiah, the old people of God has become the new people of God.
The woman crowned with stars that we find in the book of Revelation
is thus both Israel and the Church.
Has she, then, just nothing to do with Mary? Not quite. Obviously
it is Israel which brings forth the Messiah herebut the specific
Israelite woman who brought the historical Messiah into the world was
of course Mary. Israel may be in the pangs of mortal danger; but the
actual birth pangs as Jesus entered the world were Marys.
John the seer has here in just a few sentences sketched a whole
history of Israel, Jesus and the Church. The dense symbol of the
woman crowned with stars evokes the whole of the Old and New
Testaments. To understand who she is, we need to look at the two
Testaments as a whole. That will enable us finally to see the full
significance of this particular one-in-three: Israel, Mary and Church.
4
Confessions 7. 15 (21): quia tu es omnitenens manu veritate.
58 Dieter Bhler
Abraham is separ-
ated out. He is chosen
to enter into a special
relationship with God,
and consecrated.5 But
from the outset, the
intention is universal
in its scope. Right
from the election of
Abraham and his des-
cendants, in other
words right from the
election of the people
of Israel, Gods plan
includes the whole
human race. But it is
nevertheless in free-
dom that God wills to
draw humanity; and
his sacrament for this
purpose is Israel, the
The Woman is Given Wings
chosen people. In the
course of the book of Genesis, God several times repeats this to Isaac
and Jacob: all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for
themselves through your offspring (Genesis 26:4). At the foot of
Mount Sinai, God tells Moses and the Israelites: Indeed, the whole
earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy
nation (Exodus 19:5-6).
The Mosaic Torah thus makes it repeatedly clear that Israels
election has a universal purpose. Israel is to be for God a sacrament
through which God one day wishes to reveal Himself to all people. But
the Torah does not say how this is to happen. It does not tell us how
the heathen peoples, those who are outside Israel, are eventually to
enter into Abrahams blessing. It is the prophets who spell it out,
especially Isaiah, Micah and Zechariah. If one were to summarise the
5
God links all other peoples relationships with God with their relationship to Abraham and his
children: I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.
60 Dieter Bhler
6
Isaiah 2: 1-5, 60; Micah 4: 1-3; Zechariah 8: 23, 14: 17; Malachi 1: 11.
Mary, Daughter of Sion 61
Jesus is sent to the children of Israel, not to the pagans. Jesus mission
is to restore Israel, and gather it together from its scattered diaspora.
Then this renewed Israel will act as a magnet and attract the Gentile
peoples. But Jesus comes to realise that his mission is not being
accepted by Israel. Shortly before he dies, he weeps, and says in
lament:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones
those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and
you were not willing! (Matthew 23:27)
Jesus did not succeed in restoring Israel. After his death, the disciples
on the road to Emmaus can complain, we had hoped that he was the
one to redeem Israel (Luke 24:21). It seems that Gods original plan,
the plan for which He had chosen Abraham, had failed. God cannot
provoke the pilgrimage of the nations to Sion if Sion herself does not
accept the Messiah.
How, then, can the nations enter into the blessing of Abraham if
Abrahams descendants have failed to act as a sacramental instrument?
It would seem that God must now dismiss Israel in order to create for
Himself another approach to the pagan peoples, revoke the oath sworn
to Abraham, and annul the covenant made with Israel, so as to reveal
Himself to the nations in a way that bypasses Abraham and Israel. In
theory, there is no reason why God cannot do this. In theory, God
could say: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, the prophets, Jesus
it was all a waste of time. I need to acquire the other peoples for Myself
without Israel. With this, a thousand years of salvation history would
just vanish. In theoryto repeatGod might have done this. But in
fact God does not revoke the covenant with Israel after Jesus is put to
death. God may flare up against Israel in passionate anger, but stops
short at rejecting Israel:
How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O
Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm
and tender. (Hosea 11:8)
62 Dieter Bhler
Israel refused the offer of renewal through Jesus, and yet God cannot
reject Israel. What, then, can God do now? How can the pilgrimage of
the peoples to Jerusalem, the incorporation of the nations into the
chosen people of God, take place, if Jerusalem itself has not followed
Gods design?
If God does not want to reject His people for putting to death the
Messiah, He has to save His project by intervening in an act of new
creation, of a kind hitherto unknown. God has to arise and enthrone
the Messiah. God has to renew Jesus kingship and his kingdom. God
has to renew the election of Israelif not for Israels obedience, which
failed, so at least for its kings vicarious obedience. God did act. He
raised the king. But was he renewing the election of Israel or
repudiating it?
7
The Galatians are ethnically Celtic.
8
See Romans 11: 13: Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry; and
Romans 15: 16: the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the
priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified
by the Holy Spirit.
Mary, Daughter of Sion 63
the Messiah, even before that of the twelve apostles, was the yes
given by Mary. In that this daughter of Abraham, Mary, was ready to
accept and receive the Messiah, God found in Sion the means that
would enable Him to draw the nations to Himself and to incorporate
them around the Israelite centre.
Among the New Testament writers, it is Luke and John above all
who present Mary in these terms. In the infancy narrative at the
beginning of his Gospel, Luke sketches Mary and Joseph as
representatives of the true Israel: poor, simple, but totally faithful to
strict observance.9 As Marys son, Jesus is a ben-Jisrael, a son of this
true Israel. After the Ascension, Luke also sets Mary at the centre of
the apostles (Acts 1:14). Along with the Twelve, Mary is the centre,
the heart of the Church, because together Mary and the Twelve form
the remnant of Israel, a remnant that has become messianic, Christian
in the root sense. In Acts, we see first diaspora Jews at Pentecost
coming on pilgrimage to Sion, to this holy remnant of Abrahams
children. Then Gentiles follow.
For his part, John presents Mary in his Gospel as a representative
of Sion, impatiently waiting for the hour when the Son of Man will be
revealed. At the marriage feast of Cana, which comes at the beginning
of the Gospel, Jesus retorts to this impatient female figure, Woman,
what concern is that to you ...? My hour has not yet come. (John 2:4)
But at the end of the Gospel, the hour has indeed come. Now Jesus
speaks to the woman again, and says, Woman, here is your son (John
19:26). All future disciples need to join themselves to this woman,
this daughter of Abraham, if they want to stand beneath Jesus cross.
Finally, the visionary who wrote the book of Revelation presents
Israel as the woman with the twelve stars. The mother of Jesus is not
the only embodiment of this symbol, but she is certainly the richest: it
was through her that Jesus became a ben-Jisrael. She represents the
twelve-tribe people, because she is the woman through whom Israel
receives, conceives, and brings forth the Messiah. Within the New
Testament itself, she embodies the holy remnant; she is the Daughter
of Sion, the central symbol for Israel. Already in the New Testament,
9
See the references to the law of the Lord in the story of the Presentation in the Temple: Luke 2: 22-
24, 39, 41.
Mary, Daughter of Sion 65
Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross,
from the Nrnberg Chronicle, 1493
she has become the beginning of the Church, and its abiding Jewish
core.
