One of the initial purposes of this blog was to provide commentary on ecclesial documents. It is essential in the age of information that we relentlessly reference Church writings. Since the 1960’s there has been a persistent move away from the documents and towards talk of “the spirit” of various realities. Perhaps most notable is the phrase “the spirit of Vatican II.” Unfortunately this talk of “the spirit” is more often than not used to supplant the written teachings of the magisterium with personal opinions and politics. More unfortunately, the practical implications of this move have been devastating. First, without a grounding in actual sources, this leads to a relativism that halts any fruitful dialog and, contrary to its stated intention, decisively moves away from the actual “spirit” of the Church, be it in reference to the Council or other ecclesial realities. Second, it has placed the vast majority of the Church, mostly laity but also to some degree the clergy, in the position of not knowing what the magisterium actually teaches. It has been the goal of these pages to present the documents with commentary in the hopes of motivating people to read. I have often said, “The Church writes so that we will read.” Indeed, the very title of this blog, together with its URL, form a familiar phrase that used to mean something. Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Rome has spoken, the case is closed.
What follows is a reflection on Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. I wrote it several years ago, well before the formation of this website. In perusing through my computer at the aim of cleaning up old files, I ran across it. It struck me as quite suitable to the purpose of these pages.
Without further adieu,
Deus Caritas Est - A Foundation.
“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
These words from the First Letter of John are also the first words of Pope Benedict’s encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est.
Why love? It is a question that must be asked, because none of the speculation that surrounded the Pope’s first encyclical, the one that will inevitably set the tone for his pontificate, predicted such a topic. The original ecclesial rumors were that the Holy Father would be speaking about either moral relativism, a topic that he addressed repeatedly in the days between the death of his predecessor and his own election to the chair of St. Peter, or about liturgy, a topic about which he had written extensively as Cardinal Ratzinger. Indeed, having gained the reputation as the Vatican watch dog, it is seemingly surprising that our pontiff would chose for his first encyclical … love.
Why love? Pope Benedict answers this question himself. “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others” (DC 1). The Holy Father recognizes two facts. First, that theology, being the study of a God who is love, must be the study of love. At the center of every theological concept, we find love, from creation to the incarnation, from the redemption to the resurrection, and from Holy Communion to the Communion of Saints.
The second fact recognized by Pope Benedict is that our world is a long way from understanding this basic issue. He states, “Today, the term ‘love’ has become one of the most frequently used and misused words” (DC 2). Indeed, the encyclical seeks to redeem our language, to redeem the very word “love” just as the Word that is love has redeemed us.
Because of these two recognitions, this encyclical will inevitably serve as a foundation for (1) the rest of his pontifical teachings and (2) theological research in virtually every area of the creed for years to come. Pope Benedict is insisting that the teaching of the Church and the theologizing of academics begin with the nature of God and the nature of humanity as an image of that God. It must begin with love.
Thus, while the topic does not directly address moral relativism, nor the liturgy, it does serve as a foundation for both, as well as a foundation for the doctrine of the Trinity, the Marian doctrines, social justice issues, the incarnation, the Communion of Saints, eschatology, and so on. This indeed is why this first encyclical letter of our new Holy Father is of the utmost importance. How wise he is in beginning at the beginning, and in the beginning was the Word, and that Word is love.
Instead of taking you through the document line by line, which could form a whole series of articles, and instead of giving you an overview, which would rob the letter of its richness, I would like instead to demonstrate my claim that the ideas of Benedict serve as a foundation by applying his words to the theology of the Trinity and our being made in God’s image.
Saint John makes a very bold statement in saying the “God is love.” His word choice is very deliberate and therefore deserves great attention. Notice that he does not say that God loves or that God has love. He firmly states that God is love.
Cardinal Ratzinger, in one of the most brilliant books I have ever read, Introduction to Christianity, presents a very compelling analysis of the relationship between the God of the philosophers at the time of Christ and the God of Christian theology. In its early days, Christianity made a crucial decision to accept philosophy. The philosophy of the ancients knew very clearly that a god, a superior being, must exist. With only the tools of logic and common experience, the philosophers were able to deduce that a God exists and that God is one, or unity. The religions at the time, instead of having a logical god, had a mythical god (or gods). Ratzinger states, “By deciding exclusively in favor of the God of the philosophers and logically declaring this God to be the God who speaks to men and to whom one can pray, the Christian faith gave completely new significance to this God of the philosophers, removing him from the purely academic realm and thus completely transforming him” (IC, 143). This acceptance of philosophy into theology, this marriage of faith and reason, is what gives Christianity a most distinctive flavor. This topic is addressed in detail in John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio and has been a persistent theme in Pope Benedict’s international addresses.
