It is naive to assume that a thinker is so autonomous as to be no longer affected by the effects and influences of that tradition in our very language, a presence carrying us along by providing our initial prejudgments and often unconscious presuppositions as to the nature of reality. It is equally naive, and equally destructive of systematic theology’s hermeneutical task, to assume with the traditionalist and fundamentalist that so autonomous in one’s heteronomous obedience is the theologian that one can be faithful to the tradition to which one belongs by repeating its tradita rather than critically translating its traditio.

David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination (Crossroad: 1989), 100.

Jesus is not like God

Fr. Alberto Maggi OSM

For many, in the past, the Church committed an error by counting John’s gospel along with the other canonical gospels. The distrust of a theology so diverse from that of the other evangelists, with its radical opposition to the temple and every form of religious institution (Jn 4.21), and, with the welcoming of Samaritan heretics, the community born from John’s gospel was not only rendered repugnant for the Jews, but was also considered suspect in the eyes of the nascent church.

Under the pontificate of Pope Zephyrinus (199-217) there were even those who rejected the gospel, like the Roman priest Gaio, attributing it not to John but to the heretic Cerinthus. In fact, the oldest comment on the gospel of John was written by Heracleon, a disciple of Valentinus, founder of a famous Gnostic sect. The gospel of John was welcomed by both Gnostics and heretics, and yet it was seen with suspicion in more orthodox ecclesiastical circles who suspected it of being an anti-institutional gospel. John’s gospel took an opposing position to the hierarchical structures that were being formed in the Church. In fact, the community of John is formed by ‘one flock, one Shepherd’ (Jn 10.16). The existence of the believing community (flock) contains in itself the presence of the Lord (shepherd) and forms the new sanctuary which radiates the love of God for all humanity (Jn 17.22-23). The work of the community-sanctuary is that of going to meet those who were driven out by the religious institution (Jn 9.22, 35; 12.42; 16.2) and welcoming those who feel unworthy to draw near to the Lord. To all these people, the Lord and his flock make the word of the Shepherd resound. He invites us to unite in one community which is composed not of the Lord’s servants, but his friends (Jn 15.15), brothers and sisters (Jn 21.23), where one commandment of mutual love applies (Jn 13.34).

Considered a little inappropriate for disciplining the life of believers, John was classified as a ‘spiritual gospel’ as early as 200 by Clement of Alexandria (cf. Eusebius of Cesarea, Storia Ecclesiastica 1,6,14,7). It became a heavenly gospel for use and consumption by mystics and not for the masses. It was adapted for those who were attracted to the things of heaven and not for those people that dirty their hands with the things of earth. So, the gospel of John has been accompanied throughout the ages with the reputation of being a difficult work, reserved as nutrition for the ‘spiritual’ person, and thus neutralizing the explosive impact that this gospel can provoke in the lives of believers leading them into complete liberation: ‘Know the truth and the truth will make you free’ (Jn 8.32). In this gospel the understanding of Jesus is undoubtedly formulated in the most profound way in all of the New Testament. If the other evangelists present Jesus as the Son of God (Mt 14.33; Mk 1.1; Lk 1.35), John is the only one that attributes the term God to Jesus: ‘My Lord, and my God!’ (Jn 20.28). But which God?

John authoritatively declares ‘No one has ever seen God’ (Jn 1.18; 5.37; 6.46), inviting the believer to fix herself solely on Jesus, ‘the only son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’ (Jn 1.18). When Philip asks Jesus to show him the Father, Jesus responds ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (Jn 14.9). For John, Jesus is not equal to God, but God is equal to Jesus.

The evangelist invites the reader to rid herself of every image or concept of God that is not found in the figure of Jesus, in his life and in his teaching. Every image of God, born from the religious tradition and spirituality, that does not coincide with Jesus is eliminated, however incomplete, limited, or false. The God that Jesus reveals cannot be known through doctrine, but rather through his works: ‘Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves’ (Jn 14.11). The only criteria to verify the divinity of Christ are his works, the same ones of the Father. And the works of Jesus are all in favor of humanity, its life and happiness.