Here it is that we find the central significance of Mary for the
Christian faith. For the scriptures, to be a Christian, to believe in Jesus
as Israels Messiah, is to enter into Abrahams blessing (see Galatians
3:14), and so it remains for all time. To be a Christian means to attach
oneself to the holy, messianic remnant of Abrahams children. To be a
Christian means to attach oneself to Mary, the Daughter of Sion.
of her bodily assumption into heaven are not so much about privileges
that are personal to her as Jesus mother, but rather about the fact that
Gods saving action for the Church has really succeeded in the
Church. The Church is immaculatenot in us, but in Mary, the
person at its heart. The Church cannot permanently succumb to
deathperhaps it can within its individual believers, but not at its
centre as represented by Mary.
Mary is for all time the abiding centre of the Church because she is
the first Israelite, the first child of Abraham, to have accepted the
Messiah. In her, Israels restoration has already begun, successfully.
Through her faith, the old covenant passes over into the new. She
belongs to the old covenant people; around her gathers the new
covenant people. Mary is the heart of the Church because she
represents within it Abraham and his descendants. And when Gentiles
attach themselves to Mary, Abrahams daughter, the Church becomes
the fulfilment of Gods promises to Abraham, as Mary herself sings in
the Magnificat:
Dieter Bhler SJ was born in 1961 and joined the Society of Jesus in 1983. After
his ordination to the priesthood in 1991, he pursued higher studies in Scripture at
Rome and Fribourg, writing a doctoral thesis on the themes of the Holy City and
the restoration of Israel in Second Temple Judaism. He now teaches Old
Testament in the Jesuit faculty of theology in Frankfurt-am-Main.
From the Ignatian Tradition
1
There is only one rather peripheral reference to them in the Constitutionsscholastics who are to work
among the Moors and the Turks are to learn suitable languages (Constitutions IV.12.2, B [447, 449]).
2
Ignatius writes a moving exhortation to Miguel de Nobrega, a Jesuit who has absconded from Goa
without permission and then been captured by Turks en route back to Portugal, encouraging him to
patience and fortitude (25 August 1554, MHSJ EI 7, 446-448). When Jean de la Goutte was captured
by the Turks, there were dealings about a ransom. At one point Ignatius wrote to say that if the Turk
who was to be exchanged for Jean de la Goutte wanted to become a Christian, then money must be
found for de la Gouttes ransom instead (18 July 1555, MHSJ EI 9, 336-338). Unfortunately, de la
Goutte died in captivity while all the negotiations were still in hand.
3
See the article by various hands, Turqua, in Diccionario histrico de la Compaa de Jess Biogrfico-
temtico, edited by Charles E. ONeill and Joaqun M. Domnguez (Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute,
2001), volume 4, 3849-3852.
4
An earlier translation can be found in Letters of St Ignatius of Loyola, selected and translated by
William J. Young (Chicago: Loyola UP, 1959), 260-265.
Ignatius and the Turks 69
this to be a very necessary thing, one that can be done with the
Emperor spending less than what he is currently spending. And
our Father is so much set on this that, as I said, if he thought it
would find credibility with His Majesty, or if he had a stronger
indication of the divine will, he would be glad to employ what is
left of his old age in this, not fearing the trouble involved in going
to the Emperor and the Prince,5 nor the danger of the road, nor
his illnesses, nor any other negative things that might arise. You
should commend this to God our Lord, and look into it, and let
us know soon what appears to you in His divine sight.
Taken on its own, this text is principally striking for what it says
about how precisely Ignatius reflected on his inner movements as he
was weighing up whether or not to make a political move. At one
level, the process is articulated in passive terms: he has been moved by
zeal for souls and received an impresin. Nevertheless, he has
measured the force, so to speak, of these movements from outside
himself, and he is quite clear that he should not act on them as he
would have done had God given him a more effective inner sign. At
the same time, he has also been moved by the light of reason. Here
the outcome is similar: he can see convincing arguments for his
position, but he also knows that he lacks credibility with the Emperor.
Were the signs from God our Lord clearer, or were he convinced
prudentially that he could move forward, he would not be waiting for
advice from anyone. But, as matters stand, he is seeking adviceor
rather asking what comes to Nadal on the topic in His divine sight.
The second letter, again written by Polanco under instruction, is
very different. It is long, thorough, public, self-confident in tone; and
its sheer length helps express its message. Ignatius must have hoped
that some version of it would find its way to the Emperors desk.
5
Later Philip II.
70 From the Ignatian Tradition
The fact that we have the two letters together suggests that
Ignatius more public and political documents are often informed by a
delicate spiritual process, about which he is always discreet and often
silent. One might smile at the grandiosity of Ignatius vision, and also
at the disingenuousness or cheek with which he puts rich religious
orders at the top of his list of potential contributors. But it is also
striking how the Turks appear only as an enemy to be overcome. The
sole reference to their conversion comes in the wake of a conquest; the
idea that they too are people for whom Christ died seems not to cross
Ignatius mind. Perhaps this very lack says something important about
the dynamics of Ignatian spirituality and ministry.
Different Frontiers
The first Jesuits were drawn by a vision of ministry at the Churchs
frontiers: the Turks, the New World and the Lutherans. Soon after
their foundation, they added to that list the world of humanist
education, with its potential for exploring a significant cultural frontier
even among Catholics. Within this vision, what do the Turks signify?
At the risk of being fanciful, we might draw an analogy from the
Cold War world in which most readers of this article will have grown
up. In those years, vigorous missionary commitments to Africa, Latin
America and Asia would have paralleled the first Jesuits willingness to
76 From the Ignatian Tradition
advance that they were not the powerful party. The Indies betokened
the Other as exotic; the Lutherans, the Other as apostate; the Turks,
the Other as threat. As Ignatius and his followers developed a
distinctive spirituality of apostolic engagement with the Other, it took
on different forms corresponding to these different settings.
Ignatius more public letter about the Turks reminds us of the
temporal king in the Exercises, whose will it is to conquer all the land
of unbelievers (Exx 91, 93). But in his political spirituality, Ignatius
has not really moved beyond that image, and begun to think about the
eternal king, whose mission of conquest concerns the whole world, not
just enemy territory, and who will thus draw us into the glory of the
Father (Exx 95). The process will involve humiliations, setbacks, the
way of the cross (Exx 98).
The dynamic of this meditation is as old as Marks Gospel. What
begins as an expansive programme of conquest eventually becomes
something darker and more mysterious; in the end, the synoptics Jesus
inaugurates the Kingdom not by conquering the negative but by
entering its shadow. The Father into whose glory Christ the King
enters is one who has no favourites (Acts 10:34); he makes his sun
rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and
on the unrighteous. If we are to be His children, we are not to
retaliate against our persecutors, but rather to love our enemies
(Matthew 5:44-45).
The process of appropriating this vision, even in the Gospels, is
slow, complex, permanently unfinished. In the Examen, Ignatius
acknowledges that the grace we should pray for at the end of the
Kingdom meditation does not come easily. But what he says about how
to begin is significant. A candidate begins by,
If we are to hear the call of the eternal king, we need to move beyond
violence, beyond defending our sense of the right, even when this
latter is correct and justified. The enemy is to be redeemed rather than
overcome. Aggression and conflict are to be purged away.
