Discipleship, Secularity, and the Modern Self: Dancing to Silent Music 9780567693419, 9780567693402, 9780567693440, 9780567693426

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Discipleship, Secularity, and the Modern Self

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Discipleship, Secularity, and the Modern Self Dancing to Silent Music Judith A. Merkle

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Judith A. Merkle, 2020 Judith A. Merkle has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Terry Woodley Cover image © LeoPatrizi/Getty All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932255 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-9341-9 PB: 978-0-5676-9340-2 ePDF: 978-0-5676-9342-6 eBook: 978-0-5676-9343-3 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

In gratitude to those who have gone before me; who have taught me how to dance.

Daniel 12:3

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Contents List of Abbreviations and Documents Cited

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Introduction 1 Part One  Foundations 1 2 3 4

Silent Music and the Dance: A New Moment in Christian Spirituality 7 The Human Partner: The Steps of Modernity 31 The Step of Faith: Searching for the Face of God in Modern Life 57 The Dance of Religion: Do We Need It? 78

Part Two  Dancing to the Music: Discipleship 5 6 7 8 9

The Way of Jesus and Human Flourishing: Salvation and Atonement 101 The Eclipse of Desire and the Freedom to Dance 126 The Desire to Dance: Toward a New Asceticism 150 Being Music Makers: Church and Community in a New Era 176 The Scaffoldings of the Future 198

Bibliography Index

223 233

Abbreviations and Documents Cited1 AA

Apostolicam Actuousitatem: Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity (Vatican II, 1965)

AL

Amoris Laetitia: On Love in the Family (Francis, 2016)2

CV

Caritas in Veritate: Charity in Truth (Benedict XVI, 2006)3

DH

Dignitatis Humanae: Declaration on Religious Freedom (Vatican II, 1965)

DM

Dives in Misericordia:  On the Mercy of God (John Paul II, 1980)

EG

Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel (Francis, 2013)4

GE

Guadete et Exsultate: Rejoice and Be Glad (Francis, 2018)5

GS

Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Vatican II, 1965)

LS

Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (Francis, 2015)6

RH

Redemptor Hominis: Christ the Redeemer (John Paul II, 1979)7

RM

Redemptoris Missio:  On the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate (John Paul II, 1990)

SRS

Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: On Social Concern (John Paul II, 1987)8



Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible:



Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). Francis, Amoris Laetitia (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2016). 3 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2009). 4 Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2013). 5 Francis, Gaudete et Exsultate (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2018). 6 Francis, Laudato Si (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2015). 7 The Encyclicals of John Paul II, J. Michael Miller, C.S.B. (ed. and intro.) (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1996). 8 All social encyclicals are cited from Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002). 1

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Introduction

Such thought-such thought have I that hold it tight Till meditation master all its parts, Nothing can stay my glance Until that glance run in the world’s despite To where the damned have howled away their hearts, And where the blessed dance.1

All Soul’s Night by W. B. Yeats

In the poetry of W. B. Yeats, dance is a symbol both of tension and of resolution in human experience: tension in human relationships, tension between the daily and the supernatural, tension in seeking a “unity of being” amid life experiences of evil and suffering, finitude and excellence. Yeats searched for a “vision” where the absence of conflicting impulses gave way to an existence of personal harmony with life and everything around it.2 The subjects raised in All Soul’s Night arose from the memory of people in his life who died, and their impact on his own response to these life questions. Yeats pondered the questions and learnings evoked from his relationship with them, not once, but as he thought of his own passing, “as mummies in the mummy’s cloth are wound.” This book will suggest that these “riddles of existence” persist in every generation, and are never easily answered, yet by some, are never asked. People today question if there are damned “who howl away their hearts” or blessed who “dance” in the next life. For some, thought of the next world is unrealistic or childish. Many question whether a shared understanding of the existence and nature of transcendence at all has any role in human living. This book explores a similar search as Yeats, for the transcendent; for spiritual truth that has to be discovered by each person. While the movements of a dance attract us in their elegance, grace, and meaning, W. B. Yeats, “All Soul’s Night,” in Seven Poems and a Fragment (Gutenberg Project), http://www.gutenberg.org/author/W.B. Yeats. 2 Julianne White, “The Pirouette of Ideas: Dance as Metaphor in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats,” St. John’s University Humanities Review (2007), 1. 1

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search for a spiritual path does not always have such allure. In secular society a spiritual search may remain a non-question. A new option for humanity exists today in the popular imagination, one of exclusive humanism, which envisions human living as self-contained within one’s life course, without the need for any spiritual resources beyond self-determination, human initiative, and autonomy. Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, in two of his books, The Making of the Modern Self (1989) and The Secular Age (2007), explains that neither the modern person nor secular times can be explained simply by a generic sense of the human person, or a previous age, minus the presence of religion which a secular culture dictates. Rather the plausibility structures have shifted in the modern situation which forms the backdrop to the coming to religious faith. In describing this changed climate in modern times, Taylor puts it this way, “Some great realizations of collective life are lost, but other facets of our predicament in relation to God come to fore; for instance what Isaiah meant when he talked of a ‘hidden God.’ In the seventeenth century, you had to be a Pascal to appreciate that. Now we live it daily.”3 The subtitle of this book refers to this insight in suggesting that Christian discipleship today can be experienced as dancing to silent music. The shift to secularity involves a move from a society in which belief in God is unchallenged and in most cases unproblematic to one in which it is considered as one option among others, and not the easiest option to follow. This climate affects believers and unbelievers alike. This book will unpack Taylor’s main thesis as a backdrop to explore Christian faith and practice today. In course, we will draw on scripture and the work of modern theologians to explore the nature of Christian discipleship in light of the potentials and problems of the modern self and the challenges it faces both within and in global society at large. In places we will incorporate the thought of traditional and contemporary sociologists of religion to clarify concepts of religion in society, and its function in the modern world. We will reflect on the nature of the church, as Christian discipleship is an expression of faith for Catholics and Protestants in community. Many of the questions which address the impact of the church on the practice of faith are common to both churches, while some address matters which are specific to the history and practice of the Catholic community. Part One will introduce the foundations of the argument of the book. Chapter 1 will explore how today is a new moment in Christian spirituality and suggest why the metaphors of music, dance, and silence have the potential Charles Taylor, The Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 531–2.

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Introduction

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to convey the uniqueness of these times. Chapter 2 will trace the major lines of argument by Taylor that secularity is the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual, or religious experience and search takes place. Modernity and secularity arise from new inventions, newly constructed selfunderstandings and practices, and cannot be explained in terms of perennial features of human life. Taylor’s analysis is rich and complex; however, we will explore its main features as a way to clarify the new conditions in which Christian discipleship takes shape. Chapter 3 asks the nature of the search for the transcendent in the modern world. Is the process of secularization a “falling from grace” from the religious world of premodern Europe to a spiritually lackluster modern life, or is more involved? It will explore how modern life spurs a religious search; and the impact of a climate of contingency, the increase in options for individual action, on religious commitment. Chapter 4 will address the need for religion, in face of its critics who claim religion is at odds with the goals of modern life. Why do people still believe, or believe again? It will note that all belief stands in a climate of “cross-pressures.” Both belief and nonbelief are challenged by the lived alternatives of those with whom we stand side by side in modern society. William James comments that modern religious belief is experienced in modern society as a sense of standing in an open space, with the feel of winds pulling you now here, now there. These winds represent the variety of responses to the questions of transcendence that are constructed between the alternatives of belief and unbelief. Is religion simply a choice, a preference, a selection among options? Or is there more to it? The secularization theory has predicted the disappearance of all religion in the modern age. This chapter will explore the qualities of a church and religion, “you would not want to erase.” Part Two unpacks possibilities of the meaning of Christian discipleship today. Chapter 5 explores the idea of atonement and salvation, its centrality, its misinterpretations, and its meaning of the Christian life. We will investigate the thesis that for Christians, Jesus Christ is not a superagent who performs and makes possible our salvation, but is the very locus of salvation itself. What difference does this interpretation make for Christian discipleship? The chapter will explore human experiences which are doors to the meaning of salvation to which the witness of scripture refers. Chapter 6 addresses the role of freedom and desire in openness to union with God. It will go into the past history of Christian asceticism, its goals, practices, and excesses, as well as vestiges of its practice in contemporary society. The chapter will affirm that human desires are transformed in the Christian life, which distinguishes discipleship from self-initiated practice. Chapter 7 calls for a new asceticism for a secular age. It explores the foundations upon which a new asceticism can be established as well as

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modern experiences which lead us to its practice. The chapter will look at the beatitudes in their relationship to human flourishing and the definition of happiness which drives human life. It will present the beatitudes as icons of the experience of discipleship in modern society and show their link to the modern ideals held by both believers and unbelievers. Chapter 8 will explore how the church and community are “music makers” for the dance of discipleship in secular times. It will inquire how an eclipse of a higher good, of grace, of mystery and a final destiny for humanity in society impact how the church is called to mission and be a moral authority in a society in which it has lost considerable moral stature. It will examine the popular adage, “I am spiritual but not religious” and offer some markers of true spirituality which often transcend the popular imagination. Chapter 9 will suggest directions for the future for Christian discipleship and the church in secular society. These suggestions are a “scaffolding” of what is yet to come, as it is unknown. The spiritual hungers of the secular age arise from the search all people have for “fullness,” although they recognize it and seek to attain it in different ways. It is hoped that through the analysis offers of the experience of Christian discipleship today, the reader will be able to identify in their own life, how the “dance to silent music” expresses their own spiritual search. I would like to thank my own religious community, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, an international congregation of Catholic religious sisters and associates, for the many ways they have made concrete through their witness the contents of this book. Niagara University research council, my colleagues in the Religious Studies Department and the library staff have provided both financial and collegial support in the writing of this book. I am grateful to the Lay Centre in Rome, its director Donna Orsuto and its students, for their hospitality during my research period there. I am blessed by the support of friends and family whose interest and emotional encouragement helped me “keep dancing” in the completion of this text.

Part One

Foundations

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Silent Music and the Dance A New Moment in Christian Spirituality

Throughout the centuries human beings have wondered, is it possible to connect to God? How does one do it? Who knows the way? Philosophers throughout the ages have sought to define a life worth living, a life that responds to human potentials and leads to fulfillment. However, their goals were not always religious as we know today, but they did reflect the meaningseeking nature of human life. Before the Axial Age, 900–200 BCE, the beginning of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece, societies show some belief in a High God or Sky God, since he was thought to be in the heavens. This god, however, was rather inaccessible, and faded from ordinary consciousness. People experienced the sacred in a more generalized way in the world around them. Some held that gods, people, animals, plants, insects, and rocks all shared the same divine life. Even the gods had to preserve this order, and had to cooperate with people in the preservation of the divine energies of the cosmos. If these were not renewed, the world could fall into a primal void.1 The vision of the ancient gods was a mix between human and mythological characteristics that only approximated the image of a dialogue partner and a divine-human relationship which later became a characteristic of the Judaic tradition, and the monotheism upon which Christianity rested. A form which exists beyond sensible experience, which accounts for order in the world, approaches the God who the Judeo-Christian believers encountered through revelation. Exod. 3:1-6 recounts Moses meeting God in the burning bush. This offers a picture of an encounter with God which goes beyond a mere principle of order. Coming upon a bush which was blazing but not consumed, Moses states, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up. When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Harvill Press, 1960), 172–8; Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), xi–xviii.

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he said, ‘Here I am’” (Exod. 3:3-5). God revealed Godself to Moses: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Exod. 3:6). The core dynamic of the God-human encounter is recounted here. God offers a sign, Moses turns to pay attention, God reveals Godself. The mix between meaning-seeking inquiry and religious experience continued in the early centuries of Western civilization. In Augustine’s account of fourth-century life in The City of God, he notes the variety of philosophies, schools of thought, and visions of right living in Roman society. In his account, there were currently 288 varieties!2 Augustine reviews the categorization of these different ways of thinking, first by their content and then by whether the philosophy requires that the philosopher actually practices the beliefs espoused or simply professes them. These systems of thought addressed the issue of life in the earthly city, but did not arrive at the heavenly one. Early Christians were known, not as adherers to a new system of thought, but as those who belonged to “the way.” They recognized that response to Jesus Christ was a reply to the more fundamental question of whether earthly life and heavenly life could mix. Belief and discipleship affirmed more than a philosophical system; it acknowledged that the realities of heaven and earth could touch. The scriptures did incorporate visions of the quality of life which flows from belief, and in some instances borrowed the ideals of those who followed the Greek and Roman philosophies. But the primary focus of the gospels is the Good News that a connection between God and human beings is possible. Early Christians did not die in martyrdom for an idea, an unmoved mover, or even a system of virtue and vice. They died because of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

What Is the Way? Writers of both Testaments and those who followed in the Christian tradition offered images of what made up “the way” of the Christian life. The symbolic nature of linking the boundaries of this-worldly and other-worldly realms could not be captured in maps, linear language, blueprints, or recipes. Response to the question, how do we on earth connect to God had to appeal to the imagination and the heart. It had to suggest rather than describe; lure and invite instead of command. Both the Hebrew scripture and the New Testament offer such images. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Random House, 1950), Book XIX.1, 699. Here Augustine quotes Marcus Varro.