The acceptance of the God of philosophy carried with it the implication that God is one, that there is a supremacy of unity over that of plurality. There is only one God. However, the incarnation of God in the person of Christ, the infinite becoming small, elevates a certain part of humanity to the level of divinity. The Christian faith teaches that each human being is a unique and unrepeatable person, and it is precisely the incarnation that gives us this great dignity. Ratzinger concludes, “If it is the case that the person is more than the individual, that the many is something real and not something secondary, that there exists a primacy of the particular over the universal, then oneness is not the unique and final thing; plurality, too, has its own definitive right. This assertion, which follows by an inner necessity of the Christian option, leads of its own accord to the transcending of the concept of a God who is mere oneness” (IC, 161). The marriage of faith and reason, of logos (or word) with the Logos (the Word), reveals that God must not only be one in His nature, but must also have plurality. God must be a Trinity.
While the ancient philosophers concluded that this one God is pure act, the Trinitarian theology refines this notion in saying that not only is the essence of God act, but this act is precisely love: Deus caritas est.
In the first part of the encyclical, Pope Benedict analyzes two types of love: eros and agape. Eros is a love that seeks out another, also often called “ascending love”, “possessive love”, or “amor concupiscentiae”. Agape, in contrast, is a love that gives of oneself, also called “descending love”, “oblative love”, or “amor benevolentiae”. At first glance, it seems that eros is not a desirable love, or at least is a love in an immature form, while agape is a perfected eros, or even “real” love.
The Holy Father says, “In philosophical and theological debate, these distinctions have often been radicalized to the point of establishing a clear antithesis between [these two loves] …. Agape would be typically Christian, while eros would be typical of non-Christian, particularly Greek culture” (DC 7).
However, much as the Christian notion of a Trinitarian God brings together the primacy of unity from the ancients with the primacy of the particular revealed by the incarnation, we must also join the concepts of agape and eros. Eros is not flawed agape. The Pope says, “Eros and agape – ascending and descending love – can never be completely separated” (DC 7). To do so would bring about all sorts of dualisms: we would see the separation of body from soul and of Christ’s humanity from his divinity. “[T]he essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence” (DC 7).
As proof that agape can never replace eros, that self-giving can never completely replace a love that receives, we find that both agape and eros are found in God himself. Benedict says, “God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape” (DC 9). God is love, yes, but that love is a perfect union of ascending and descending love. The Trinity, by its very nature, is an infinite exchange of love, an infinite cycle of self-emptying and reception. God the Father gives his existence to the Son, the perfect image of the Father. The Son eternally receives this existence and gives of Himself back to the Father on the Cross. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” This eternal exchange is so real, is so perfect, that it spirals out of control and gives rise to a new Divine Person, the Holy Spirit. This exiting of the Son from the Father together with His return is an example of what Aquinas referred to as the exitus-reditus cycle (exit and return). (Certainly Aquinas was not the first to speak of the concept of exit and return, but the fact that he structured his entire Summa Theologica around the concept is enough to mention his name.) This indeed is why we say that God’s very nature, his very love, is creative, or fruitful. And this is precisely why St. John can say with boldness and confidence that God is an eternal exchange of love.
However, Pope Benedict says, we also find eros and agape with regards to God’s relationship with his people. We clearly see God’s self-giving love, agape, in his very gift of existence to creation. Further, in an act of sheer grace intended to perfect this created nature, God took the form of a slave, culminating in a self-emptying act on the Cross. God showed us on the cross that not only is he pure act, and not only is that act pure love, but that love is precisely gift, gift of oneself, self-abandonment. This is the essence of agape.
But we also find in God a love that seeks, or eros. The Holy Father says that God’s love is elective. The Jewish people are referred to as God’s elected people. The Book of Revelation speaks of those saved as the “elect”. And Christ tells us in the Last Supper discourses, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (John 15:16). C.S. Lewis said that Christianity is not man’s search for God, but God’s search for man (Miracles).
Again, in our relationship with God, we see the exitus-reditus cycle. Man has received his very existence from a God who is love, and so man’s eros for God comes from God’s agape for man. The only proper response to this reception, the only response worthy of God, is to transform our eros into agape and to return, as Christ did, to the Father. This is only possible by the grace of God, by the fact that God has chosen us. And in this way, God’s eros for us, his election of and incorporation of us into the body of Christ, is exactly what makes our agape for God possible.
While Benedict does not directly reference the exitus-reditus cycle, he does state that, “Love is indeed ‘ecstasy’, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it,’ as Jesus says through the Gospels. In these words, Jesus portrays his own path, which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection … Starting from the depths of his own sacrifice and of the love that reaches fulfillment therein, he also portrays in these words the essence of love and indeed of human life itself” (DC 6).