78 From the Ignatian Tradition
Peter Knauer
If you read this text as a whole, putting together the beginning of the
first sentence with the beginning of the second, it seems to be saying
something very odd indeed: the Catholic Church referred to in the
Creed subsists in the Catholic Church.1 It can only be making sense if
Catholic Church is being used in two different senses. What, then,
does Catholic Church mean in each case? And which version is
intended when Unitatis redintegratio, the Councils decree on
ecumenism, speaks about people other than Catholics, and says that it
is only through Christs Catholic Church, which is the all-embracing
1
It is worth noting that this formulation was taken over verbatim into the Code of Canon Law (204.2).
means of salvation, that they can benefit fully from the means of
salvation? (n.3)
In the original draft for Lumen gentium distributed to the Council
Fathers on 23 November 1962, what is now paragraph 8 had run as
follows:
The sacred synod thus teaches and solemnly proclaims that there is
only the one true Church of Jesus Christ: the one which we
celebrate in the Creed as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic
Church; the one which the Saviour won for himself on the Cross,
and bound to himself as body to head, bride to bridegroom, the one
which he entrusted after his resurrection to St Peter and his
Successors, who are the Roman Pontiffs, to be governed. And
therefore it is only the Roman Catholic Church that is rightly
2
called Church.
Subsistit in
What exactly does subsistit in mean? We need to be clear from the
outset that there is no question of the Church we profess in the Creed
being simply an idea which is then subsequently made real, or
concretised. This Church is from the outset a reality which is
2
Acta synodalia sacrosancti concilii oecumenici Vaticani secundi, 1. 4. 15.
The Catholic Church' Subsists in the Catholic Church 81
This suggests that subsists in may also simply mean is really present
in: the Church designated in the Creed as Catholic is really present in
the Roman Catholic Church.3
The other similar passage in Lumen gentium comes at the beginning
of paragraph 23:
3
The report which accompanied the draft rather confirms this interpretation: The Church is one single
reality, and here on earth she is present [adest in] the Catholic Church, even if ecclesial elements are also
to be found outside her (Acta synodalia sacrosancti concilii oecumenici Vaticani secundi, 3. 1. 176)
4
in quibus et ex quibus una et unica ecclesia catholica existittranslation borrowed from Decrees of the
Ecumenical Councils, edited by Norman Tanner (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990)the official
Vatican translation, comes into being, is misleading. German writers are equally misleading when
they render ecclesia particularis as Teilkirchepart-Church; they should say Einzelkircheindividual
Church.
82 Peter Knauer
A Church in Canada
The other passage comes in paragraph 13, where the talk is of different
communions separated from the Roman See: Among those in which
Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist [in quibus
The Catholic Church' Subsists in the Catholic Church 83
Catholic
However, when est was replaced by subsistit in, this change affected also
the words in the immediate context. The fact that many of the
Council Fathers may not have been fully aware of this does not affect
the point. A statement can imply more than what its author
consciously and explicitly intended.5 When the first draft said that the
Church designated as Catholic in the Creed was straightforwardly the
Roman Catholic Church, then the two realities were being equated,
and no distinction at all was being made between them. But once
people started to say that the Catholic Church subsisted in the Catholic
Church, then this could only make sense if Catholic Church now had
two different meanings. The final formula is logically possible only if
the two uses of Catholic Church no longer have quite the same sense.
The point stands, whatever the authors were thinking at the time, and
whatever they might have been explicitly intending.
Catholic Church is evidently being used here in two different
senses, a transcendental one and then a categorial one. We begin by
talking about the Church as such, the Church in some kind of absolute
sense, the universal Church. Then we go on to talk about a particular
Church. The universal Church which is designated as Catholic in the
Creed is fully present in the particular Church that is led by the Pope
and by the bishops who are in communion with him. But then this
Roman Catholic Church is no longer the universal Church. Given that
subsistit in has replaced est, the Roman Catholic Church can be
5
A German example: when the German Basic Law was formulated in 1949, the authors wrote that
everyone was to have a right to the free development of their personality (Article 2). At that point in
history, they were certainly not thinking of the right to freedom of movement. But free development
of the personality is such a wide-ranging concept that we can correctly today see it as incorporating
freedom of movement. The authors of the Law were seeking not to circumscribe the countrys future
within what they could consciously envisage, but really to pave a way to whatever the future might
promise. Anyone invoking this article in support of the right to freedom of movement is perfectly
justified in so doing.
84 Peter Knauer
6
The point stands even if there are also uniate Churches in communion with Rome that have their
own institutional structures. The Roman Catholic Church is itself a communion of Churches and
hence described in the Code of Canon Law as an ecclesia universa, a whole Church in the sense of
being a kind of composite. But this is to be distinguished from ecclesia universalis, the universal Church
of Christ, the Church as such. Even as a communion of Churches, an ecclesia universa, the Roman
Catholic Church is still an ecclesia particularis. It is not identical with the ecclesia universalis.
In 2002, Alexandra von Teuffenbach published a dissertation on the meaning of subsistit in Lumen
gentium 8 that has become quite influential in certain circles: Die Bedeutung des subsistit in (LG 8):
Zum Selbstverstndnis der katholischen Kirche (Munich: Utz, 2002). She claims that the phrase subsistit
in is equivalent to est, on the ground that otherwise the clause in the text, although many elements
of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure [extra eius compaginem], would
be meaningless. What she fails to realise is that this clause refers not to the Church of the Creed, but
only to the particular Church known as the Roman Catholic Church. It is rather doubtful that
elements of Christianity can be found outside the Church as meant in the Creed.
The Catholic Church' Subsists in the Catholic Church 85
If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, then you would say to
this mulberry tree, Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it
7
would obey you.
Deficiency of Faith?
The customary ground for denying that a person is in full ecclesial
communion is the supposition that the person has a deficiency of
faith. At least since Vatican II, Roman Catholics generally recognise
that other Christians too, who believe in Jesus Christ, have been
justified by faith in Baptism and are members of Christs body
(Unitatis redintegratio, 3). Nor is it just individual believers who partake
in Gods grace; the Holy Spirit in person has not refrained from using
their Churches and communities too, though we believe them to be
deficient as means of salvation.8
But then there is an oddity. Neither the fact that we recognise
other Christians as members of Christ, nor the fact that their Churches
have become instruments of the Holy Spirit, seem to suffice without
further ado for such things as eucharistic communion. The point needs
to be rethought in the light of Acts 10:47 (Can anyone withhold the
water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just
as we have?) and 11:17 (If then God gave them the same gift that he
gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I
7
Luke 17: 5-6. The standard translation begins, If you had faith, a phrase which implies that Jesus is
rebuking the disciples for not having faith at all, even though they have asked him to increase their
faith. But the Greek verb is in the indicative, not the subjunctive. Jesus is not questioning the
disciples implicit claim to have faith, but rather endorsing it, and drawing their attention to the fact
that it makes no sense to speak of increasing it. They only need to realise that they already have it.
8
Etsi defectus illas pati credimusbut can we really say that it is an object of faith in the full sense that
other Churches suffer from lacks? Credimus here can only be signifying an opinion, rather than faith in
the theological sense.