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Genesis 28:10-17 puts forward the metaphor of a ladder. The biblical patriarch Jacob dreams during his flight from his brother Esau of a ladder which connects earth and heaven. Jewish scholars, in later periods, unpacked the image of a ladder to remind the community of what it means to live in relationship in these two worlds. They pointed out the “ups” and “downs” of the Jewish people in their life with Yahweh and drew attention to the presence of angels who represent continual divine assistance to the sincere. They compared the ladder to the Temple, which connects the Jewish people and Yahweh as well as their prayers and sacrifices, offered in the Temple, which express their attention to God in their lives. The symbol of the ladder carried the belief of the Jewish community that their symbolic actions on earth have a heavenly connection. In the New Testament, the gospel of Jn 1:51, retrieves the image of the ladder, as a symbol of Jesus as the true connection between God and people. Many people of the early church would have been familiar with Jacob’s ladder and found in the image a confirmation of their new faith in Jesus Christ. In subsequent centuries, the church fathers returned to this theme to speak of the church. In the first centuries, Christian identity struggled to take root in a new and hostile culture, while the stability and integrity of the church was challenged by persecution from without and controversy from within. Irenaeus in the second century describes the Christian church as the “ladder of ascent to God.”3 The use of images to describe the human encounter with God reflects the density of what is involved in awakening to and engaging in the divinehuman relationship. Tradition affirms that meeting the divine is not a once and for all event, rather a pursuit which happens over a lifetime. To capture a fuller sense of the divine-human encounter, the metaphor of journey is used both in the Bible and literature to symbolize the ongoing character of the relationship. The book of Exodus depicts the Israelites setting out on a journey in the desert, away from their slavery in Egypt to a new relationship with Yahweh in the promise land. The book of Deuteronomy gives directions as to how to live in relationship with God, as God’s people. After years in exile in Babylon, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah recount how God helped to restore the people of Israel after their sins, mistakes, and misfortunes.

Later Christianity In the unfolding of Western Christianity, abundant images have been offered to help people understand the “way” to God in their lives. These have become classics of the Christian spiritual tradition. St. Bonaventure in the thirteenth Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, III, 24, 1.

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century, writing The Soul’s Journey into God, retrieves the image of the sixwinged Seraph seen by St. Francis on the slopes of Mount Alverna.4 This central religious experience in the Franciscan tradition, an encounter of the earthly and the other-worldly in the life of St. Francis, was a vision that imprinted on him the living seal of the Stigmata. Bonaventure followed Francis in his conviction that creation itself is a major bridge between earth and heaven, and a deep source of spiritual development. The splendor of created things awakens us to acknowledge God. Bonaventure, a man of his century, viewed the sciences, particularly metaphysics, mathematics, and physics, as a means of deepening awareness of spiritual realities and ultimately leading human beings to God. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, written in 1522–24, grew out of Ignatius’s own personal experience as a person who sought to grow in union with God and to know God’s will in his life.5 He kept a journal as he gained spiritual insight and deepened in his spiritual experience. He left these behind as a guide for others, along with directions as how to enter into these same spiritual experiences. Many have followed “the way” of St. Ignatius as a guide for their spiritual journey. Teresa of Avila, in her Interior Castle, offers a narrative of the soul passing through various castles or states of personal transformation, in its journey to God.6 Found also in the sixteenth century is St. John of the Cross who wrote the Ascent of Mount Carmel.7 This text offers another description of the path of the ascetical life in pursuit of mystical union with Christ. John as a Carmelite monk already responded to the question can we meet God on earth, by entering the Carmelite order to pursue this journey. What John contributes is information concerning stages in the journey, and what happens along the way. John attends to his own experience of the “Dark Night of the Soul” when the individual undergoes earthly and spiritual privations in search of union with God. Christians for centuries have turned to John for confirmation of their question, “which way is ahead” when doubts and obstacles enter into their spiritual life. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation cultivated the realm of “devotion” to survive spiritually. In England, the threefold controversy, Catholic against Anglican against Puritan, produced in English publications evidence that the public had taken the fruits of the Counter-Reformation Bonaventure, Bonaventure: Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). 5 Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganes, S.J. (Chicago, IL: Loyola Press, 1992). 6 Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 2 (Washington: ICS Publishers, 1980). 7 John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodrigues, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publishers, 1991). 4

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to its heart through inward devotion. Practices of meditation, especially among the educated, developed on the continent, were practiced to promote the very connection to God believers sought. Meditation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was recognized as a method, or way, of applying the understanding to see and to know, as well as to “taste” something of the divine. The goal was to draw one’s heart and affection to the good inclinations and purposes and to stir up love of God, neighbor, and virtue. Evidence of this spiritual movement is found in the religious poetry in England in the seventeenth century.8 Francis de Sales in his Treatise on the Love of God (1616) and Introduction to a Devout Life (1614) appeals to both the ordinary person and the person who is more advanced in the spiritual life. Socially, this included the poorest peasants to court ladies. Both writings are to offer a “way” to deepen or advance in their “holy affections and resolutions,” not by leaving the world, but by facing the temptations and hardships which enter into each life.9 Francis de Sales offers practical methods to deal with these life situations. Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) by John Bunyan, regarded as the first novel, and one of the most significant works of religious English literature, takes up a similar theme but for new times and circumstances. Presented as a dream sequence spoken by an all-seeing narrator, the allegory’s protagonist, Christian, an everyman character, embarks on a journey from “this world,” his hometown the “City of Destruction” to that which is to come, heaven, or the “Celestial City” atop Mount Zion. The characters, places, and events of Christian’s pilgrimages depict the dangers, temptations, and obstacles as well as the supports and advocates that are involved in a soul’s journey to heaven. What these images of a journey convey is there is no “heavenly” zone in the earthly city where the believer can move unencumbered from within and without. The connection to God is never without struggle, doubts, turns, and surprises. These and many other spiritual classics have offered images of the “way” of the Christian living, or discipleship, throughout the history of the church.10 Meditation was considered a practice of the lower levels of the spiritual life, See: Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study of English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1954). “The metaphysical poets may be seen . . . as a group of writers, widely different in temper and outlook, drawn together by resemblances that result, basically, from the common practice of certain methods of religious mediation,” 2. 9 Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Intro. Cardinal Archbishop Edward Egan (New York: Vintage, 2002). 10 The medieval mystics Julian of Norwich and Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Brother Lawrence and modern-day Dag Hammarskjoid, Evelyn Underhill, and Thomas Merton among others. 8

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and not properly speaking a mystical activity. It was pictured as part of the duties of every person in daily life and was available to everyone through the working of ordinary grace. However, modern living raises new questions regarding the spiritual journey, its possibility, and practice. Thus these classical images take a new turn.

Modern-Day Mysticism Theologian Karl Rahner claims that modern-day mysticism is not the mysticism reserved for the saints and those with privileged spiritual experience, as it was once considered in the past. Rather it is a genuine experience of God arising from the heart of existence, and open to all people of faith. Rahner claims that it is not only in “time apart” that one comes to meet God but in the very processes of knowing and loving in ordinary life. An individual’s relationship with God is lived out in ordinary life in modern times, rather than cloaked in an “other-worldly” fashion, withdrawn from day-to-day living. The idea of some pure encounter of God and the individual soul requiring the blocking out of the responsibilities of living today is questioned. This is not a dismissal of a contemplative approach to life, or the need for silence and prayer. Rather it is a retrieval of the focus of Judeo-Christian tradition which places our encounter with God as engaged with the neighbor—as incarnational. The Christian life is not just “in one’s head” it is an embedded presence in the concrete world, as was the life of Jesus Christ. For Rahner, ordinary modern life is not a distraction from the spiritual journey; instead it is its context. The experience of expanding the horizon of possibility in modern life grounds us in the awareness that the human person is someone with an infinite horizon. We ask questions, we find solutions, and we make new discoveries. “The infinite horizon of human questioning is experienced as an horizon which recedes further and further the more answers man can discover.”11 Modern life itself can lead the human person to experience themselves as transcendent, as oriented to “more,” as God who is limitless is always on the horizon of our search. The initiative and creativity of the modern person can be the source of the experience of encounter what is infinite. Rahner suggests that every time we know or choose anything in particular, we do so against a horizon of limitlessness. In doing so, we

Karl Rahner, Foundations of the Christian Faith (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 31–2.

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experience “absolute mystery” as the term of our transcendence.12 Mysticism is moved from the margins of Christian life and made a feature of people’s everyday existence as they live the Christian life.13 The modern experience also brings deeper insight to the negative pole of the spiritual journey. The “dark night” of the soul experienced today is often caught up with the “dark night of the world.”14 Its eclipse of God is given expression in a variety of ways which touch on the experience of hopelessness and light in the world today. The “journey” of the Christian life is the paschal mystery, the dying and rising to new life with Christ. The face of this journey today is not solely in the monk’s solitude, rather in experiences of family life, work, illness, and the struggle to find inner peace. The “dark night” is met as the possibility and consequences of war, migration, ethnic cleansing, trafficking, and starvation are faced, resisted, and overcome. People engage in the paschal mystery in their efforts to respond to the challenges of their daily lives. They live the resurrection in their striving toward peace, acceptance, justice, and the work they do to order the world so the goods of the earth are destined for all. While modern people discover the link between the earthly and the other-worldly in ordinary life, not everyone acknowledges the existence of God. The experience of the Absolute or of our transcendence does not impose itself upon us like a concept or sense experience, a deep feeling or an idea. The experience has to be interpreted. We do not automatically make the transition from the experience of our transcendence, the drive to “more,” to recognition of it at a conceptual level, for many reasons. We acknowledge that good people can share with believers important values and ideals yet deny there is a God. Rahner, however, would claim that even those who expressly deny God may also implicitly experience God in their efforts to live a life worth living. In his words, “Whenever there is selfless love, wherever the incomprehensibility of death is calmly accepted, wherever people are good with no hope of recognition, in all these instances the Spirit is experienced, even though a person may not dare give this interpretation to the experience.”15

Karl Rahner, “The Experience of Self and the Experience of God,” Theological Investigations XIII (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 123–4. 13 See Declan Marmion, A Spirituality of Everyday: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, Inc., 1985). 14 Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 147. 15 Karl Rahner, “How Is the Spirit Experienced Today?” in Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interview, 1965-1982, eds. Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons and trans. and eds. Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 142. 12

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For the modern person the question of faith contains the same quandary as ever, can we on earth connect with the divine? Is it possible? Is it necessary? How does it happen? The answer to this question involves the human search for meaning, not only of my life but of all life. It is a question which goes beyond, what is a life worth living? What can I do on my own? It involves an encounter and surrender to an Other. Rahner names the experience of faith in the Spirit of God as the positive and unconditional acceptance of one’s own existence as meaningful and open to a final fulfillment, “which we call God.”16 It involves an acknowledgment that our deepest desire for fulfillment cannot be fulfilled alone.

Dancing to Silent Music Christian discipleship, as a following of Christ, has been described through many metaphors throughout the history of the church. The Christian has been compared to the faithful soldier, the handmaid, the faithful slave, the dutiful servant, the spouse, the shepherd, the branch of the vine, the hands and feet of Christ, the friend who is no longer servant (Jn 15:15). All affirm relationship with Christ is a response to an invitation, a following, a service to God and others and an affair of the heart. Today there is a challenge to express the core reality of discipleship in terms of the changed conditions of coming to faith and living in a new millennium. This is pursued while at the same time honoring markers of its identity preserved in the continuing tradition of the faith community. Many in the twenty-first century affirm that earthly life and heavenly life can mix, but also have experiences not captured always by traditional metaphors. As a thought experiment let us explore images of dance, music, and silence as an entry into a new imaging as believers. Walking down the street, a common experience today, is to encounter people with earphones on, listening to music. To some extent they are immune to what is going on around them. Their focus is a listening which is private. They walk to work or to class surrounded by other people, yet attuned to what sustains this daily journey, gets them to the next step in it, or takes their minds off the responsibilities which press in on them in modern life. Perhaps they are trying to stay calm in traffic, get energy for the next meeting or connect with the memory of a love source that makes it all worthwhile.

Karl Rahner, “The Certainty of Faith,” in The Practice of Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 32.

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Is the experience of Christian discipleship in modern society captured in this type of listening?