Through the themes of Creation (Genesis) and of Liberation (Exodus), John presents Jesus as the fulfillment of the hopes of the old covenant. Christ is announced as the fullness of life and of light: ‘In him was life and the life was the light of all people’ (Jn 1.4). In his gospel, the evangelist presents a crescendo of this life and this light ‘that illuminates everyone’ (Jn 1.9), through works that gives back, communicates, and enriches the life of every person, independently of their moral or religious condition. The life-light that Jesus transmits, fully responds to the desire for fullness of life that everyone possesses, which expands more and more and ‘shines in the darkness’(Jn 1.5), completely liberating humanity from the dominion of death and darkness. This crescendo of light will be at times so dazzling that it will be intolerable for those that live in the darkness (Jn 3.20) and are themselves darkness: the religious leaders. In fact, it will be them that will not tolerate the intensity of the light that emanates from Jesus the Man-God, ‘light of the world’ (Jn 8.12; 9.5), and it is they that cry out to Pilate: ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ (Jn 19.15). ‘He who takes away the sin of the world’ (Jn 1.29) has been taken from the world by accomplices of this sin: the son of God did not die because this was the will of the Father but rather for the convenience of the priestly caste in power (Jn 11.50).

The madness of the Messiah

For John, in Jesus the Man-God is manifested the fullness of the love of the Father, which is not humanity’s rival but its ally. The God-who-is-Love does not dominate humanity, but renders it possible, He does not absorb it, but rather merges with humanity in order to communicate the fullness of his divine life (Jn 17.22). A God who does not ask for offerings because it is He that offers Himself (Jn 4.10), does not want to be served because it is He that serves humanity (Jn 13.14), who asks for a new relationship with him, not already as His servants, but as His own children.

This offer will not be welcomed, and the long awaited Christ will be refused, contested, slandered and in the end assassinated: ‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’ (Jn 1.11). The will of God is that every person becomes his child (Jn 1.12) will eventually be considered blasphemy, a crime punishable by death according to the religious authorities that reject Jesus and his message in the name of the divine Law: ‘We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God’ (Jn 19.7).

But for the evangelist the Law of God does not exist: ‘God is Love’ (1 Jn 4.8) and love cannot express itself through laws, but only with acts that communicate life to people. There is no possible conciliation between the love of the Father and the Law of God. For Jesus, the Law invoked by the leaders of the people is nothing but an empty container that hides the pretense of domination and power by the religious authorities: the proof is that they do not ever invoke the divine Law in favor of the people but always for their own advantages (Jn 7.19). The Law of God is adopted by religious leaders to defend their shaky theories passed off as the will of God, in order to oppress the people and rule the roost so that the people cannot have an opinion other than what the authorities express (Jn 7.48).

Jesus never makes reference to the Law of God, but always to the love of the Father. In the name of the Law, even the divine one, they are able to make people suffer and even kill them (Jn 16.2), in the name of the love of the Father you can only alleviate suffering and give people their lives back.

The authorities would have been able to tolerate a reformer or a prophet, one sent by God to purify the Temple, the priests, the worship and also the Law—which had by now become tangled up and impracticable—but Jesus no, he was not acceptable. He was not a prophet nor was he sent by heaven, he did not move in the realm of the sacred, but left it altogether. Christ is the very manifestation of God among humanity and he did not come to purify the religious institutions but to eliminate them.  He denounced all those beliefs and acts of worship called religion which not only does not permit communion with God but actually impedes it.

Rejected by his own family, to the point that ‘not even his brothers believed in him’ (Jn 7.5), and abandoned by the majority of his disciples, ‘many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him’ (Jn 6.66). For the religious authorities, Jesus is only a crazy person, a maniac. In the accusation made by the leaders, Jesus is a Samaritan (‘Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?’ Jn 8.48). This accusation not only contained the contempt that they held towards this people, who they defined as stupid in the Scriptures (Sir 50.26), but he was denounced as if he was a dangerous enemy of God (demon-possessed) and from the same people (Samaritan) that they fought and eliminated. Only a nut, a demon-possessed Samaritan could denounce the religious leaders as sons of the devil and assassins (Jn 8.44) and then hope for the end of the religious institution that believed itself to be willed by God Himself. For this reason they joined forces against Christ with all their might because they saw in this man one who ‘made himself equal to God’ (Jn 5.18) and thus a threat to their dominion, their ambitions and their security. The same leaders that make religion a system to satisfy their own frustrated ambitions, make of God a pedestal for their own desire for prestige.