86 Peter Knauer
Since faith is one and the same, the person who can say much
about it does not have more of it; and the person who can say little
9
about it does not have less of it.
9
Adversus haereses, 1. 10. 2.
The Catholic Church' Subsists in the Catholic Church 87
A Cathedral in Mexico
Incarnation. Only in this context does it make does it make any sense
at all to talk of divine self-communication through the word.
To recognise this love of God which occurs and becomes manifest
in the word of God requires a faith which just is the reality of being
filled with the Holy Spirit. Given such a faith, it is not then just an
additional fact that one happens to be in agreement with all other
believers. A person who has faith in this sense is necessarily in
agreement with everyone else who does.
All realities of the world are such that our knowledge of them
depends on the perspective through which we see them. Other people
see those realities differently, and we can never fully coincide with
other peoples viewpoint. Christian faith, however, is in this respect the
very opposite: if, strictly speaking, agreement with others is possible at
all, then the agreement has to be complete. For what we believe is
something that overshoots earthly perspectives, and is not confined to
the measure of anything created. What we believe is one and the
same: the eternal love of the Father for the Son into which we are
being drawn.
Thus it was that the great theology of the Middle Ages could say
nothing false can be the object of faith [fidei non potest subesse
falsum].10 This sentence only makes sense if it is understood as
entailing the following: it is impossible to make statements of faith in
the sense of expressing Gods self-communication, which are
nevertheless false. For statements of faith in the full sense, statements
expressing Gods self-communication, must be statements in which
there is actually occurring the very reality of which they are speaking:
Gods loving self-gift to us in the interpersonal word through which
faith is passed on. And if the statements can really be understood in
this kind of way, then they are necessarily true of themselves [ex
sese].11 Moreover, to claim that other things are matters of faith in the
Christian sense of the word is not to make a meaningful claim which is
10
The phrase is quoted by the Council of Trent in its Decree on Justification, n. 9.
11
The formulation comes from Vatican I, Pastor aeternus, n. 4: if the Pope defines a doctrine in the
realm of faith and (its application to) morals (this is the absolutely necessary condition for infallibility)
as something to be held by the whole Church, his definitions are of themselves, and not by the
consent of the Church, irreformable. The application of faith to morals (see Lumen gentium, 25)
expresses the truth that only what is done in communion with God can be good before Hima
statement that is nothing other than the doctrine of justification. Moral norms as such (what tradition
calls natural law) are the object of reason, and cannot be taught with the infallibility of faith.
The Catholic Church' Subsists in the Catholic Church 89
something proclaimed by those who believe already. And the fact that
even the faith held by all people together, and thus the faith of the
whole community, nevertheless comes from hearing finds its expression
in ecclesial ministry: in those who relate to the others as a whole (to
the body as such, not just to individuals) in the person of Christ as
Head [in persona Christi Capitis]. It follows that where there is real and
effective Christian faith, the structure of ministry willed by Christ is
necessarily being preserved unfailinglyto use the expression of
Lumen gentium, 27.
However, this continuing transmission of the word of God occurs
in different language-communities. It is not just that people speak
different native languages, but also that even within the same native
languages different theological languages are used. You can compare
this with the use of arabic and roman numeralsthey are different,
but you can count perfectly with either, even if arabic symbols are
easier to handle.
It is in terms of such an analogy that we need to think about the
different particular Churches. If they are Churches at all, they are
living out of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It follows that the
one Church of Jesus Christ subsists in them. Certainly this Church of
Jesus Christ subsists in the Church that calls itself Roman Catholic,
and this Church can rightly claim to represent the fullness of faith in
Jesus Christ. But that does not give the Roman Catholic Church any
right to question the real presence of the very same one Catholic
Church of Christ also in other Christian communities. For is it simply
impossible to believe in Jesus Christ in a deficient way. If faith means
belief in Gods self-gift, then you either really have it or else you do not
have it at all. No one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.
(1 Corinthians 12:3)
But surely, it might be objected, there remain wide differences of
faith between the different Christian Churches. Are there not many
Churches which deny claims that the Roman Church makes, for
example regarding papal infallibility? Are they not lacking in what the
Roman Church sees as necessary for its very existence: the papacy and
other such things? And if you answer yes to these questions, it seems
The Catholic Church' Subsists in the Catholic Church 91
that it is only in a diminished form that the one Church of Christ can
subsist in Churches separated from Rome.12
But there are answers to these objections. If it is really the case
that a Church believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God denies what
for another Church is a truth of the faith, one can only assume that
the same words are being understood by these two Churches in
different ways, and that both, when understood in their own terms, are
right. To take an example. In the Lutheran Church we find the
principle scripture alonesola scriptura; this sounds like a denial of
the Catholic principle that the fullness of revelation occurs only
through scripture, tradition and magisterium together. But even such
a simple word as scripture has a different meaning in the two
12
John Paul II in fact himself wrote of the elements of sanctification and truth present in the other
Christian Communities and says that to the extent that these elements are found in other Christian
Communities, the one Church of Christ is effectively present in them (Ut unum sint, 11). The only
remaining question here is whether there can therefore actually be such a thing as a differentially
graded, perhaps only defective, presence of the one Church of Christ in a particular Church? Can
there be a true bond in the Holy Spirit between the different Churches (as there is said to be in Lumen
gentium, 15) that is nevertheless in itself deficient?
92 Peter Knauer
Church subsists in all communions that believe in Jesus Christ. His own
honour comes to be only in the honouring of all Churches.13
The criterion for Christian unity can only be faith in Jesus Christ as
Son of God, as empowering our own communion with God though our
participation in his relationship to the Father. Whoever is not with me is
against me. (Matthew 12:30) However, in other matters, we have to say
of anyone who is not actively struggling against us, and not denying the
rightness of our faith, whoever is not against us is for us (Mark 9:40).
This passage is making the point that others who are driving out demons
in Jesus name are not to be prevented on the ground that they are not
one of us. Jesus himself denies his disciples the right to hinder them.
To see the matter in these terms is not to render the Roman
Catholic Church less important. For once you stop seeing its grace as
confined to itself, and start seeing that grace as making the Roman
Catholic Churchs reality as a particular Church something that goes
beyond itself, as making visible something which ultimately it has in
common with all Christian Churches, then its importance and value
becomes all the greater.
Something similar happens with the sacraments. In Holy
Communion, we are united with Christ in the deepest way possible. But
this union does not remain confined to the moment of receiving
Communion; rather, the momentary act of Communion expresses a
bond we have with Christ that simultaneously expresses how deep our
bond with Christ is at every moment. Our faith is always living from his
very self, just as our earthly life is being nourished by what we eat and
drink. The actual dignity of the Eucharist consists precisely in this
pointing beyond itself. And so it is also with our Roman Catholic
Church.
Peter Knauer SJ is a German Jesuit who from 1969 until 2003 taught
fundamental theology at Sankt Georgen, the Jesuit Faculty of Catholic Theology
in Frankfurt-am-Main. He is now a collaborator in OCIPE (the Jesuit European
Office) and in the European Catholic Centre (a pastoral centre for employees of
the EU) in Brussels.