Spirituality and Discipleship Christian existence is living and listening to this “other” dimension. As Moses turned to pay attention to the burning bush, listening to the religious dimension of life is a similar posture. In the Hebrew scripture, Spirit is the life force stemming from God, which can be experienced and known.17 It was the power of Yahweh in its significance for the people of God—either as a prophetical and eschatological gift (1 Sam. 10:6) or as the Wisdom of God (Wis. 1:6; 7:22). The New Testament recognizes that God was present in Jesus as nowhere else, and saw him as bestower of the Spirit and Lord of the Spirit-filled community (Lk. 4:14; Acts 2:33). The relation of the Spirit of the church to the eschatological reality of the Lord was seen to be one of identity.18 St. Paul affirms that to be united to Christ is to enter into the sphere of the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). St. Paul stresses the fulfillment of the Spirit yet to come, while St. John speaks the present salvation in the Spirit which brings judgment to the world, yet a rebirth in the Spirit of truth and love for the faithful (Jn 3:3-5; 14-16). These experiences brought deeper insight into the divine and personal individuality of the Spirit to the early Christians. The “spirituality” of Christian existence, in the individual, the community, and the church became more clearly recognized. Spirituality, living with this “other” dimension, is rooted in the Christian tradition in belief in divine revelation, the historical concreteness of revelation in Jesus Christ, and the tradition of the church through word and sacrament. Christian spirituality draws its vitality from the salvific deed in Jesus Christ present in the church and transmitted through its preaching and sacraments. Scripture, as revelation, is a manifestation by God—primarily of Godself and God’s will and intentions. Spirituality in this sense involves the personal assimilation of the salvific mission of Christ by each Christian, which is always in the framework of new forms of Christian conduct and is involved within the fundamental answer of the church to the word of salvation. This inner fullness of Christian spirituality demands listening to the Spirit in various historical circumstances both in personal life and the

Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), chapter one. 18 Josef Sudbrack, “Spirituality,” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Adolg Darlap, Vol. 6 (London: Burns and Oates, 1970), 148. 17

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life of society and the church. Vatican II referred to this ongoing process as “listening to the signs of the times (GS 4).” The written record in the New Testament is important to Christians as it is the permanent and unchanging testimony of the apostolic generation. Even though the New Testament writings are not a complete and balanced inventory of the early church’s beliefs, nor do they claim to be, they are of vital importance. They lay down what cannot be changed: the rule of faith as it was recorded, to which the church is always bound, and which she can develop and expand but never falsify.19 The meaning of Christian discipleship is captured in an irrevocable way in this witness. Using new images to interpret discipleship today has to rely on a correspondence to this foundational witness.

Discipleship in the New Testament There are a number of different situations in antiquity in which a person might leave family and occupation to become a “disciple” of a popular leader.20 The most common would be to follow a teacher, for a Jew, a Pharisee or teacher of the law, or for a non-Jew a particular philosophical teacher. Teachers were of various calibers and attracted people of diverse characters. For instance, a person could join a band of robbers set on preying on travelers or a group of revolutionaries plotting to overthrow Rome, as well as follow Jesus. Jesus’s teaching likely overlapped with that of the Pharisees, as both sought to interpret the will of God, the later through the law and Jesus going beyond that with healings and prophetic sayings and actions. People reacted to Jesus both positively and negatively. Some described Jesus as coming in the name of God, and others as a magician, deceiver, and rebel. Jesus was followed by the “twelve,” symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet others joined Jesus in various capacities. Apostles, beyond the twelve, including Paul, had in common a mission of being also sent by Jesus to heal and preach the gospel. To follow Jesus was not just a matter of personal selfimprovement; it involved a mission to share the gospel with others. The apostles learned from Jesus’s style of life how to engage others when they preached the gospel. However, their testimony to the resurrection of Jesus separated them from others who were followers of other teachers. They knew Jesus intimately in different ways. Scripture scholar Pheme Perkins describes R. A. F. MacKenzie, S.J., “Introduction,” to the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 108–9. 20 For this section on discipleship I rely on Pheme Perkins, Reading the New Testament (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 68–9, 208–11, 225–7, 238–9, 251–3, 265–8, 276–8. 19

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the difference apostles found in Jesus, after his death and resurrection, as compared to other “teachers” in this way. But they make it clear that they are not claiming simply that Jesus had an immortal soul which is now resting peacefully in heaven. They are claiming that God has taken the Jesus of Nazareth, whom they knew, and done something which had not happened to any other person. God has raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him to the heavenly throne.21

Jesus was followed not because he was a martyr, or a suffering righteous one. Without the resurrection Jesus might be remembered as a righteous person who healed people and taught about the Kingdom of God. He may have been thought of as a founder of a small Jewish sect. In contrast to our practice today when we remember a person who was a martyr to a cause or suffered an unjust death because of their beliefs, Jesus was followed because he was Lord. The apostles witnessed that the resurrection is the heart of Christian faith. Paul insists to the early Christians that what God has done in raising Jesus is the beginning of a resurrection that will encompass all Christians. If they do not believe in the resurrection, their whole Christian faith is in vain. Christian discipleship has this as a distinguishing mark.

Mark The gospel writers fill out the meaning of discipleship. While a complete picture is beyond our purpose here, highlights of their insights will clarify the perimeters and possibilities set by the gospels. The gospel of Mark was written for Christians who were suffering persecution. They likely wondered, as we would, why an exalted Jesus did not step down to save them in their precarious position. They faced the danger of following false messiahs, who seemed to have an answer or a prediction of their future. Yet the truth was even the Son of Man did not make such predictions (Mk 13:32-37). Mark makes it clear that discipleship will involve suffering (13:9-13) for those who preach the gospel. At the same time, they are to be confident that God is with them in suffering and that they will be saved. Their lives will involve the humility, service, and suffering set by the example of Jesus (Mk 9:33-37; 10:35-45). It will require material sacrifices (Mk 10:17-31). Mark addresses the fears, hesitations, misunderstandings, opposition, and even flight seen in Jesus’s disciples (16:7-8), yet also testifies they finally did follow Jesus. Mark encourages Christians by recounting the weaknesses and sufferings of Jesus’s Ibid., 95.

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first disciples. The divine forgiveness and love which is extended to all in Jesus death was not less because of human failure. He encourages modern day disciples to follow Jesus faithfully, despite their weaknesses and setbacks, since Jesus is the source of salvation. For Mark the concrete issues of the Christian life are few. They are summed up in love of God and neighbor and willingness to follow Jesus’s example of self-sacrificing service. Whatever difficulties arise, whatever the cost in personal or material terms, Jesus is there “ahead of his disciples” reaching out to save them.

Matthew Throughout the gospel of Matthew Jesus is presented as a teacher. Jesus is set in the context of “fulfilling” the law and prophets and presenting a “higher righteousness” than that of the Jewish interpreters of the law. The commission in Matthew 28 calls upon Jesus’s followers to make disciples of all nations. Matthew 13:52 speaks of every scribe who has been made a disciple for the kingdom should be able to bring out of his treasure both old things and new things. Matthew shaped the traditions about Jesus to address the situations of Christians who must find their way outside the original confines of Judaism. Jesus’s teaching is to bring that tradition to its fulfillment. Christians have a guide to the true expression of God’s will for humanity. The ongoing problems of discipleship for the community involved internal turmoil within the group, and a weakening of faith. Matthew reminds them that as long as it exists in this age the church will be a mixed community of good and bad. Only God’s judgment will separate the two. Discipleship involves living in this mixed situation, and always being ready for the Lord’s return. Relationships are not to be marked by legalism, judgment, or exclusion, rather by justice, mercy, forgiveness, and a willingness to seek out the lost.

Luke The gospel of Luke defends Christianity against false accusations before a sympathetic Roman audience. Luke wants to assure readers that what the church is preaching goes back to the preaching of Jesus and the earliest apostles. He uses the image of God’s plan moving in history to address the question of the place of non-Jews in a salvation that was rooted in Israel. Luke emphasizes the diversity of people who are called to discipleship by Jesus. We meet women and men from all social categories. The new life of Christ comes through repentance and conversion, not by rank or class. True discipleship requires one to “leave everything” (Lk. 5:28) and is characterized

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as “hearing and keeping the word of God” (Lk. 8:19-21). Luke warns against the danger of wealth and seeking position to the life of discipleship. Traps posed by wealth are illustrated by the parable of the rich fool (Lk. 12:13-21), the unjust steward (Lk. 16:1-8), and the rich man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-31). Discipleship involves recognizing that the concerns of daily life have the capacity to rob people of their enthusiasm for the gospel. One needs to not only hear the message but hold onto it in face of conflicting obligations and duties. It means a whole lifetime of “bearing fruit” which comes from the “good heart” of the faithful disciple. Luke’s model of the first disciple is Mary, who shows in the infancy narratives how to hear the word of God and keep it: “Representing all of the faithful, pious ones of Israel, she heard and accepted the word of the Lord so that the promises of salvation could become realized through her. The same devotion is held up to all disciples in the gospel.”22 Since Luke wrote both the gospel and Acts he has an interest in showing how the gospel stands at the center of a larger story of salvation. Luke goes back to the Old Testament and into the ongoing teaching of the apostles after Jesus’s death and resurrection. God’s promises have been fulfilled in Jesus. Acts is not “church history,” rather it is a story of how God’s providence worked through such famous apostles as Peter and Paul to bring into being the church and traditions which Luke and his readers have inherited. The Christian movement is something new in Acts as all people are called to believe in Jesus, to repent, receive forgiveness for sin and join the new fellowship of believers. It is “the way” (Acts 9:2). Discipleship is a journey; the disciple is the person who follows Jesus along his journey. In Acts, the parallels between the story of Jesus and the lives of the apostles are one way in which Luke makes his point. The depiction of discipleship in Luke has three themes. The first is hospitality and sharing with the poor. The unity of the community of the first disciples depended upon shared things in common (Acts 16:11-15). This is a moderate sharing not a radical poverty practiced later in church history. A second theme is piety. Acts 4:24-30 reports a lengthy prayer in which the community reviews “salvation history” and asks for boldness in its testimony to Jesus despite persecution. Prayer accompanies important events in the community (Acts 6:6), healings (Acts 9:40), and defeat of pagan practices and lingering habits from the pagan world (Acts 8:9-24; 10:25-26; 14:12-18). Luke answers the objections to Christianity in the pagan world, that it is a base form of mass superstition, by showing it to embody only the noblest forms of piety. A third theme is that of conflict and persecution. Various times of persecution are depicted in Acts but in all cases the apostle makes a bold Ibid., 239.

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case for the gospel. The disciple is never moved by human orders to cease preaching, rather is motivated to continue to preach by “divine necessity.” Luke teaches us to look back to the story of the earliest community for a vision of what it means to be followers of Jesus. Now that the apostles are gone, those who have charge of the churches are responsible for teaching and admonishing others so that the community does not fall victim to divisions, false teaching, and predatory attacks. Discipleship involves believing God places this trust in his followers.

John The fourth gospel presents a different picture of Jesus from that in the Synoptic gospels. The prologue of Jn 1:1-18 presents us with the story of Jesus as the coming of the divine Word to humanity. The Word is rejected by some, but by those who receive it, the Word is the source of salvation and rebirth as children of God (vv. 12-13). There is no other way to “know” God except through the Word that has come among humanity in Jesus (vv. 14, 18). In John, teachings about the rule of God and the ethics of discipleship are missing. The gospel calls for faith in Jesus’s identity, as Jesus and the Father are one (Jn 10:30). Belief in Jesus brings persecution—discipleship means a willingness to “bear witness” to one’s faith in Jesus in a hostile world. In the Last Supper discourses Jesus draws his disciples into the relationship of love that exists between himself and the Father. They are promised a share in that love if they love one another (Jn 14:21-24). Jesus offers his own body and blood in the Eucharist at the Last Supper and performs the washing of feet as a sign of the total giving of his life for “his own” (Jn 13:1-20). Jesus prays that the same unity will exist between his followers as between himself and his Father. He prays this in face of hints of external persecution. The resurrection appearances of Jesus in the gospel of John indicate what the disciples must do now that Jesus is glorified in heaven. Jesus gives them his Spirit. They are now sent as Jesus was sent by his Father. By the time the gospel of John was written even some people who had known Jesus had died. People for whom the gospel of John was written were no longer first-generation Christians. Jesus prayed for believers who have believed “without seeing” (Jn 20:29). Faith lies at the heart of discipleship in John, especially faith for disciples who did not walk and talk with Jesus when he was on earth. Many of the characters in the gospel find it hard to believe that Jesus is one with God. Many walk away, others simply deny him. But John testifies that you cannot enter into a relationship with God without believing in his Son. This is a relationship expressed in a life of love and service, and in a willingness to testify to one’s belief in Jesus despite hostility from outsiders. Belief is not

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just for one’s own benefit, but to witness to the mission of Jesus. If one’s faith is weak like the apostle Thomas, or one is unsure how to respond to the criticisms being wielded against Christianity, John claims only God can do the signs which Jesus does, and only God can offer eternal life. Those who are unable to believe are blind to the presence of God in Jesus.