But what of this union with God? What of our eschatological destiny? Are our identities swallowed up into God’s very being in a pantheistic manner? No. Pope Benedict says, “But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one” (DC 10).
Thus, we have established that our God is a God who by his very nature, is love, is the exitus-reditus cycle, which we might now rename the eros-agape cycle. And we have established that man, as being made in the image and likeness of God, is called to the same eros-agape cycle. Man is called to take the existence/love that he has received from God and to give of himself back to God. This call is stamped, if you will, into his very soul, his ontological core. While this reflects the classic understanding of what it means to be made in God’s image, John Paul II brought a radical development to the theology of image. In his Theology of the Body, Benedict’s predecessor says, “Man became the image and likeness of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of Persons which man and woman form right from the beginning … Man becomes the image of God no so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.” He even goes so far as to state that this “Trinitarian concept of the ‘image of God’ … constitutes the deepest theological aspect of all that can be said about man” (TB 46-47).
In other words, man, in his deepest essence, images God not merely as an individual, but also in his call to communion. This call to communion, seen most obviously in the joining together of man and woman, does not destroy the individual dignity of the person, but affirms it and lifts it up. We see in this a parallel to our union with God, a union that does not swallow up the individual identities, but fulfills them. We can therefore rename the eros-agape cycle as the person-communion cycle. The communion that we are called to, that image of God’s Trinitarian nature, lifts up the dignity of the persons, perfects their very nature as persons, which in turn will open them up for an even deeper communion. We see very clearly what is meant when we refer to the Trinity as a communio personarum, a communion of persons, and we see in our human relationship a shadow of that reality, an image, or even a sacramental expression.
In this way, just as exitus-reditus reveals God as pure act and the identification of this with eros-agape confirms that this act is precisely that of love, the transformation into person-communion uncovers the notion of gift. So God is love, but love is gift. Therefore, God is gift.
We are called to participate in this cycle, the cycle of self-giving and reception of another, in our relationship with God. However we are called to the same in our relationships with one another. Pope Benedict says that love “involves a real discovery of the other” and “becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self seeking … instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice” (DC 6). However, “man cannot live by oblative love (agape) alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive (eros). Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift” (DC 7).
This giving of self to another, whether to God or to another human being, is at the heart of what the great mystics such as St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila referred to as self-abandonment. The only path to true fulfillment is the via dolorosa, the way of the Cross. The Second Vatican Council confirmed this in its document Gaudium et Spes when it said that “Man can fully discover his self in a sincere giving of himself” (GS 24). This is precisely why Matrimony and Holy Orders are vocations, or paths to God. Both of them have at their core a complete self-abandonment, a complete renunciation of self to another. However, when we give of ourselves, when we act out a sacrificial love, when we allow ourselves to be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians), we participate in a very real way in that love that is God. Therefore, not only are marriage and holy orders vocations, but they are also sacraments.
Both of these sacraments, as is true of all the sacraments, find their culmination in the Eucharist. As the Second Vatican Council stated in Lumen Gentium, “Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and summit of the Christian life, [the faithful] offer the divine victim to God and themselves along with it” (LG 11). The Eucharist is so powerful, so real, that Pope Benedict compares it to the mystical experiences of the Saints. “The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving …. The sacramental “mysticism” [the Eucharist] … operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation could ever accomplish” (DC 13). Indeed, the Eucharist not only draws us into communion with God, with the sacrifice on Calvary, but it also draws us into communion with one another, with our common humanity. We see in this action, the realization of both vocations: Marriage (as the union with another human) and Holy Orders (as the union with God). This is why Lumen Gentium calls the Eucharist the “source and summit of Christian life”.
In conclusion, I hope that this has been enough to convince you of the riches of thought in Pope Benedict’s first encyclical. I repeat what I said at the beginning. More than anything, I see this letter “to the bishops, priests, deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful,” as a foundation. Because of the centrality of love in our faith, any theological program must begin here. The Holy Father makes the same assertion in saying, “God’s love for us is fundamental for our lives, and it raises important questions about who God is and who we are” (DC 2). In general, I was amazed at the Pope’s personalism, a personalism we have come to expect from John Paul II, but one that many did not expect from the former Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI. He is the shepherd; he is Peter. And just as Peter is the Rock, a foundation of truth and a potential for building, Deus Caritas Est is the same.
I leave you with the prayer to our Blessed Virgin that ends the encyclical:
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
you have given the world its true light,
Jesus, your Son – the Son of God.
You abandoned yourself completely
to God’s call
and thus became a wellspring
of the goodness which flows forth from him.
Show us Jesus. Lead us to him.
Teach us to know and love him,
so that we too can become
capable of true love
and be fountains of living water
in the midst of a thirsting world.
Amen.
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