13
Compare Vatican I, Pastor aeternus, n. 3, which quotes a letter of Gregory the Great: My honour is
the honour of the universalis ecclesiae. My honour is the steadfast strength of my brethren. Then do I
receive true honour, when it is denied to none of those to whom honour is due.
EVANGELICAL SPIRITUALITY
AND THE CHURCH CATHOLIC
Ian M. Randall
1
Gordon Giles, The Music of Praise: Through the Church Year with the Great Hymns (Oxford: Bible
Reading Fellowship, 2002), 81-85. For more see Ian M. Randall, What a Friend We Have in Jesus
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005).
2
David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s
(London: Routledge, 1995), 20.
3
For the thinking of the Reformation see Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1993).
4
James I. Packer, Among Gods Giants: Aspects of Puritan Christianity (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1991),
236-240.
5
Jonathan Edwards, Concerning the Nature of the Religious Affections and Their Importance in
Religion, in The Select Works of Jonathan Edwards, volume 3 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1961), 31.
6
Edwards, Religious Affections, 192.
7
Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (Leicester:
Inter-Varsity Press, 2003).
8
For further detail, see my study of evangelical spirituality in England between the two world wars:
Evangelical Experiences: A Study in the Spirituality of English Evangelicalism, 1918-1939 (Carlisle:
Paternoster, 1999). My analysis followed Philip Sheldrakes suggestion (see Spirituality and History
[London: SPCK, 1991], 52) that spirituality is concerned with the conjunction of theology,
communion with God, and practical Christianity.
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 97
Conversion
John Wesley, who shaped much early evangelical thinking, recorded in
his diary for 24 May 1738 the following words, which were to become
among the most famous in the story of Christian experience:
9
Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 2-17.
10
See Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in
the Twenty-First Century (London: Cassell, 1996) and Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins
and Development Worldwide (Peabody, Ma: Hendrickson, 1997).
11
The Works of John Wesley, volume 18, Journal and Diaries I (1735-38), edited by William R. Ward
and Reginald P. Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988), 249-250.
12
For a full discussion of the meaning of John Wesleys experience see Henry D. Rack, Reasonable
Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989), 144-157.
98 Ian M. Randall
13
For George Whitefield, see Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of
Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mi: Eerdmans, 1991).
14
Dissenters who were influential in the early eighteenth century included preachers such as the
Congregationalist Philip Doddridge, who wrote about his conversion in the famous hymn O happy
day, and the even more influential hymn-writer Isaac Watts. See Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Puritan
Spirit: Essays and Addresses (London: Epworth, 1967).
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 99
mystical spirituality, such as that expressed in the book The Life of God
in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal of Aberdeen, a Scottish
Episcopalian.15 The evangelical stress on a changed life thus drew from
existing streams of spirituality.
The next generation of evangelicals continued to make wider
connections. John Newton, who had experienced a dramatic
conversion when he was a slave-ship captain, and who later became a
Church of England clergyman, had a significant bridge-building role.16
His own conversion was expressed in the very personal words of
assurance that we find in the most popular of the hymns he wrote:
Amazing grace (how sweet the sound)
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now Im found;
Was blind, but now I see.
Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relievd;
How precious did that grace appear,
17
The hour I first believd.
Both slave-traders, such as Newton, and slaves, such as Olaudah
Equiano, experienced the same evangelical conversion. In 1789
Equiano, who was by then free, wrote about his remarkable story in his
widely read Interesting Narrative. After his freedom he had tried to find
spiritual truth in many places, and as part of his search began to attend
evangelical services. The result was that he had an instantaneous
conversion, in which, as he put it, he saw clearly, with the eye of faith,
the crucified Saviour bleeding on the cross on Mount Calvary. This
vision convinced him that he was a great debtor to sovereign free
grace.18 Such testimonies express the classic evangelical understanding
of conversion as a personal encounter with Christ.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who became known as the Prince of
Preachers of the Victorian era, described his own conversion in
15
Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 37-38. See also Arthur S. Wood, The Burning Heart:
John Wesley, Evangelist (Exeter: Paternoster, 1967), chapter 3.
16
Douglas B. Hindmarsh, John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition: Between the Conversions of
Wesley and Wilberforce (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), chapter 4.
17
Hindmarsh, John Newton, chapter 7, especially 276-277.
18
Noll, Rise of Evangelicalism, 272.
100 Ian M. Randall
19
C. H. Spurgeon, Spurgeons Autobiography, volume 1, 1834-1854 (London: Passmore and Alabaster,
1897), 88-89.
20
See Mike Nicholls, C. H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1992).
21
The Sword and the Trowel (October 1886), 514-516.
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 101
22
John C. Pollock, Billy Graham: The Authorised Biography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966),
64. For Barnes, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 207-208.
23
William Martin, The Billy Graham Story: A Prophet with Honour (London: Hutchinson, 1992), 181.
102 Ian M. Randall
If you cannot yet pray without a form you may use some of those
composed by Mr Spinckes [A Complete Manual of Private
Devotions], or any other pious writer. But the sooner you break
through this backwardness the better. Ask of God, and he will soon
28
open your mouth.
24
George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand
Rapids, Mi: Eerdmans, 1987), 162-165.
25
The Works of John Wesley, volume 1, Sermons I, 1-33, edited by Albert C. Outler (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1984), 105; see also Wood, The Burning Heart, 211.
26
The Works of John Wesley, volume 8, Addresses, Essays, Letters, edited by Thomas Jackson (Kansas:
Beacon Hill, 1978), 348.
27
Gordon Mursell, English Spirituality: From 1700 to the Present Day (London: SPCK, 2001), 96.
28
On Visiting the Sick, in The Works of John Wesley, volume 3, Sermons III, 71-114, edited by Albert
C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), 392.
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 103
29
James M. Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality (London: SPCK, 1991), 33-35; Noll, Rise of Evangelicalism,
260-269; Mursell, English Spirituality, 97.
104 Ian M. Randall
He [Christ] leans over me, he puts his finger along the lines, I can
see his pierced hand: I will read it as in his presence. I will read it,
knowing that he is the substance of itthat he is the proof of this
book as well as the writer of it; the sum of this Scripture as well as
the author of it . You will get at the soul of Scripture when you
can keep Jesus with you while you are reading.
Yet this did not mean that scholarly approaches to the Bible were
rejected by Spurgeon. Speaking in 1874 to fellow ministers, Spurgeon
insisted that our main business is to study the Scriptures, and
suggested that evangelical pastors had to be greater Biblical scholars.31
30
Abner W. Brown, Recollections of the Conversation Parties of the Revd Charles Simeon (London:
Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1863), cited in David K. Gillett, Trust and Obey: Explorations in Evangelical
Spirituality (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1993), 134-135. One of Simeons concerns was that
Christians should begin each day with prayer and Bible study. Despite his best intentions, however, he
himself overslept on several occasions, especially in winter. He once decided he would pay a fine of
half a crown to his college servant when he overslept. A few days later, lying comfortably in bed, he
reconsidered this plan. His next decision was that when he overslept he would throw a guinea into the
river. This, apparently, he did, but only oncebefore deciding that he could not afford to pave the
river-bed with gold. See Handley C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1948
[1892]), 66.