Christian Discipleship in Tension Today, not everyone agrees we can listen to the word of God nor see God in our lives. People find it unnecessary, and unwise to believe in God, or any higher power. The question is deeper than how to listen to the word of God; rather it raises doubts we are addressed by God at all in our contemporary world. Moderns, believers and unbelievers alike, live in a world which Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls “metaphysical naturalism.” This position maintains reality is only a matter of natural forces and that nothing exists beyond the natural world.23 In light of this strong cultural supposition, religious commitment is viewed as the domain of those who are clinging to a premodern worldview, or have some psychological incapacity which drives them to entertain fantasies of the supernatural. Nevertheless, people today do believe in God, are practicing Christians, and “hear” and “recognize” another dimension in their daily lives. So while some claim we are not being addressed, other modern experiences lead people to believe otherwise. Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx claims that we as moderns often encounter God indirectly. Daily life presents us with the dilemma of what he calls, “contrast experience.” Hurricanes, drive by shootings, war, genocides, tragic illness, malnutrition, racial unrest, stories of physical and sexual abuse, chronic unemployment, ecological devastation are all experiences that communicate something is amiss in the world. Both believers and unbelievers experience these disjunctions. Both may react with the sentiment, this ought not to be. Schillebeeckx argues that implicit in their “no” to the situation is “yes” to something better. People choose to work to make things better; they believe love is worth their effort, and act from a vision of a better life which fuels their energies.24 Schillebeeckx points out that both believers and unbelievers search for “more.” In seeking what is more than now, not more money or things but more quality, humans act from a sense of transcendence. They turn away from the Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 326–7. 24 Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 22. 23

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rumors of disaster that float in our fear-ridden world today, and open their lives to hope. People name the source of this anticipation differently: God, a higher power, the attentive listening to life itself and its mystery. Believers might strain to hear the word of God in contemporary experience, for it can seem barely audible, as almost silent music. What adds to the struggle to hear is everyone does not. People find themselves attending to the “music of more,” a sense of transcendence, and asking for help. They hope God’s energies will join with their own and this partnership will produce a dance, more than any individual can do alone. They strain to hear the murmurings of a higher power, for contact which keeps their hope alive, calls them to community and to continue on the way. As the individual in their everyday routine, with their earphones listening to music, the modern person gives attention to the things of everyday life, yet also looks for signs of a higher meaning to accompany their day. Christian tradition testifies that only the Spirit can spark the thoughts, words, and feelings that awaken in a person this sense of being addressed, as an experience of being loved. Christians find themselves with the desire to respond with the actions of a dance, movements which express something deep inside, which at times they cannot even explain to themselves. Certainly this is an experience of Christian discipleship today. Charles Taylor says that a nonbeliever might work very hard at the same struggle to bring more fullness into their lives. They too seek a condition which is fuller, richer, meaningful, more as it “ought to be.” They also experience its opposite, a sense of exile or alienation from the condition which they seek and a powerlessness to reach it. However, for them, this life is all there is. The sense of fullness toward which he strives or she aspires is understood in terms of the potentials which human beings can accomplish in the here and now. Unlike the believer, they hear nothing nor expect help from above; rather the potential to reach fullness is within.25 The human effort of making laws, using reason, drawing on Nature, and ordering the world is the only source of response. The fuller element to which the rational mind must open, they claim, is perhaps just another side of human life, its deepest feeling or instincts. While believers join in these same tools of response, they seek to experience the partnership of God in their efforts. Yet, the music believers hear is silent for many in our culture today. Believers and unbelievers share a human finitude which longs for a happiness which it cannot fulfill alone. In spite that modern identity carries a high profile of initiative and autonomy, the inevitable threatens any sense Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harward University Press, 2007), 8.

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of mastery; human mortality testifies to a reality of death which cannot be escaped. The unavoidable offers daily obstacles which cannot be totally controlled. Deep inside humans know that no one can prevent certain people, events, or things from affecting life negatively, no one is that powerful. No medicine, psychology, therapy, welfare or warfare, or any science or technique is capable of changing all adversities.26 While not all people embrace religion as a path to deal with these riddles of human existence, there is really no rational response which explains to those who do, that they should not or may not.27 They dance as if no one is watching. Christians believe they are addressed by God in their lives; they listen for God, hear the word, and strive to keep it in love. This is the relationship of discipleship for a Christian. Throughout this book we will use the images of music, dance, and silence to express nuances of how we seek, hold onto, and express the reality of living this discipleship in these new times. We do this realizing even a sense of the discipleship can slip away from consciousness as we go about our daily lives, and our need to constantly return to the source of its meaning and existence in Christian practice. For that reason we will employ the metaphors of music, dance, and silence to touch into the experience of this search and our role in it.

Music Music can serve as a powerful metaphor for the voice of God in our lives, as music conveys and draws us to the deeper meaning of our human experience. This meaning and its possession is not always conscious, but it is real. Diana Hayes tells the story of the poet Jean Toomer in the 1920s who encountered the spiritual richness of black women in the South. He met women who had spirituality so deep, so unconscious, and so internal that they were themselves unaware of the richness they held. Amid the many trials and tribulations these women faced as a result of slavery, they found a way to rise, to be free, to create, even when no-way seemed the only obvious path. Alice Walker commented, they, as their foremothers, moved or danced to “music not yet written.”28 Mothers and grandmothers handed on a creative spark often in

Adrian Van Kaam, The Music of Eternity: Everyday Sounds of Fidelity (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1990), 110. 27 Hans Joas, Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity, trans. Alex Skinner (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 138–43. 28 Diana L. Hayes, Hagar’s Daughters: Womanist Ways of Being in the World (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 10–11. 26

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anonymity, “. . . the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see; or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”29 Does not music, as well as the word of God, stir in us a forgotten memory, a hidden strength, an unaddressed wound, or an unmet longing that quotidian life has left buried? The music addresses us at a level where we do not always invite it. It can express for us what words cannot convey: an atmosphere of welcome and relaxation, an announcement of life passage at graduation, the dirge of taps, the memory of “our song,” the celebration of a New Year with anticipation and tradition. It can elicit tears when we do not want them or bring peace when our hearts and minds are scattered with concern. We too can become music for each other. Music’s presence in human life is a two-way street. Throughout history gifted individuals and ordinary people offer music to the human community in a manner which addresses its spirit and needs, and the human community receives it, is uplifted, and empowered to go on. Music involves the mutuality which is also found in Christian discipleship. God shows faithfulness to the individual and the community in addressing us, and we manifest our fidelity to God in straining to listen. Beyond our individual playlists, there is something about music that draws us together; in listening we form a community. Music forms the bonds of a generation, as in “our” music; it marks the boundaries of nationality and inheritance. Even the dance of a child rouses our energies to meet our common crises and mourn our public losses. As the Indian proverb says, “Love is revealed in words, when words are not enough, it is revealed in deeds. When deeds are not enough, love resorts to music.”30 In an age where concern for the earth is a global concern, there is a way creation itself is the music of God. On the one hand, modern people are aware of the importance of the earth and its systems as well as their responsibility for its sustainability. On the other hand, there is a “given” in a sunset that pulls us into a primitive posture of the earth before we touched it. We can connect to God in the rushing of the sea or in the silence of the plains and the mountains; we can hope again through witnessing a new birth. At those moments we can be drawn into the music of creation that leads us to its Creator. Even though many moderns do not live an agricultural lifestyle, close to the earth, they can also meet God in the ongoing creation of civilization. When caught in a traffic jam, surrounded by sirens, computers, and technology, it can seem like the music of God is far away. Yet moderns know the Musician has handed the score over to men and women, and left Ibid., 14. Quoting Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 240. 30 As quoted in Segundo Galilea, The Music of God: Parables of Life and Faith, trans. John Eagleson (Oak Park, Il: Meyer-Stone Books, 1988), 1. 29

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its suitability to their initiative and creativity.31 We rarely in our day meet nature alone, more often nature plus human initiative adapting it in a new surgical procedure, a better bridge, a vitamin enriched food, a connected society through media and TV. Discipleship today involves listening to God in the rhythm of human progress, when the humanum and the earth itself is served and respected. Yet caught in these two worlds of pure nature and modern civilization we find ourselves in the same position of early Christians who met Jesus face to face, will we respond? We listen again the words of Jesus, and wonder where we are in the parable: “To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like. They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep” (Lk. 7:31-32). Today, as always, we have the option to hear the music or not and decide how to respond.

Dance Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207–82), a thirteenth-century German mystic, listened to the scripture quoted earlier, and turned to the symbol of dance as an image of her response of discipleship. She begins her prayer saying that she cannot dance unless the Lord leads her. Such an invitation from God evokes in her a joyful leap, yet her response depends on God’s action not her own. She prays that if God wants her to dance, God must first dance and sing. This response of God will call her to leap for love—a love which will lead to knowledge of God, and a fulfillment in her beyond all human sense. She sees this “dance” with God as a fulfillment which will deepen and draw her more and more into its mystery.32 How might dance be an image which communicates the experience of discipleship today? Dance as a symbol of discipleship conveys a partnership, and a response to an invitation. Dance is a rhythmic series of movements, which, unlike the steps of a ladder or staircase, do not go up and down. Since the steps of our lives often are not as consequential as “up or down,” but simply meet what is next, like the steps in a dance, dance captures a realistic aspect of modern life. There is movement backward and forward, we turn and return, bend and bow, circle and spiral as we move through life experiences which move us to the next phase of our lives. New relationships, changes in our Galilea, The Music of God: Parables of Life and Faith, 2. This is a paraphrase of Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead: The Revelations of Mechthild of Magdeburg, trans. and Intro. Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), Book 1, section 44, 58–65 at 59.

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life cycle, opportunities, tragedies, and external events require a response, as multiple moods of music elicit adaptation rather than fixed movements. Sometimes change is called forth by invitation, sometimes by our own time, and in some cases through necessity—as an uninvited life or responsibility comes upon us. What is required is we answer rather than walk away. To dance, one must be invited, usually partnered or taken into a circle, to interpret, respond, and enjoy the movement dance creates. Often dance links a present culture to the past, or announces a new age is about to birth. Little girls stand on the feet of their fathers to first feel the movement, and learn to move in sync with another. Yet a day comes when their movements are not those repeated from the past, but fresh expressions of a new moment in time. Dance often expresses celebration, a pause from the troubles of living, and a letting go, an escape from the restraints and restrictions of duty and perfunctory tasks. We can ask how Christian discipleship might be considered a dance. How does dance stand up before other images of Christian living; as a solemn march of obligation, a duty of diligence, a path to perfection, an annihilation of self, a necessary discipline for good citizenship and national harmony? To invite our imaginations to consider discipleship as a dance is to retrieve these other images of the Christian life, and to ask how they can remain or must be reframed as suitable images of discipleship in the modern age. Christian discipleship always involves an ethical component, a focus on human agency. Can the image of dance, the sense of an invitation and a partnership, stand up to the modern expectation that all that is needed to fulfill the demands of Christian living is to take responsibility for its ethical demands? Does Christian faith involve more than good behavior? Does God’s invitation precede our human response, or even desire for perfection? We experience in modern life that efforts toward hopeful change in society are often directed to what is not yet real. In this sense, many moral choices are more than decisions between right and wrong, however important this is, rather they are exercises of hope. Does the image of dance convey there is a ground to our hope beyond a modern theory of progress? Unlike a traditional model of efficient causality, where we measure ends and means, the attractive power of the future offers possibility, but leaves us free to assent. Ethical choice in modern living implies the freedom to consent or dissent to an opportunity that presents itself. The image of dance conveys that as lovers of God, disciples, God may be inviting us to take the next step or a new one. In contrast to the modern objection that gospel living restricts human freedom; God’s invitation activates rather than usurps it in these situations. Christian belief holds that ultimate reality is dynamic rather than static. It moves toward us as we move toward it. It searches us out even before we go

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in search of it. For Christians it is not only dynamic but has a heart, a face, and a name, Jesus Christ. Therefore, for the modern self, morality must be more than external obligation or a rule we impose on ourselves at the risk of being otherwise inconsistent (Kant). It must also be seen as a dance or a step of acceptance of an opportunity for good, a partnering with a loved one in the service of love. Scripture, tradition, and the church community tells us that Christian morality is also concrete, enmeshed in the details of daily living and the life cycle, and involved with one’s place in the global complexities of our times. The modern person must somehow navigate the tensions of initiative and obedience, autonomy and community, identity and diversity, and the generosity of helping projects along with the long suffering of uninvited and not anticipated obligation. Can we love a neighbor who now is the world, and accept a commission to be a Good Samaritan when the scale of complexity of modern living makes right and wrong difficult to discern? Where in these modern challenges do we find the room and the grace to dance? Even religious identity in modern times must rely on the internal agency of the individual’s own authority and cultural or lifestyle preferences. The uniform practice of traditional institutional or external norms is no longer enough to stabilize Christian practice. But what of the traditions of Christian practice, of worship, of communal life, or personal prayer? Does one learn to dance without the practices and disciplines that separate random movement from the institutional gestures of the ballet, the anniversary waltz, the square dance, or the samba? How does one access a life beyond the limitations of the modern secular frame and be open to and receptive of the possibilities of transcendence within modern culture? How do we understand church and community, prayer, worship, and sacramentality in a way which speaks to modern experience? It is hoped that new images can assist us to meet these questions of our new moment in Christian spirituality.