John has written his gospel ‘so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’ (Jn 20.31), assuring that the darkness will not have the better of the light (‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ Jn 1.5) and inviting every believer to actively collaborate with him who has said: I have conquered the world’ (Jn 16.33), because life will always be stronger than death.

This article was originally published in the October 15, 2007 issue of Rocca which is a periodical that seeks to connect the Christian faith and commitment with a critical approach to reality.

Hope & Hell: A Comment on Spe Salvi

José M. Castillo

MOCEOP- Granada, Spain

The Pope does well to ponder all the positive things that the Christian hope offers to the world. However, with all due respect, I dare to say that a disoriented hope can become a dangerous one. I say this because even the suicide bombers that take the lives of those that they consider to be enemies of the faith, do this because someone has put in their head the idea that death is only an instant, while the pleasures of paradise are eternal and without end.

It is evident that, in these cases, religious hope becomes dangerous and frightening. Naturally, the Pope has not wanted to make any sort of similar insinuation. But it would not have been so bad if, instead of accusing human reason, the Enlightenment, and modernity, Benedict XVI would have warned us about the excesses of hope that de facto have not been anything other than inhumane aggressions against human rights.

An eloquent example would be the fourth Lateran council (1215) which decreed that, if a person fell ill and should refuse to receive the sacraments of the Church, they should not have to receive the care of a doctor. Hope in life eternal was put before the rights of a human life—and Benedict does this without realising it. With the Enlightenment, human and civil rights were born (1789); Rights that were condemned by Pio VI, in 1790. From the time of John XXIII until today, popes praise human rights, but the Vatican has not signed off on them.

The hope of another life could make sense of this, it could help better support those in adversity and suffering. But the motivations that base themselves in the ‘hereafter’ can be dangerous for those of us ‘here’. John Dewey rightly pointed out that ‘Men have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing’. From here, among other things, springs the anti-clericalism that has done a lot of damage to religion and to the Church.

For, anti-clericalism ‘is the idea that the ecclesiastical institutions, despite all the good that they do, are dangerous to the health of democratic society’ (R. Rorty). It is not good that people think this is the case. There are many believers who, for religious reasons, do a lot of good in this life. For this reason, the stubborn ‘spiritualists’, from the moment in which they pose the centre of their life as not being in ‘this life’ but in ‘another life’, can become useless or even dangerous.

The acceptance, tolerance, and hope in another life may be very helpful for those that suffer without a cure—like a terminally ill person. But when we face problems that we can cure with our own effort and struggle, it is stupid and even cheeky to make a call for religious hope and then turn your back rather than to show your face. For the rest, if someone comes to tell me that they have forgiven me or they love me because God has forgiven or loves them, I will tell them to keep their forgiveness and affection.

I say this because this person doesn’t love me; they only love their self. It is this hypocrisy that so often permeates religion. Hypocrisy from those who say they love others, but in reality, love no one. Forced to hear admonishments that we need to love everyone ‘for God’ or ‘for eternal life’, which end up coming from refined egoists that aren’t even aware of their egoism. They maintain an appearance of humility that stinks of holiness.

One final comment, something on hell. The pope affirms its existence. And the basis for this is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 133-137). However, the existence of hell is not a doctrine of faith. What we know in faith is that ‘those that die in mortal sin are condemned’. But it is not a matter of faith that someone might die in mortal sin, not even Judas. Moreover, during the second Vatican council, there was a bishop who requested that the Council affirm that there are persons condemned to hell. But the Council did not accept the request. Because (to use religious language) in this world no one can know that which happens in the other. So, hell, as usual, contains a contradiction. Even the cruelest tyrant has used punishment to achieve some goal. Hell is the only punishment that, being eternal, does not and cannot have another goal other than to cause suffering.

If God is the Father that defines himself as Love, then how can He do a thing like that? Can unlimited Goodness produce and maintain unlimited Cruelty? Naturally, for those of us who believe in the God of Christianity, this God is just. And He must bring about justice. But how? When? Where? I prefer to hold on to these questions instead of making affirmations that, in the end, present God as if He were the cruelest of tyrants.

This article was originally published on December 7, 2007 in MOCEOP, an Andalusian Magazine for alternative religious information.