31
C. H. Spurgeon, How to Read the Bible, sermon on Matthew 12: 3-7, The Metropolitan Tabernacle
Pulpit, volume 25 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1879) no. 1503, 634; The Sword and the Trowel
(May 1874), 221. This latter address was later published in C. H. Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry:
Addresses to Ministers and Students (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), 40-66.
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 105
The Cross
Evangelicals, despite what their language sometimes implies, are surely
not alone among Christians in having a devotion to the cross. What is
distinctive about evangelical devotion? Perhaps one distinctively
evangelical feature is the link which evangelicals make between the
cross and personal conversion. This is brought out well in the hymn by
Charles Wesley, O for a thousand tongues to sing, which was the first
hymn in the later Wesley hymnbooks and was intended, significantly,
for the anniversary day of ones conversion. The opening expresses
general praise and prayer:
32
P. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer (London: Kelly, 1916), 77.
33
Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, 118.
34
Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, 105.
35
John R. W. Stott, Understanding the Bible (London: Scripture Union, 1972), 244.
106 Ian M. Randall
David Gillett suggests that there are parallels here with Roman
Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.39
36
Frederick C. Gill, Charles Wesley: The First Methodist (London: Lutterworth, 1964), 72.
37
Gillett, Trust and Obey, 78, citing Julians Dictionary of Hymnology.
38
Frank W. Boreham, A Late Lark Singing (London: Epworth, 1945).
39
Gillett, Trust and Obey, 79.
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 107
40
F. B. Meyer, At the Gates of the Dawn (London: James Clarke, 1910), 74; Frederick B. Meyer, The
Souls Pure Intention (London: Bagster, 1906), 45.
41
F. B. Meyer, Moses: The Servant of God (London: Morgan and Scott, 1893), 99; an address given to
the Annual Evangelical Alliance Conference in November 1901, The Evangelical Alliance Quarterly,
11 (January 1902), 206.
42
F. B. Meyer, introduction to George W. Robinson, The Philosophy of the Atonement and other Sermons
(London: Dent, 1912); Keswick Week (1924), 156.
43
H. C. G. Moule, The Call of Lent to Penitence, Discipline and Christ (London: SPCK, 1917), 65, 68, 71-72.
44
B. L. Manning, The Hymns of Wesley and Watts: Five Informal Papers (London: Epworth, 1942), 133.
108 Ian M. Randall
by faith, I see our Lord standing in our midst, and I hear Him
say, with voice of sweetest music, first to all of us together, and then
to each one individually, I will give you rest. May the Holy Spirit
46
bring to each of us the fulness of the rest and peace of God!
Activism
Evangelical activism flowed from evangelical belief in the need for
conversion, specifically through personal appropriation of Christs work
on the cross. Thus Charles Wesley, for example, made a point of
speaking about Christ to fellow-passengers when travelling by coach,
encouraging them to make a personal response. Once a lady was so
offended that she threatened to beat him; but on another occasion
Charles so impressed another passenger that the coach stopped for a
time of prayer. Charles recorded: We sang and shouted all the way to
Oxford.47 Here we have the stress on active personal witness with the
aim of personal conversion. Another expression of this activism was a
commitment to world mission. This was not newthe Jesuits were, of
course, involved in world mission in the sixteenth century, and indeed
Henry Venn, the full-time Secretary from 1846 of the (evangelical
Anglican) Church Missionary Society, wrote a life of Francis Xavier.48
Mission also included action for social change. Evangelical lay people
such as Hannah More and William Wilberforce, both of whom had
been influenced by John Newton, became known for their practical
expressions of evangelical faith.
45
C. H. Spurgeon, Till He Come: Communion Meditations and Addresses (London: Passmore and
Alabaster, 1894), preface
46
C. H. Spurgeon, I Will Give You Rest, in Till He Come, 197.
47
Gill, Charles Wesley, 75.
48
Henry Venn, The Missionary Life and Labours of Francis Xavier, Taken from His Own Correspondence
(London: Longman, Green, 1862).
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 109
49
Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality, 5, citing Jeremy and Margaret Collingwood, Hannah More (Oxford:
Lion, 1990), 133.
50
For William Wilberforce, see John C. Pollock, Wilberforce: Gods Statesman (Eastbourne: Kingsway,
2001).
51
William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the
Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity, edited by Vincent Edmunds
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989).
52
The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, edited by John Telford, volume 8 (London: Epworth, 1960
[1931]), 265.
110 Ian M. Randall
Are we to have another six years of Tory rule? This is just now the
question. Are we to go on invading and slaughtering ? How
many wars may we reckon upon between now and 1886? What
quantity of killing will be done in that time, and how many of our
weaker neighbours will have their houses burned and their fields
ravaged by this Christian (?) nation? Let those who rejoice in War
vote for the Tories; but we hope they will not find a majority in
54
Southwark.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the social vision that
had characterized nineteenth-century evangelicals gave way to a fear
that social involvement diluted the pure gospel. Thus in 1949 Basil
Atkinson, a leading statesman behind the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate
Christian Union, stated that the only work given to the Church was
evangelization. Social ministry, as an end in itself, was rejected.55 But in
the second half of the century evangelicals again became active in
social transformation as well as evangelization. As they did so they
recognised the common ground shared with Catholics. In 1994 a core
group of seven Roman Catholics and eight evangelical Protestants in
the USA issued a historic 8,000-word declaration entitled
Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the
Third Millennium (ECT). Recognising that evangelicals and Catholics
constitute the growing edge of the missionary expansion at present
and, most likely, in the century ahead, it sought, without downplaying
53
Millicent G. Fawcett and Ethel M. Turner, Josephine Butler: Her Work and Principles and their
Meaning for the Twentieth Century (London: Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, 1927), 99-100;
compare Lisa S. Nolland, A Victorian Christian Feminist: Josephine Butler, the Prostitutes and God
(Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004).
54
Reproduced in Nicholls, C. H. Spurgeon, 65.
55
David W. Bebbington, Decline and Resurgence of Social Concern, in Evangelical Faith and Public
Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in Britain 1780-1980, edited by John Wolffe (London: SPCK, 1995), 175-
197.
Evangelical Spirituality and the Church Catholic 111
The evangelical story has been one in which conversion, the Bible, the
cross and active service have been central. Evangelicals have regularly
preached on these themes; they inform, too, the hymns and songs both
of classical figures such as Charles Wesley and John Newton, and of
more contemporary song-writers such as Graham Kendrick and Matt
Redman. For Redman, when we come to God in worship, we focus in a
particular way on Christ, the crucified saviour. We see,
56
For the full text see First Things, 43 (May 1994), 15-22: http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9405/
mission.html.
112 Ian M. Randall
the lion and the lamb, the sinless friend of sinners, who terrifies
and befriends, thunders and whispers, reveals and conceals his
footstool is the earth but he bent down and washed the earth off
57
the feet of his disciples.
Ian M. Randall was born in Scotland. He worked for some years as a personnel
manager before training for the Baptist ministry and then pursuing doctoral
research on evangelical spirituality between the two world wars. Since 1992, he
has been on the staff of Spurgeons College in South London, and more recently
has also been teaching at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in
Prague. Among his books are What a Friend We Have in Jesus (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 2005).