Silence Silence is a third image which can highlight the experience of Christian discipleship today. Silence has traditionally been a component of religious experience in the Christian tradition. Silence though takes on new meaning in secular society as a marker of the changed condition in which believers come to faith. Silence is a symbol of a new background, or worldview which pervades secular society which affords a different place to religious consciousness than in previous centuries. It can serve as an icon of how a previously religiously embedded Western culture now responds to the

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religious question, and underscores the changed condition of public support for religious practice especially in first world culture. Silence has always been a component of the search for religious experience. In modern times social science research has both augmented and challenged its identity and role. Silent Music: The Science of Meditation by William Johnston addresses the question of the relationship between the new science of biofeedback, brainwaves, and altered states of consciousness and the practice of silent meditation in religious traditions.33 In the 1970s, there was an interest in going beyond traditional forms of prayer or consciousness, so people turned to both science and faith to search for sources of a “depth within” human experience. Christians displayed a renewed interest in Pentecostal prayer, which emerged from experiences of deeper interior silence in community, and was different than common prayer rituals in traditional settings. There were books on mind control to help seekers enter a deeper level of mind beyond the consciousness in discursive reasoning. People searched to spiral down to silent depths, their center, as Christian spirituality focused on the individual before God, and a movement away from the institution and the communal as the only normative confirmation of spiritual experience. Some entered into meditation with no religion at all and approached silence simply as a way to develop human potential.34 The search was not the same as that for the ultimate truth: the values and wisdom of a religious quest. Its goal was a pursuit of something deeper than quotidian experience—for some a desire for inner peace or even cure a headache. Johnston did not see an impasse between these two approaches to the fruits of silence; both were striving for a way to attend to reality more deeply. He asserted that what makes meditation religious or nonreligious is one’s sense of values and one’s motivations. He believed that people who search for truth sooner or later will confront ultimate questions of life, death, faith, and the absolute. Even though these new powers could be used for good or evil, religions are called to give values and motivation to this effort. Religion in this sense has to give guidance about what is important in life and the goals toward which increased human potential should be directed.35 Meditation, without religion, will not do this, and the science which measures it will remain at the level of science alone. It cannot capture the encounter with mystery which is involved in the religious posture, nor the dimension of faith and charity and ultimate concern linked to religious experience.36 Johnston William Johnston, Silent Music: The Science of Meditation (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). 34 Ibid., 18. 35 Ibid., 20. 36 Ibid., 49. 33

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did not see development of human potential and faith formation as opposites. Whatever develops human potential should also develop Christian faith, provided the faith is alive and nourished by scripture and worship. If human potential is enhanced, then the totality of one’s commitment to Christ can also be deepened. Profound silence is a movement beyond thought, concepts, images, and reasoning which leads one to a deeper state of consciousness. The turning off the exterior sense turns on powers in men and women of which most people are unaware. The tradition of the Judeo-Christian faith community is silence does not take someone out of the world, rather into it. The Word awakens one.37 For Christians, encounter in silence with Christ is being drawn into Christ’s love, Jesus’s love for the Father, which impels one to engagement not withdrawal.

Silence and the Secular Silence takes on another identity in depicting the spiritual life today—silence can be a symbol of the secular in relationship to religion. In A Secular Age, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor reminds us that the “background” for modern life has changed. Background refers to the context of our lives, the beliefs, and outlooks which we take for granted and seldom even formulate into clear terms.38 As a cluster of ideas or worldview, background is unconscious. Yet it forms the framework by which we interpret our experience, frame the conditions of experience, and answer the spiritual and moral questions of our lives. Taylor argues that today this background is marked by the experience of the secular. In contrast to people who lived five hundred years ago, we come to belief or assume a posture of unbelief using a new set of conditions marked by secularity. Taylor offers three indicators of secularity in modern experience. One, we live in societies where public space is emptied of the mention of God. Two, we notice around us the falling off of religious belief. Most importantly, three, the conditions of coming to belief have drastically changed. In contrast to a former age when it was difficult not to believe in God, we come to belief in a climate where belief in God in one option among others to explain the integrity of life. While there have always been rival theories to the existence of God and the meaning of life, modern living brings us side by side with

John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love: With His Letters, Poems and Minor Writings, trans. David Lewis (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007), stan. IV, 8, at 123. 38 Taylor, A Secular Age, 9. 37

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people who have very different interpretations of the same life. That which brings meaning to the life of a believer is silent in their lives. At the same time, the modernization of society assumes a separation of what is of public interest, such as the political activity of citizens and the private sphere of personal interest. In this sphere religion is considered to be a private interest, and adherence to it is seen as one option among many. The decline and eventual elimination of religion is imagined as a type of subtraction theory in societal life, as modernization increases, religion decreases. Some see the decline of religion as a result of lack of interest; others attribute it to the discovery of something better to perform its functions. Consequently, religion does not perform, or is actually forbidden to play, a role in the formation of public opinion in the public sphere.39 Religion should remain silent, it is argued, in matters of public discourse.40 The secular stands in contrast to the religious setting of earlier societies, where religion was everywhere, interwoven with everything else and in no sense construed as a separate sphere of its own. The shift to secularity involves a move from a society in which belief in God is unchallenged and in most cases unproblematic to one in which it is considered as one option among others, and not the easiest option to follow. In other words, we have moved in our conditions of belief from a situation in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for a strong believer, is one human possibility among others. Silence, once considered only a path to the spiritual life, today is a challenge to its existence. It is not necessary to agree with the theory of secularization, that as modernization progresses, religion must decrease. However a closer examination of the conditions of modern belief confirms that silence is an element of spiritual experience in a manner uncharacteristic of former times. Throughout this inquiry we will explore how “dancing to silent music” captures new elements of the experience of discipleship today, as well as grounds Christian belief in a long tradition of attentive listening as well as faithful response to the “music” of God in human life.

Anthony J. Carroll, S.J., Weber, Secularization, and Protestantism (Scranton and London: The University of Scranton Press, 2007), 1–81. 40 Stephen L. Carter, A Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (New York: Anchor Books, 1994). 39

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The Human Partner The Steps of Modernity

A common perception of the secular world is it is simply the world of traditional values, the world we know, minus God. But for Charles Taylor, it is not that simple; the secular world is an entirely different world.1 The idea that the only thing different about our world is the absence of religion is reinforced by a widespread cultural belief, the secularization theory. This “narrative” explains the absence of religion in secular society by claiming that science has replaced it as the central organizing factor of modernity. The fact there has been a shift in the role of religion in society, however explained, is joined by a new imagination of how people perceive their life goals and measure the significance of their efforts. Both contribute to a very different view of the world. Taylor argues that coming to faith is not a matter of the age-old struggle between belief and disbelief nor are problems the same as those faced by St. Paul where people followed many gods. It is more common today to observe that people are not necessarily bothered by questions of the divine. Even the more contemporary discussions between religion and secularism or belief and reason are not the clear bookends which frame modern experience. The tension between the secular and the religious is experienced more subtly as a mutual dance of displacement and decentering. Unbelievers find themselves tempted by belief while believers believe while doubting.2 Christian discipleship is lived out as presence in this cross-pressured space. Modern believers experience tension—a malaise of missing a public sense of the transcendent God, and the underlying vision of purpose that cultural reinforcement of belief provides. At the same time they are attracted to Christian commitment in face of rival stories of the meaning of life and the world, and the contestability that religion is worth the effort. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 2–3, esp. 3. 2 James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 1–25. 1

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William James, even though he lived in the nineteenth century, captures the modern dilemma of Christian identity. In Varieties of Religious Experience James pinpoints this current religious state of modernity as, what it feels like to stand in the open space of modern life and feel the winds pulling you now here, now there.3 There is a shift in plausibility structures that characterize our age, which even religious devotion alone cannot undo. For this reason, Taylor addresses the role these plausibility structures have in framing the context of both modern belief and unbelief. As the early monks in the transitions of the Roman Empire wandered in the desert looking for signs, believers now seek new modes of being which are emerging out of or through the crosspressured situation in which they live. In the following we will briefly map the terrain of this search as seen in Taylor’s thought. We will begin by examining the secularization theory in more detail, as well as Taylor’s counterargument to its adequacy. Following that, we will look mainlines of the picture which he provides of the modern self, its evolution, and its dilemmas. The modern age is fraught with both greatness and dangers.4 Modern accounts of life have benefits for humankind as well as “thinness” and lacunae that contribute to the cross pressures experienced today. This situation is reflected in the vague rumblings in our experience for which we lack words. Taylor’s argument is complex. We will examine three of its core tenets. Coming to faith is not the same as it was 500 years ago; secular society is the context of both the believer and the unbeliever, and, the modern self has been shaped by developments which must be taken into account in the expression of modern religiosity. It is hoped this inquiry into Taylor’s thought will give us a feel for the secular in contemporary experience.

The Secularization Narrative The secularization theory seeks to explain how modern society emerged, and why our age is different religiously than 500 years ago.5 Numerous factors contributed to the new situation of “modernity”: rise of new scientific methods, political and legal changes brought about through the seventeenth-century wars of religion, the invention of new forms of political Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002), as cited in Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 87. 4 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), x. 5 Anthony J. Carroll, S.J., Weber, Secularization and Protestantism (Scranton and London: The University of Scranton Press, 2007), 1–81. 3

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and economic theory, the religious and cultural changes associated with the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution. Modern society thus transitioned from feudal medieval Christendom to a modern capitalist secular society. Modernization was further impacted by functional differentiation of sectors of society that had previously been fused together in an undifferentiated whole. For example, the separation of politics into the apparatus of the state and its legitimation through various styles of democratic rule, and of the economy into a network of interacting markets based on the freedom of the individual to buy and sell, produced the capitalist societies of the modern period. There was also the separation of a public sphere of the political activity of citizens in the formation of public opinion from a private sphere of personal interest. In this sphere religion is considered to be a private interest, and adherence to it is seen as one option among many, similar to choosing one item to purchase rather than another. The decline and eventual elimination of religion is imagined, in the secularization theory, as a type of subtraction equation in societal life, as modernization increases, religion decreases. Some argue people are no longer interested in religion, others say science or something else has taken over its functions. Overall, the secularization theory sees modernization and religion in a zero sum contest; religious belief would decrease as modernity progressed.

Taylor’s Response The secularization theory has become “common sense” in society and often remains unchallenged. This narrative, however, is inadequate to explain the modern situation. For Taylor the question is not whether the world is more or less religious or whether we are living in an age of belief or an age of reason. He is concerned with the conditions of belief, or what is believable today? What plausibility structures support religion and what ones contest it? While the prior contest faced by Christianity was between paganism and the axial religions, today exclusive humanism has become a radical new option. Exclusive humanism is a type of option not offered in the same way to people in past centuries. Since the eighteenth century it has become possible to imagine a fulfilled human life without religion, and a sense of completion or fullness within the boundaries of a type of human perfection which can be reached in the “natural” passage from birth to death. We need not go beyond the boundaries of this life to reach fulfillment, nor do we need the love of God which takes us beyond human perfection through its power. There is no higher good beyond human flourishing.