Castillo has written numerous books on ethics and theology. Most notably, Dios y Nuestra Felicidad (Desclee, 2002), Espiritualidad para Insatisfechos (Trotta, 2007) and La Iglesia y los Derechos Humanes (Desclee, 2007).

Most recently, La Humanizacion de Dios: Ensayo de Cristologia (Trotta, 2009). His forthcoming book is called, Fuori dalle Righe: il comportamento del Cristo (Cittadella, 2010).

Castillo is heralded as ‘one of the most profound and stimulating scholars on the International theological scene’ (Fr. Alberto Maggi).

You can read more on Castillo’s blog, Theology Uncensored.

Criticism, of course, never does find out what poetry is, in the sense of arriving at an adequate definition; but I do not know of what use such a definition would be if it were found. Nor can criticism ever arrive at any final appraisal of poetry. But there are these two theoretical limits of criticism: at one of which we attempt to answer the question ‘what is poetry?’ and at the other ‘is this a good poem?’ No theoretical ingenuity will suffice to answer the second question, because no theory can amount to much which is not founded upon a direct experience of good poetry; but on the other hand our direct experience of poetry involves a good deal of generalising activity.

T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism p. 16

Sin is fundamentally a refusal to accept creatureliness, the struggle to remake the world around myself; it is a refusal of contemplation. To refuse contemplation is to refuse God’s creation, and so to reject love. And if hell means anything, it means this. It is this we fear, and rightly fear. Not ‘the end of the world’ as a catastrophe at the material level (as if that were not bad enough), but the unmaking of the world, the system of created relationships designed for sacrificial love–a massive and ultimate revolt against the will of God.

++Rowan Williams, The Truce of God: Peacemaking in Troubled Times, p. 41-42 [Amazon: US/UK]

Earlier this month, NPR had an article on Flannery O’Connor’s book ‘Mystery and Manners’.

She has a great essay on fiction which my friend Charlie put me on to and I wanted to share a clip:

‘St. Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. This is what the fiction writer, on his lesser level, hopes to do. The danger for the writer who is spurred by the religious view of the world is that he will consider this to be two operations instead of one. He will try to enshrine the mystery without the fact, and there will follow a further set of separations which are inimical to art. Judgment will be separated from vision, nature from grace, and reason from imagination.

These are separations which we see in our society and which exist in our writing. They are separations which faith tends to heal if we realize that faith is a “walking in darkness” and not a theological solution to mystery.’

Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, p. 184. Amazon (US/UK).

“When we look at Jesus transfigured, we must be prepared to be mentally and spiritually flung backwards, baffled in finding adequate words for this, even fearful at the prospect of discipleship it puts before us. But it is the one vision that allows us to see everything in our experience as open to God–so that we need not fear that God is bound to disappear if we encounter this or that situation, that it is impossible to stay with God in times of failure, pain or self-doubt. That is not a glib reassurance but a sober statement of what’s implied in recognizing the glory of God in Jesus.”

Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, p. 16. Amazon (US/UK)

“our talking about rights has taken shape as a way of affirming what it is about human beings that cannot be negotiated away or extinguished by the claims of sectional interest. The problem arises with the possible implication that what is non-negotiable or ‘essential’ in human existence is primarily a set of abstract entitlements; which in turn suggests that actual historical conditions are secondary to the imperatives of meeting a cluster of timeless conditions. It is then possible to assess and condemn any specific complex of historical relations according to their failure to embody the entitlements laid down in some kind of primordial charter for human life. What comes first, it seems, is a self to which certain things are due.

“But this sounds dangerously mythological if we are learning at all to think of selves as being formed in particular histories, particular kinds of interrelations … [What is normally considered as] an infringement of ‘rights’ [is rather] a failure to begin thinking, a failure to find things difficult in the characteristic way human language implies that they are difficult.”

Rowan Williams, Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement, pp. 137-139. (Amazon US/UK)

This is just a reminder for those who may not have signed up yet for the upcoming Terry Eagleton Colloquium.

St. Chad’s College
1 July, 2010
14:00-19:00
Dinner and Live Music

To secure your place at the colloquium and dinner (small fee), please email t.j.lynch (at) durham.ac.uk

For programme details, go here.

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