57
Matt Redman, interviewed by John Buckeridge, in Heart of Worship, Christianity (July 2004), 13.
58
James I. Packer, Crosscurrents among Evangelicals, in Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Working
Towards a Common Mission, edited by Charles Colson and Richard J. Neuhaus (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1996), 159, 164, 171.
59
Stanley J. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downers
Grove, Il: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993), 57-59.
RECENT BOOKS
Remembering Iigo is available from The Way Ignatian Book Service. Visit our
website, www.theway.org.uk, and click on Book Service.
All three volumes were published in Rome in 2005 by the Jesuit Refugee Service; they are
available without charge (though a donation is requested) via www.jesref.org/pubs or else
international@mail06.jrs.net.
The life of an apostle was tough. And at one point in his letters, the
apostle Paul breaks his usual silence on this score and admits it. He lists
the hunger and thirst, the many beatings and the one stoning, the night
he spent adrift at sea, and the many nights of sleeplessness he endured.
The climax of this long catalogue of hardship was his anxiety for the
churches (2 Corinthians 11:23-28).
Among the churches which fed this anxiety were the church of
Philippi, a Romanised city in the north of Greece, and a church of
unknown location that met in the house of a wealthy individual called
Philemon. In Philippi, gospel ideals were under threat. There was division,
self-centredness and status-seeking. The content of the gospel was at risk
from false teachers. Good people were failing to make right choices.
Women whose names we know, Euodia and Syntyche, were feuding.
These new Christians were confused about their Christian identity as
citizens of a city that enjoyed a privileged place in the empire of Rome
and as heirs to the culture that was the legacy of Greece.
In the church of Philemon, crisis threatened because of the slave
Onesimus. This man was now with Paul, but legally he was the property of
Philemon and to Philemon he had to return. A runaway slave could
expect a nasty and unpleasant reception according to the legal standards
of the time. Paul, who knew that in Christ there is no longer slave or free
(Galatians 3:28), had to convince Philemon that he could no longer treat
his slave as his neighbours in the next street treated theirs. But at the
same time the economic and social life of that era was so dependent on
slavery that Paul could hardly imagine a world without it.
Paul was not writing to these churches from a study in some episcopal
palace. He was in prison. He could expect either release or execution and
Recent Books 119
he had to be ready for either. He did not hide his perilous situation. The
letter to Philemon begins Paul the prisoner. He was in prison because of
the gospel (Philippians 1:16). And he made no claim to worldly glory. He
began his letter to the Philippians Paul the slave, but his slave master was
Christ Jesus. Modern translations tend to replace the word slave with the
less threatening word servant.
Pauls missionary method, obvious from his letters, was to meet
practical pastoral questions with theological answers. He had learnt his
theology during his early years as a Pharisee when his life was blameless as
to righteousness under the law (Philippians 3:5). But his understanding
of God and salvation had been transformed because of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord which came to him through what
we call his conversion experience (Philippians 3:8). And in writing his
letters, he made good use of the lessons in the art of persuasion he had
learnt as a Jew educated in the Greek world.
In responding to the Philippians troubles, Paul praises them and does
not nag. He compliments them on the spirit of fellowship (koinonia) which
they shared among themselves and with him. He skilfully exploits the
positive words that share the same Greek root, chara, namely the joy and
the grace that belong to the gospel. He challenges them by putting
examples before them. The first model is of course Christ himself. His
career of self-emptying and being raised up by God must be the way of life
to which the Philippians aspire (Philippians 2:5-11). This was no
impossible ideal. It had already been imitated by people known to them.
Let them look at the lives of Timothy, Pauls colleague, and of
Epaphroditus, their own agent in their relations with Paul
(Philippians 2:19-30). It was also the life story of Paul himself (Philippians
3:4-14). All three had reproduced this Christlike pattern in full view of
the Philippians. And among other points, we can note Pauls exhortation
to them to be as proud of their status as citizens of heaven (Philippians
3:20) as they were of their citizenship of such a privileged city as Philippi.
Likewise in the opening lines of the letter to Philemon, which is only
25 verses in length, Paul sets out theological reasons why Philemon should
accept Onesimus back not as a slave but as a brother, and even as though
he were Paul himself. He commends Philemon for the quality of his faith
and love. But Philemon must allow these to blossom further. He and
Onesimus had had a new birth through their baptism. This is how Paul
had become father to them both, and they now belonged to the same
Christian family. The only slave relationship in this new family was that of
being a slave of Christ.
120 Recent Books
All these topics are thoroughly and lovingly dealt with in this volume
which belongs to the admirable Sacra Pagina series of commentaries.
These approach New Testament books in four parts. An introduction deals
with general questions and with the world behind the text. In treating the
text section by section, a translation is offered which may lack elegance but
which reproduces the structure and sense of the original. Notes deal with
key words and concepts in the paragraph discussed, and because many of
these occur elsewhere in the Pauline literature, we find here a little
encyclopedia of Pauline theology. Finally an interpretation of the paragraph
is provided. These four elements together form a formidable programme
for continuous reading, but a sensible and judicious selection from the
material offered will enrich any reader anxious to grow in the knowledge
and love of Scripture, and of the world in which it arose. A particular
emphasis in the Philippians commentary by Bonnie Thurston, herself a
recent contributor to The Way, is Christian spirituality and the life of
prayer (pp.4-5). And this should make this volume of special interest to
the readers of The Way.
Peter Edmonds SJ
Charlene Spretnak, Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and her Re-
emergence in the Modern Church (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2004). 1 4039 6398 3, pp. x + 282, 21.99.
Some of the most heated debates during the Second Vatican Council
focused on the question of Mary, with so-called Marian maximalists
arguing for a separate document on Mary, and minimalists saying that
issues relating to her should be included in the document on the Church.
In the end, the latter won by a narrow majority, and the Councils
discussion of Mary was incorporated into the document Lumen gentium.
Although the uniqueness and greatness of Marys role in the story of
salvation are acknowledged, the document is careful to emphasize her
subordination to her Son, and it cautions against excesses in Marian
devotion. In a way perhaps confirming the fears of those who defended a
more central place for Mary, her significance in Catholic devotional life
declined dramatically in the years following the Council. Pope Paul VI
made some attempt to halt the decline with his encyclical Marialis cultus,
but it was only under John Paul II that Marian devotion achieved a partial
rehabilitation, albeit one largely confined to more conservative Catholics.
Among progressive Catholics, including liberationist and feminist
Recent Books 121
theologians, Mary was either ignored altogether, or else she was portrayed
as a model disciple, a sisterly figure and woman of faith who stands
alongside the poor in their struggle for justice.
Charlene Spretnaks readable and engaging study, Missing Mary, makes
an eloquent appeal for a rediscovery of the cosmic mystery and glory of
the Queen of Heaven. From a perspective informed by feminist theology,
quantum physics and goddess spirituality, Spretnak pits herself against
both conservatives and progressives, arguing for the restoration of Mary to
her former magnificence at the heart of the Churchs devotional life.
Spretnak points to the example of her own parents to argue that
generations of Catholics have combined political liberalism with devotion
to Mary, and she does not see that a revival of traditional Marian devotion
would pose any threat to the positive achievements of Vatican II.