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Social Imaginaries Exclusive humanism is a new social imaginary. A social imaginary is different from an intellectual system or framework of belief. It is the way ordinary people imagine their social surroundings. A social imaginary is not a theory; according to Taylor, “I am thinking rather of the ways in which they imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectation which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie these expectations.”6 While an imaginary is carried in a culture through stories, images, legends, etc., the theory behind it is often the possession of a small minority. Yet, it is shared by large groups of people and can form a common understanding behind social practices giving them legitimacy. Taylor places exclusive humanism within modernity as a social imaginary in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing in this life becomes conceivable for masses of people. It becomes the way they imagine their future. It is not the only factor which contests a Christian vision of life but it forms a crucial link with what Taylor means by secularity.7 The secular is not a neutral, rational, a-religious world left over after we have thrown off religion. Rather it produces exclusive humanism as a new option, a way to construct meaning and significance without any reference to the divine or transcendence.8

Definition of the Secular The secular stands in contrast to the religious setting of earlier societies where religion was everywhere, interwoven with everything else and in no sense construed as a separate sphere of its own. Three characteristics express the secularity of modern society. First, out public spaces are emptied of God, or of any reference to ultimate reality. When we function economically or within the sphere of politics or education, we act on standards, not from religion, but from the “rationality” or principles which are embodied in each of these disciplines. Second, secularity refers to the falling off of religious belief and practice. People no longer go to church, or it seems that way. The third concerns changed conditions of belief. The shift to secularity involves a move from a society in which belief in God is unchallenged and in most cases unproblematic to one in which it is considered as one option among others, and not the easiest to follow. Thus, we have moved in or conditions of belief Taylor, The Secular Age, 171. Ibid., 19–20. 8 Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 26. 6 7

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from a situation in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for a strong believer, is one human possibility among others: “Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.”9 Secularity in the third sense as the new conditions of belief puts an end to the naive acknowledgment of the transcendent, or of goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing. This loss of naivete is true for both the believer and the unbeliever. Taylor finds the secularization theory inadequate on two accounts. First it assumes there is just one modernity, whereas our awareness of globalization indicates there are “multiple modernities,” where people have developed under different demands, aspirations, and cultural systems. Second, the subtraction approach to modern life explains modernity in general and secularity in particular in a narrative “where human beings have lost, or ridden themselves from earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge. This implies what resulted from this process were aspects of human nature which were there all along, and were impeded by what is now set aside.”10 On the contrary, Taylor argues that Western modernity and secularity arise from new inventions, newly constructed selfunderstandings and practices, and cannot be explained in terms of perennial features of human life.

Modern Identity Modern identity exists in a collage of images of what it means to be a human agent. Its main elements are a sense of inwardness, freedom, individuality, and being embedded in nature. All are assumed aspects of life in the modern West. Modern identity is not a singular creation. It developed out of earlier pictures of human identity, yet its genesis stems from new modes of thought as well as complex historical processes. Modern inwardness involves a sense of ourselves as beings with inner depths and a sense of “self ” as a center. Affirmation of freedom and individuality is understood within the wider context of affirmation of ordinary life and rejection of hierarchies developed in Reformation and early modern period. An expressivist sense of nature is focused not simply in the facticity of biological life but as an inner moral source. These individual characteristics of the modern self developed in response to a search for the “good” or a moral vision. There is a strong link

Taylor, The Secular Age, 2–3, esp. 3. Ibid., 22.

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for Taylor between identity and pursuit of what is good, between the self and morals.11 While the modern age is not without moral imperatives, they are in conflict with modes of modern living. Moral aspirations of the modern age of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of the ordinary life evoke a demand for universal justice, equality, self-rule, and beneficence that carry a sense of moral obligation which is almost unprecedented in human history. They put a high priority on the avoidance of death and suffering, and ending suffering in society. Even though there is a general agreement on these standards, there are profound rifts when it comes to the constitutive goods, the moral sources, which underpin them. For instance, benevolence for one’s family or circle of intimates is understandable, but universal benevolence? Why would someone reach out to this demand, especially out of a vision of an exclusive humanism—where this life is all there is? In history, the type of moral stretch which represents seeking universal justice or benevolence was upheld generally in the West through a transcendent vision of agape, God’s universal love for all. Secular thinking today would not uniformly support this vision. Taylor asserts that to understand both the greatness and messiness of our society we must cut through major periods of time to retrieve the progression of understandings of human life inherited by the modern age. In turn, we need to recognize the questions which these understandings leave unanswered. There is no “pure” path in the story of “how we got here.” There is no person alive who is solely of one viewpoint or another, formed merely by one influence in pure form. It is more realistic to hold that the views of moderns are hybrids. They reflect major intellectual periods as well as reactions to them. Rival outlooks go on influencing and shaping each other and to some extent this forms some of the tension inherent in modern living. The pluralism of thought, as well as contradictions within a school of thought, become a source of crosspressures in modern life where the standards which are demanded of the modern person lack a conceptual support which can bear their requirements. Conflicting resolutions of the tensions confront us. They cause, as James recounted, the feeling of the winds pulling you now here, now there. Different periods of thought offered a distinctive approach to the nature of the “good.” We began with the original theistic grounding for moral standards, moved onto a naturalism of disengaged reason, and finally to the protest of Romanticism and what followed, which linked moral and spiritual sources to the creative imagination. A sidebar to these intellectual trends was a modernization process which brought great benefits but also appeared Taylor, Sources of the Self, Preface, ix–x.

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to narrow and impoverish our lives creating a fragmented, instrumentalist society which arose from these changes.12 All have bearing on the formation of modern identity. For us who are considering the challenges of modern Christian spirituality, a way forward is to revisit Taylor’s map and ask what it suggests about Christian discipleship today.

Steps to Modernity: The Great Chain of Being In contrast to past centuries, modern people live in what is called an immanent frame, life without a transcendent reality. Instead of an enchanted world of the premodern period, one connected to a world beyond this one, moderns live in a state of disenchantment. The enchanted world was filled with spirits and moral forces, ones which impinge on human beings.13 The boundary between the self and these forces was porous. The person was vulnerable to forces beyond the self which had power to wreck good or will. Superstition associated these forces with “magic” while religion linked them to the transcendent. However, in modern times, a new “buffered self ” replaced the porous self of days ago, and a new experience of life became possible. An enchanted world finds meaning in the cosmos. A more formal theory of an enchanted period is that the world is comprised of a great Chain of Being. As an explanation of how the world works, being itself exists on several levels, while the cosmos manifests a hierarchy, and order. The same superiority of dignity and rule that the soul manifests over the body reappears in the state in the preeminence of the king, in the animal realm in that of the lion. These features “correspond” to each other in the different domains. The whole is bound together by relations of hierarchical complementarity, which should be reproduced in a well-ordered state.14 In the enchanted world, charged things have a causal power which matches their incorporated meaning. They hold power over a porous self. These spirits can be good or bad. One can pray to a saint for a favor and they can decide to grant it. There are objects in the enchanted world like the Host, or blessed candles, which deserve respect, not because I think so, but because they do. The chain of being provides a hermeneutical key to understanding the real.15 Ibid., 490–9. Charles Taylor, “Disenchantment-Re-enchantment,” in Dilemmas and Connection: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 287–302. 14 Ibid., 291. 15 Taylor, The Secular Age, 161. 12 13

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In this enchanted world, the cosmos functions as a sign which points beyond itself, to what is more than nature. It testifies to divine purpose and action. Its order and design points to the creator, and an order and purpose for all created.16 What things mean are independent of human perception or attribution. Society itself is understood as grounded in a higher reality, earthly kingdoms are grounded in a heavenly kingdom as St. Augustine states in City of God. Individual actions have meaning in light of the order which unites human action, community, and the cosmos. This framework offers a vision of what is higher and lower, more important from less important, distinguishing the honorable from the less worthy. The social bond is enchanted, as the social good is a collective good, dependent upon the social rituals of the community. Commonweal is bound up in collective rights, devotions, and allegiances; disbelief has communal consequences. By the time of the Middle Ages society was imagined as a type of equilibrium based on hierarchical complementarity. The famous formula, the clergy pray for all, the lords defend all, the peasants labor for all, reflects the idea that society is organized in complementary functions, even those of unequal dignity.17 In the transition to modern times, modern notions of universal respect rose above these views of a hierarchical society.18

Age of Disengaged Reason While larger cosmic and social horizons of actions offer meaning to the world and activities of social life, they also restrict. A certain disenchantment of the world grew simultaneously with the rise of the primacy of instrumental reason: the type of thought and action that identifies problems and works toward their solution. Focus shifts from attention to the purpose of life and the ends of our actions by an order beyond us, to the belief that human meanings are simply projected, arbitrarily conferred by humans. The primacy of instrumental reason is a foundation of an “immanent frame,” or the absence of another world of meaning which gives significance to the present. Meaning rests in the “mind” not in reality outside the individual. For moderns, the only locus of thoughts, feelings, and spiritual energy or enthusiasm is in the mind. The only minds in the cosmos are human, and thoughts and feelings are “within” them. The meaning or significance found in things rests not in them, but in the individual mind. The difference, Taylor claims, between the mind-centered view and the enchanted world is now Ibid., 25. Ibid., 45. 18 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 65. 16 17

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meanings are “in the mind” and things only have meaning if they awaken a certain response in us. In the enchanted world the person was porous to meanings outside the self, in the modern world; the person is “buffered” from these influences. In the enchanted world, the line between personal agency and impersonal force is not that clearly drawn. In a world of buffered selves and “minds” there is an absence of boundaries, as there is no need of them. In a buffered world, meaning comes into the world as it impinges on us and we react and give it meaning. An event is registered as euphoric or depressive. In an enchanted world, the meaning already exists outside of us, prior to contact; it can take us over—we can fall into its field of force. It comes to us from the outside. In the modern social imaginary, the self is insulated in an interior “mind” and is no longer vulnerable to the transcendent or the demonic. Humans live in a self-sufficient immanent order with a buffered identity. This is the world of disenchantment.19 This move to an age of disengaged reason is a critical link in the creation of modern identity. Disengaged reason and disenchantment are central forces in the transition to a world of exclusive humanism—the three form a triad in its definition. First, the individual is the locus of meaning, not the created order or the transcendent. This “turn” to the individual, who gives themselves meaning rather than receive from a broader order, opens the way to disengagement from cosmos and God. The result is disenchantment. This shift makes exclusive humanism a possibility. Second, the turn to disengaged reason evokes a disenchantment which replaces the porous self with a buffered one. It becomes possible to imagine meaning and significance within the universe itself, as an autonomous, independent meaning that is detached from any sort of transcendent dependence. Third, disbelief no longer has social consequence since communal identity and welfare no longer rests on maintaining relationship with God. God does not give meaning to life nor insures the victory of good over evil. Lack of orthodoxy no longer threatens the commonweal.20 During the Reformation and Renaissance the turn to disengaged reason bled into the practice of Christianity. People still believed in God, even within a climate of disengaged reason. The Reformers found God’s action and grace in the Word of God rather than in objects and rituals, sacramental and material things “charged” with sacred significance. The sacred was less a concrete presence in the world. It rested more in the immateriality of preaching and hearing of scripture. See: Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), 88–9. 20 Taylor, The Secular Age, 41–54. 19

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The energy of disenchantment was both positive and negative, according to Taylor. Its negative effect was the rejection of all forms of “idolatry”; all spiritually charged realities were seen as magic, in league with the devil. Witches would be burned and statues and relics destroyed. People found it hard to distinguish between the truly spiritual-symbolic and the magical. At the same time, with the world pruned of the sacred and its limits, humans could rationalize the world, expel mystery from it, and reorder it as they saw fit. Taylor remarks, “A great energy is released to re-order affairs in secular time.”21

Nature for Itself There developed an increasing interest in nature for its own sake, not simply as a manifestation of God, but a concern manifested in science, art, and ethics. Traditionally, interest in nature was part of the Christian vision, not apart from it. Thomas Aquinas created a Christian synthesis based on Aristotle which fostered an “automatization” of nature. Things have their own nature, the forms which they strive to embody, and their own kind of perfection. While in grace they are also called to exhibit another kind of perfection, this does not cancel out their inherent natural perfection. This interest in nature was not a turn away from the transcendent; rather nature offered another way to encounter God. However, with the rise in nominalism a key shift occurred which changed the way humans approached nature. The master description of the world as one filled with natures each given their own perfection in themselves is challenged by nominalists. William of Occam argued that God cannot be limited in God’s will to determine the good for each creature. What makes something good is God wills it. If the essence of things already stipulates their good, God is not free in their regard. The good is whatever God wills; not God must will whatever is (determined by nature as) good. This approach to God’s agency was the most powerful motive to reject the “realism” of essences for Occam and his followers.22 This shift in thinking about God’s agency affected not just understanding of the world but the human agency within the world. Previously, humans saw rightful action as following patterns (essences) in the nature of things. Nominalism, however, named God as the superagent who relates to things in a freely disposed manner according to God’s autonomous purposes. What followed is humans, as dependent created agents, also were expected to relate to things not in terms of the normative patterns they reveal, but in terms of Ibid., 80. Ibid., 97.

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the autonomous super-purposes of the creator. The purposes things serve are extrinsic, not intrinsic to them. This is the stance of instrumental reason.23 Taylor argues this detachment from the ethical responsibility of normative patterns in the essences of things began in service of God’s purposes, but evolved into a broader cultural mentality in which all intrinsic purposes are expelled, final causation drops out, and efficient causation alone remains.24 There is still a belief in God as creator, yet the order of the world is no longer normative, in the sense that world exhibits normative patterns on which humans should model their lives. God no longer reveals through signs and symbols. Rather God’s purposes are shown in the ends the mechanisms which comprise the world serve. The disenchantment of the world occurs in a trade: a universe of ordered signs in which everything has meaning; is exchanged for a silent but beneficent machine. It is the charge of human beings to read the order of things. Beneficence is viewed as the path of God’s purposes. A new humanism of ordering action arises.

Next Step: Deism A belief in God who could be known through reason alone emerged in the form of Deism. For Taylor, the emergence of different forms of Deism is important to the narrative of how exclusive humanism became a live option for large numbers of people, first among elites and then more generally.25 Deists believe that God designed the world for the good of creatures. All things fit together for the good according to God’s laws. But God’s laws are not connected with any ultimate good. An ultimate good distinguishes what is good in an ultimate sense, but as not necessarily associated with any kind of this-worldly flourishing. Deists hold that God wills the good for us, but not in an other-worldly way, rather only in terms of human flourishing. These ordinary goods are ones we easily recognize: health, family, a nice house, good education, money, friends etc. God wants us to be happy, here in this life and his designs for us are exhausted by the accomplishment of our temporal well-being. Human flourishing itself is the main goal of life. God also trusts us to accomplish these goods through our reason and selfdiscipline. God put the world into motion with these laws, as a watchmaker creates a watch and then lets it run. At first glance, this view seems consistent For instance, the Enlightenment belief that humans were to dominate over nature, use nature for their purposes, is centered in this manner of thinking. 24 Ibid., 98. 25 Ibid., 221–69. 23

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with Christian hope. However, Deism holds that human beings through reason are perfectly capable of reading this design; the resources for moral growth therefore are within human nature itself. There is no need for grace. There is no supernatural source of assistance or mercy, no divine help. Rather God has already given the tools humans need to achieve their good. They only need to make use of them. For Deists there is no mystery at the foundations of life that our intellect alone cannot grasp. Everything needed for life is rationally available. Since God’s involvement with human is the ordinary, lawful functioning of the world around us, there are no miracles or synchronistic events in life, everything happens through cause and effect. In a mechanistic world picture, God does not intervene. Since a providential framework provides God’s design for humans, human beings honor God by living this moral code—the new moral order.26 It differs from the orders that preceded it because its starting point is individuals apart from a hierarchical order. They do not need this order to be fully human agents. Its members are not agents who are embedded in a society which reflects and connects with the cosmos. They are disconnected from the cosmos, and as individuals come to associate together. The design underlying their association is that each, in pursuing his or her purposes in life, acts in mutual benefits with others. Society itself is to be structured for mutual benefit, in which each respects the rights of others and which offers them mutual help of certain kinds.27 Commentators remark that the good of the modern moral order often is reduced to economic good.28 What is clear is the meaning of the good is no longer the transcendent good of premodern times, a good which is ultimate; rather the good is immanent to this life and its flourishing. A final component of Deism is there is no higher time, as it was for ancients. There is not a sense of “our time” as a lifespan, as time is mentioned in the book of Ecclesiastics, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” (3:1-8). Time is simply one’s lifespan involved in the concerns of this world. Deists did not believe that history or human beings were moving toward any further fulfillment beyond this life—history where justice, love, and peace will finally be completed by God in the end of time. End of time did not involve a time when human life itself, our ordinary human condition will be transformed into immortality. The good that God wills centers on the natural good alone. Even Eternal reward comes to be seen as just a lot more of the same and distributed so as to support and prod Ibid., 223. Charles Taylor, “Religious Moblizations,” in Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 149. 28 Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 53–4. 26 27

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the production of the natural good down here.29 A God who existed prior to the human intellect, and independent of the universe, who desires an afterlife with God’s creatures is a vision of God which acknowledges God’s transcendence. This was not the God of the Deists.

The Politics of a Polite Society The Deist gives God a function in human life, but a scaled-down version: “God remains the Creator, and hence our benefactor . . . but this Providence remains exclusively general: particular providences, and miracles, are out.”30 God plays a part in a system that generally runs without God. It is not a far stretch to imagine how a comparable inspiring power could come from the order of nature itself, without reference to the Creator. The points at which God had seemed rather indispensable to this ordering purpose were the ones which began to fade, not just in the imaginations of an elite minority but by more and more people in their spiritual outlook. For exclusive humanism to become a real option at this level, Taylor argues it had to be part of a political shift. This shift had to be practical and embodied and part of the ordinary life of people. This shift occurred not by a new theological conversation or doctrine but through the making of a “civil religion,” rooted in a “natural” religion, which can allegedly transcend denominational conflicts. Focus turned to the common project of pursuing the modern moral order, or order of mutual benefit.31 What emerges is “polite society,” a type of self-sufficient image of living together in society which has a civilizational goal that does not need the transcendent. People can find the standards of their social, moral, and political life without needing to call upon or admit any of the ways a sense of transcendence has impinged on humans in history.32 The only transcendent references allowed are those which underpin the order, and do not justify infringing on it—for instance, calling for a higher standard, checking its aggressions, or limiting its economic choices. John Paul II illustrates how the absence of a sense of the transcendent functions in a society in a manner which illustrates what Taylor is pointing to here. John Paul II remarks that failure to search for the truth of human dignity in its transcendent and permanent nature undermines the vision needed for essential political conditions in our world. Only a belief in the transcendent nature of human Taylor, Sources of the Self, 146–7. Taylor, The Secular Age, 233. 31 Ibid., 237. See Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 53–4. 32 Taylor, The Secular Age, 238–9. 29 30

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life, for instance, grounds openness in public administration, the rejection of illicit means in order to gain or increase power, respect for the rights of political adversaries and others.33 The shift to polite society as a mark of exclusive humanism is both a rejection of Christianity and is based on it. Since the ideal of polite society follows the modern moral order of mutual benefit, those who live in a disenchanted world can still experience moral fullness, without reference to God, within the range of purely intra-human powers.34 Civil religion thus is rooted in natural religion. The ultimate and the transcendent are retained but marginalized and made increasingly irrelevant. There is not a subtraction of the transcendent, rather a shrinking of it. Importance shifts to human powers and the immanent realm. Humans can make the world work, without what has been known as grace. The order of mutual benefit offers a moral goal that is experienced as an obligation but is at the same time achievable, under human steam. Civil society teaches people to be concerned with the other, be altruistic, and practice beneficence. But it rejects the Christian ideal to transcend human flourishing, to life as offering the possibility of living beyond immanence. People are to give only what is rational and natural; the rest is extravagance or “enthusiasm.”35 Christian love, and the challenge of Christian universalism, morphed into the affirmation of immanent resources for fullness and meaning, as the charter of modern unbelief.36 Polite society required objectivity, distance, and cool deliberation, which were viewed as a reason to eliminate religion in public debate.37

The Move of Radical Enlightenment and the Romantic Rebellion To view modern society simply as a situation in which religion has been subtracted from its central concerns is inadequate. Exclusive humanism evoked the need to find a weighty enough meaning to life sufficient to define the potentials of the human agent within nature itself. It was powered by the sense that certain life goods can be more integrally realized if they are related John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), no. 101:151. 34 Taylor, The Secular Age, 244–5. 35 Ibid., 247. 36 Ibid., 257. 37 Stephen Carter, The Culture of Disbelief (New York: Penguin Random House, 1994). 33

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to a nontheistic source. However, in the change brought about, more than a subtraction occurs, life goods themselves were reinterpreted.38 The alternative moral sources which define our contemporary moral situation emerged from two frontiers of exploration. The first lies within the agent’s own powers of rational order and control, together with powers of expression and articulation. The second is found in the depths of nature itself, in its order, but also nature within, in what wells up from one’s own nature, desires, sentiments, and affinities.39 The powers of human reason and will in a theistic perspective are God-made and part of God’s plan. They constitute the image of God within the human being. In exclusive humanism, however, these sources now lie within; they form the basis for an independent nontheistic morality. Nature itself is the prime moral source without its Author. While the initial conception of these sources was theistic, a mutation was possible when people believe these moral sources can only fully empower us in their nontheistic form. The dignity of the free rational agent seems genuine only free of submission to God. Taylor argues that two constellations of ideas over time have helped generate forms of unbelief. One is a sense of our powers of disengaged reason in an instrumental reading of nature. The other is our powers of creative imagination and their capacity to draw from nature an inner moral source. In his words, “These forms stand as rival, and the tension between them is one of the dominant features of modern culture.”40

Radical Enlightenment A radical unbelieving Enlightenment emerged out of Deism. These thinkers can be distinguished from their Deist predecessors by their rejection of God and providence and their uncompromising stance of disengaged reason. They saw human nature as neutral and malleable, waiting to be molded to a form that would produce universal happiness. Human beings were to be studied through the natural sciences. Human development was defined by what science indicated and reason required. The measure Enlightenment thinkers used to weigh right and wrong was neither the ancient hierarchical one of reason nor the modern one of providential design. They judged actions by their consequences. While they rejected the constitutive goods of Deism, such as the providential order, they adopted its life goods. These were three: the ideal of self-responsible reason; the belief that the Taylor, Sources of the Self, 319. Ibid., 314. 40 Ibid., 319. 38 39

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ordinary fulfillments that we seek by nature, the pursuit of happiness through production and family life have a central significance in life (because they are what we desire); and the ideal of universal and impartial benevolence.41 The thinkers of the radical Enlightenment embraced materialism and atheism not just as an ultimate way to practice self-responsible reason but also as a true response to the demand of nature. They adopted a materialist picture of human beings as driven by necessity to self-preservation and satisfaction. They criticized religion as calling on people to deny their natural impulses. Sensualism is what made Enlightenment naturalism radical, according to Taylor. Raw human desire called into account all the established systems of law, political, and particularly religion. All were questioned as their capacity to suppress the universal and natural demands of nature. It may be difficult to see how this outlook could lead one to a commitment of universal benevolence. Some held that many of the errors that reason frees us from are themselves the grounds used for restricting our efforts for the good or for inflicting suffering. Custom teaches, for instance, only to work for the good of our country; bad education can lead people to misname the good. Rational understanding therefore brings the fruit of benevolence. Benevolence as a central value was made more firm through the principle that held there was a potential harmony of interest between human beings. Taylor summarizes, “In a properly organized world, one where human happiness was best served, the felicity of each would consist with and even conduce the felicity of all.”42 This conviction did not come so much from an observation of human affairs as it did from a sense of the human moral predicament, its moral sources, and what people of this period experienced as the goodness of their own motivations. Enlightenment thinkers gave central significance to sensual pleasure and pain, which brought the relief of suffering into the center of the moral agenda. The overall story is one of progress, of the successive unchaining of reason, leading to successive discoveries of truth and the overcoming of error. However, the moral sources this narrative rested upon required the recovery of the fact that good and evil are in conflict in the human heart. Those who contested and criticized these views raised this flaw in the Enlightenment synthesis.

Romantic Protest Romantic expressivism was a protest against the Enlightenment ideal of disengaged, instrumental reason. It rejected the form of moral and social life Ibid., 322. Ibid., 330.

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which it evoked: a one-dimensional hedonism; the belief there was no goal higher than the pursuit of pleasure; and atomism, or the emerging picture of industrial life which was taking an instrumental direction. They charged the Enlightenment ideal fragments life into disconnected departments, like reason and feeling, dividing persons from nature—and from each other. The rational disengaged person is sacrificing something essential in realizing his ideals, her spontaneity or creativity, feelings, and bodily existence.43 Life’s meaning is reduced simply to the embrace of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Such thinking promotes a condition in which everyone defines his or her purposes in individual terms. Society is simply an instrument to achieve these goals, mindless of the necessity to build the cohesion necessary for a good society. Romantics found a correction for the imbalance called forth by disengaged reason in the voice of nature. Nature stands as a reservoir of good, of innocent desire or benevolence, and love of the good. Disengagement, or calculating reason, cuts people off from nature. In nature, men and women can find an inner impulse of their own natural fulfillment rests in solidarity with their fellow creatures.

Expressionism Self-expression is a necessary component in this turn to nature as a source of the good. Nature is considered a force, or the aliveness running through the world, which emerges also in one’s own inner impulses. If impulses are indispensable to one’s access to this force, then people can only know what it is by articulating what these impulses impel them to do. This is expressed by sentiment. However, if the good life is described in terms of sentiment, then departure from traditional moral codes is more close at hand than in previous frameworks. Usual restraints on sensual fulfillment can be qualified insofar as sensuality itself can be made significant and given heightened vibrancy to life, to the good life, detached from benevolence and solidarity. The distinction dissolved more easily between the aesthetic and the ethical for the Romantics.44 If access to nature is through an inner voice or impulse, then a person can only fully know this nature through articulating what he or she finds within. This is a type of “expressivism,” taking something, a vision, a sense of things, which was inchoate and only partly formed, and giving it a specific shape. The Romantics had a different approach to this type of creation. The classical Taylor, The Secular Age, 609 and Sources of the Self, 330. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 373–5.