She challenges the neglect of Mary by many feminist Catholics, and
makes no concessions to those who would associate a Marian revival with
returning to more stereotypical gender roles within the Church. Some of
her most trenchant criticisms are directed at progressives and feminists
who have replaced the glorious Mary of the Catholic tradition with a
pious housewife (p.56), and who have resisted exploring a more exalted
dimension to Marys role in creation and redemption. Spretnak refers to
this as the biblical only Mary, in whom the Marian tradition has been
pared down to its alleged scriptural essentials in the interests of a
misguided ecumenism. She also associates this Mary with a process of
rationalisation that led the Council to abandon the mystical femininity of
the Marian tradition in favour of a rational, masculinising modernity
paradoxically at a time when much of the Western world was rejecting
modernity and shifting towards the postmodern.
Spretnak appeals for a biblical plus Mary, an understanding allowing
the woman who appears in the Bible to reveal the fullness of her glory,
reflected in titles such as Queen of the Universe, Throne of Wisdom,
and Virgin in Majesty. She suggests that this mystical Marian tradition
resonates with recent discoveries in quantum physics about the dynamic
nature of the material world. Modern science is reawakening the Thomist
vision of the activity of grace throughout creation, a vision reflected in
Marian cults of the kind found in Chartres Cathedral. This cosmological
awakening includes a rediscovery of Marys association with the goddess
figures of pre-Christian and non-Christian religions. For Spretnak, the
development of the cult of Mary in the early Church was a form of
syncretism. The ancient goddess religions were accommodated within the
expanding Church in order to meet a deep human need for maternal
divinities.
122 Recent Books
For two semesters I have used Dean Brackleys The Call to Discernment in
Troubled Times in teaching North American students who are studying
and immersing themselves in the Dominican Republic. I cannot imagine a
better text to provide an Ignatian framework for reflection and growth for
those who wish to integrate their spirituality with a commitment to social
justice. Readable, clear, and replete with examples from Brackleys
Recent Books 123
The Call to Discernment is available from The Way Ignatian Book Service. Visit our
website, www.theway.org.uk, and click on Book Service.
In this book Richard Lennan presents the case for risking faith in the
Roman Catholic Church as a component of Gods self-revelation. He
understands faith as a self-surrender entailing risk, but also as something
that leads to human well-being. He seeks,
to identify what might support and sustain the ongoing acts of self-surrender
inseparable from the risk that is membership of the Church, but also what
might justify the claim that such an act of self-surrender is a reasonable exercise
of human freedom (p. 170).
in the style of its relationships, both internally and with the world at large.
In such a situation, with Catholics lacking a strong sense of shared
ecclesial identity, the exercise of authority after Vatican II in the context
of the Church as communion simply created confusion. Throughout the
book, Lennan emphasizes ecclesial faith over individualistic and privatised
faith, and the Church as communion over the Church as institution.
For Lennan, the Church is an undreamed of possibility for love (a
phrase from Juan Luis Segundo) and the place where the Spirit flourishes
(Hippolytus). Echoing Rahner and Schillebeeckx, Lennan identifies the
Church as a symbol of the God made present in human history through
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and as a sacrament of the Spirit. He
seems to privilege a Christology from below: Jesus was Lord because he
alone had lived and died with faith, he alone had handed his life over to
God (p.80). Although Lennan writes extensively about a theology of
Christ and the Spirit, his ultimate emphasis is on the Churchs
relationship to the Spirit, and he thus differs from the interpretation more
conventional in the West that would root the Church in Christ. The
Church is the symbol of the Spiritthe Spirit who leads people, in Christ,
to communion with the Father. The Spirit is the means of our sacramental
encounter with Christ in history.
Faith is both personal and communal. Believers require the mediation
of the Church and of symbolic or sacramental forms if they are to
encounter Jesus as the Christ or experience the Spirit. But then a
difficulty arises. The Church is authentic only if it is transparent to the
Spirit, yet the people within it are all too fallible and flawed. There is
always a gap between the Church as symbol and what it symbolizes.
Ecclesial faith is a surrender to something which cannot be controlled.
An emphasis on the primacy of communion challenges both
individualistic views of the Church and the notion that authority is
restrictive of freedom. The Churchs communion requires that legitimate
diversity be acknowledged, and that creative responses to particular
historical circumstances be encouraged. This communion is obstructed
both by the quest for certainty reflected in fundamentalism and by the
refusal of commitment embodied in New Age spirituality. Ultimately the
messiness which is the Church is a corollary of the Incarnation: Gods
commitment to the realities of flawed human existence.
Fundamentalismwhich is as much a manifestation as an antagonist of
postmodernismwants to control this messiness; New Age spirituality
wants to escape it.
Lennan has read widely and deeply in preparing this reflection on the
Church. Its principal merits are that it follows the current emphasis on
Recent Books 129
prayer arising from the occasions when Teilhard had neither bread nor
wine nor altar, and so sought to make the whole earth my altar, offering
to God all the labours and sufferings of the world. Perhaps Kings most
valuable contribution comes in the three appendices. The first reproduces
Teilhards original text in translation, while the second is a prayer service
based on The Mass on the World that can also be incorporated into a
liturgical celebration of the Eucharist. The last all too briefly explores how
Teilhards own personal prayer life reflects the structure of the Mass and
the pattern of the Ignatian Examen.
Having read the appendices, the reader will be in a better position to
savour the seven chapters commenting on various implications of The
Mass on the World. Chapter 1, Teilhard and the Priesthood, reflects on
Teilhards wider sense of his role as a priest,
one consecrated to be the first to become aware of what the world loves,
pursues and suffers the first to sympathize, to toil . I would be more widely
human in my sympathies than any of the worlds servants.
speculations led him to develop the notion of adoration far beyond the
devout conventions of Benediction. Two weeks before his death he wrote
of how science could move people to a kind of worship towards the world.
It was as though God, out of the future, was calling scientists and others
to a cosmic form of adoration.
Chapter 7 turns to the theme of mission and ministry in Teilhards
writing. The only thing that counts for me is not to propagate God but to
discover Him: from this, conversion follows . Teilhard complained of
the missionaries working to convert the Chinese people: they were
pushing an artificial religion without a natural trunk, whereas
Christianity should be presented as the completion and fulfilment of the
world in which they were already living. When Teilhards friends were
struggling with faith questions, he used to tell them that they must first
discover the God of their life. He would ask them about what their real
me had been finding in the world. What had been engaging them? Where
was this engagement going? For Teilhard, conversion began with a fuller
consciousness of the universe; then one could hope that the persons own
engagement would open their vision to the universes crowing glory. Only
when natural expectations were sensitised could Christian revelation
make sense.
Thomas King is a lifelong devotee of Teilhard, and very well informed
on his life and work. As such he is uniquely well placed to revive
enthusiasm for Teilhards legacy, and he presents Teilhards ideas both
simply and attractively. It is a sign of Teilhards genius that the insights
which cost him so much are now taken for granted, and that the man
himself has been forgotten. But the world in which we live is still evolving,
and we remain conscious both of its positive nurture and its looming
threats. Teilhard witnesses to how both promise a Christic way ahead,
come what may.
Billy Hewett SJ
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