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sense of art imitated nature, expressionism was a “making,” a bringing something to be. Fulfillment by nature means expressing the inner aliveness; the voice of impulse which makes what is hidden manifest both for oneself and for others. The manifestation in turn helps to define what is to be realized which could not be clear prior to this manifestation. Expressivism became the basis for a new and fuller individualism. It was believed that each individual is different and original, and this originating aliveness determines how he or she ought to live. It is not just a matter of copying an external model or carrying out an already determined formulation. Differences among people are not just variation on the same basic human nature, rather each one is different and original, and that originality determines how he or she ought to live. Taylor remarks, “What the voice of nature calls us to, cannot be fully known outside of and prior to our articulation/definition of it. We can only know what realizing our deep nature is when we have done it.”45 People should not hope to find models without. The old idea of a rationally evident harmony of nature gives way to a new one of a current of aliveness in nature which is both close to each person and baffles understanding. The Romantic protest marks a gradual fading of a believable notion of cosmic order, whose nature could be specified and understood independently of the realization/manifestation of the current of nature pulsing through each human life. To discover the order of life, one has to participate in it. Romanticism defines the modern subject, no longer just by the power of disengaged reason but by a new power of expressive self-articulation as well, the power of the creative imagination. This new view of the human is not without its conflicts. Human life seems to be a matter of desiring fulfillment, but, the very basis for a strong evaluation, for there being desires or goals which are intrinsically worth fulfilling, seems missing.46

The Victorians and the Age of Progress To view history as moral progress, as “going beyond” our forebears, is a Victorian idea. The moral imperative of the Enlightenment and Romantic period to reduce suffering blends the significance of the ordinary life, the ideal of universal benevolence with the notion of a free, self-determining individual. A fresh sense of progress took this to a new level. It claimed that each period lives by a higher standard than the former. The Enlightenment emphasis on rationally planned improvement was implemented by new Ibid., 376. Ibid., 383–90.

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bureaucratic structures, whose creation was defended as “progress.” They often were agents of their own injustice and suffering, as they not so much relieved a great deal of suffering, but rendered it invisible. Religious forces during the Victorian age fed the doctrine of historical exceptionalism, the belief each age ought and can lay higher demands on themselves than previous ages. The moral crusades of the period against slavery, the call for regeneration, practical charity, and an ordered social life were fueled by both religious and secular sentiments. On the one hand, participation by believers in various abolitionist movements was a defense of the unity of the human race. On the other hand, conservative viewpoints in both the Protestant and Catholic churches sanctioned social aspects of the religious impulse and held such involvement in question. Protestant Christians were critical of overinvestment in social movements, as evidence of a return to salvation by works which they rejected. Neo-Augustinian Catholics held that wholesale dedication to secular reform sits uneasily with the faith. To the degree that both views alienated people from social movements, religion itself was questioned.47 Religious impulse actually became an occasion of driving people out of religious belief.48 Later in the nineteenth century, people moved beyond the Deism characteristic of England and early America. They shifted from a condition in which belief in God in some form was virtually unchallengeable to the present predicament in which theism is one option among others, along with atheism and agnosticism. The widespread explanation of this new context of belief is that the loss of religious belief flowed as the inevitable consequence from the rise of science or the development of the modern economy. Belief either gave way before scientific rationality or fell victim to industrialization and the development of a mobile, technological society. Yet Taylor questions whether either of these explanations are sufficient conditions of the loss of religious belief. They might explain the eclipse of a “faith” that was magical, superficial, or based just on external practices to begin with. There were real challenges provided by industrial society and by science. Darwin showed how there could be a design without a Designer, which blew a gaping hole in the proof from design that there is a deity. Religion contributed to the vulnerability of the drift through biblical and doctrinal literalism, and over reliance on the miraculous. Scientism, the belief that science could enable all truths needed At the same time religious congregations, lay movements, and evangelical circles took up the mantle of social reform and contributed unparalleled services and institutions to the cultural work of universal benevolence. 48 Ibid., 400. 47

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for life, required a type of “faith” itself which drove people away, as it simply exchanged one faith for another. A new militant outlook also grew out of the old and presented itself as an alternative. Central to a new ethic of belief was the premise one ought not to believe what one has insufficient evidence for. This affirmed responsible rational freedom; the belief people should make up their own minds, and not bow to authority. It also held up the challenge of a heroism of unbelief, one has faced the stark truth, there is no there “there.”49 An ethic of this kind is akin to scientism as it requires a sharp boundary line between what one has good reason to give credence to and what goes beyond the limit. For Victorians, the turn from religion to science required a greater purity of spirit and manliness but also aligned them with the demands of human progress and welfare. There were agnostics, who in the face of the unhallowed universe, sacrificed for human betterment and welfare. Their loss of confidence in God, in their minds, made them more courageous and moral, solicitous to aid where only human aid is possible. Rousseau found that sympathy, the extent to which people become social and rational in an undistorted way, self-love morphs into conscience and moves people to benevolence. This turn to nature and its resources within, found in the inner impulse of nature, sources which are natural and spontaneous, the substitute for grace.50 People were led to abandon the faith of their fathers not because of some conflict between faith and science, but because of a moral demand they felt not to believe. For the first time, an alternative moral horizon was available for belief in God. From then on, both belief and unbelief live in tension with each other, and both are made problematic because they exist in a field of alternatives. According to Taylor, neither can benefit from the unchallenged security which religious faith enjoyed in earlier epochs. Moral sources today have to be sought, not only in God but in the two new frontiers of the modern self, the dignity which attaches to our own powers of disengaged reason and creative imagination and the depths of nature both within and without.

Postromantic Contributions By the nineteenth century nature was identified with a life energy running through things, a “spirit,” which had a parallel expression in the transformation of the individual as he or she completed and defined themselves though self-expression. Advances in natural science split the mindset of a unified sense of nature of the previous century. Nature now was considered in two Ibid., 393–405. Ibid., 410–13.

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ways: both a vast scientific universe and the inner impulse which could be felt within, with which a person is either attuned or out of alignment. The breach between the two requires people criticize an overly benign view of providential nature and the cosmos. The nature to which humans belong is vast, unfathomable, alien, and amoral. This vision of nature as not benign and harmonious showed itself in art. For Romantics, art displayed something which is highly significant yet otherwise inaccessible. Art as unspoilt nature or human emotion displayed some greater spiritual reality or significance shining through it. After the Romantic period, the work itself was the expression, even if it portrays nothing at all or it is hard to identify just what it is saying. Taylor asserts that art became detached from the beyond, yet it retained an epiphanic quality. The work refers not to something beyond it; the work itself is utterly selfcontained and self-sufficient. The image is a concrete manifestation, it is not meant to be understood as discourse about something. Art in this sense could take the place of religion. However, there was a problem with the ambiguous relationship of morality to the wholeness and the intensity which art promises. In the eighteenth century the essence of morality is where justice and benevolence and the control of the desires by reason are constituted. The beautiful was defined in terms of a certain kind of feeling or subjective reason. The nineteenth-century movement is beauty itself offers a higher goal. The beautiful is defined in terms of a certain kind of pleasure. While in some versions, the harmonized, free being who plays would spontaneously want to be good in the accepted senses. Other perspectives find this higher fulfillment can take one outside the received morality, and even repudiate it. There is an independence of the beautiful relative to the good. The shift in art has implications for understanding the modern self and the creative imagination as an indispensable locus on moral sources. In the nineteenth century creative imagination is not mimetic, imitating order in nature, and expressive. The revelatory power of the symbol depends on a break with ordinary discourse. There remains a spiritual order of correspondence, but it is only accessed through creative imagination, where right and wrong have no place. The moral or spiritual order of things must come to the individual indexed to a personal vision. The detachment of the spiritual order form the order of nature explored in natural science is compensated for and complemented by a new type of creative imagination. Now a certain subjectivism is inseparable from modern epiphanies. People seek the key to the order of things with and in a personal vision, open to self-absorption. Since a new naturalism involves a rejection of a hierarchy of subjects in art, ordinary people take the place of historical or sacred personages. An affirmation of raw nature affirms that basic desire does not

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hold us back from spiritual ascent; rather it is to be embraced and rejoiced in. The source of grace in the new vision is nature within.51 Paradoxically, the stark rejection of any spiritual dimension of nature or of humankind calls into question the basis of the goodness of being, how do we know it is good? Taylor indicates that a rejection of any spiritual dimension to life stirred the feeling that affirmation of the goodness of being is insufficiently based. It was now possible that the world being good was no longer a “given.”52 If the spiritual does not ground the goodness of the world, what does? Taylor argues that key to recovery from this crisis may consist in the ability of people our being able to “see that it is good” in a new way.

The Turn of Modernists This drift from the locus of the good continued in the twentieth century. It evoked a particular form of a turn to interiority, different from the Romantics.53 Thinkers in the early twentieth century wrestled with a question which is still posed today: What is the place of the Good, or the True or the Beautiful, in a world entirely determined mechanistically? Modernists shared with the Romantics an antipathy to their received world. The world seems just a mechanism, controlled by instrumental reason, and having a shallow and debased appearance. By the twentieth century, creations of instrumental reason appeared to create a world dominated by technology, standardization, mass society, vulgarization, and the erosion of community. Romantics saw the real world of nature and undistorted human feeling as the ballast which would restore the balance upset by the mechanistic world. But by the early twentieth century, this recourse was no longer as tenable for many reasons. The industrial society grew at such a rate that contact with nature was marginalized. The living close to the earth of an agricultural period was over. Mechanization which could deal with masses of people was impersonal and overpowering. Nature itself seemed like an amoral power to be controlled than a tutorial in meaning. Family life became a “haven in a heartless world,” a refuge of warm sentiment for the Romantics.54 Modernists found in a growing economy the haven created by the wheels of industry, and the means for a rich and satisfying private life. Modernists turned to interiority as a way to face what appeared to be the deterministic 53 54 51 52

Ibid., 414–46. Ibid., 448. Ibid., 456–93. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1995).

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mechanization of the world, a feeling that nothing can exist outside the ebb and flow of cause and effects, and the power of necessity. The Romantic epiphany of nature could not penetrate the claim that even sensations and feelings were controlled by exceptionless laws. Key to liberation from what the sociologist Max Weber called the “iron cage” of the industrialized world was interiority. The lived world, the world as experienced and known, the world of our creative activity—our lens on the nature of the world—was our only recourse. This was the way to reject the hegemony of disengaged reason and mechanism. While the Romantics turned to nature and feeling, moderns sought a retrieval of experience or interiority. Both Romantics and Modernists held that the spiritual reality which emanated in the world which surrounds us was also within. There is a bond between the spirit of nature and the human soul. The spirit is also at work in us. However, the modernists drifted from this sense of inner harmony with nature and the traditional idea of the unitary self. The turn to experience was no longer understood as contact with the alignment of nature and reason, or instinct and creative power. The turn could take one beyond the self as usually understood, to a fragmented experience which calls ordinary notions of identity into question, to a new unity, a new way of being. The key was to open ourselves to a flux which moves beyond the scope of control or integration.

Postmodern Postmodernism followed with a retrieval of experience which breaches a received sense of identity and time, and calls for a reordering of an unfamiliar kind. The center of gravity which is “epiphanic” is displaced from the “self ” to a flow of experience, to new forms of unity, even to new language—forming a type of structure. The self is decentered. This reflected in modern poetry which is no long descriptive. Images do not have a central referent. Instead images are juxtaposed. The epiphany comes from between the words or images, the force field they create, not from a central referent. In contrast to the ancients who found what is deep, and timeless in a world of external forms, modernists find this in an “inwardness” of experience, which, if one goes deep enough, will lead to an encounter with the mythic, the archetypical, and the luminous. Access to this source can only be within the personal. In this sense, modernists and romantics both look inward, but modernist consciousness is multileveled. People enter this awareness through the personal, but what is transpersonal is revealed as another rhythm which cannot be reduced just to the subjective. The epiphanic is genuinely mysterious, and possibly contains the key to what it is to be human. Even the

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capacity of modern poetry to capture the most degraded and debased reality involves a process by which it can be confronted, and borne by the human spirit. Struggling for a language of horror and destruction can be part of a fight for spiritual renewal. To “grasp this world in language and do justice to it,” as Herbert puts it, reflects spiritual possibilities today. Modernist sought to recover contact with the moral and spiritual sources through the exercise of the creative imagination. These sources may be divine, or in the world, or in the power of the self. All this is done in face of the critique that our modern fragmented, instrumentalist society has narrowed and impoverished our lives. Modern works often resist understanding in subjectivist fashion, as mere expressions of feeling or as ways of ordering the emotions. Taylor argues, however, that modernists did more than move the harmonious pattern, once an external order of metaphysics, to a symbolic ordering of our inner selves. Something has changed since the era of the Great Chain of Being and the publicly established order of references. Metaphysics or theology comes indexed to a personal vision, or refracted through a particular sensibility. There is a interweaving of the subjective and the transcendent. Beliefs today are more the transcendent data we rely on to act, our tacit background of objects of reliance. They can no longer be nuggets of transcendent truth that can be detached from those who live them. While at times life demands the clear statement and articulation of the creed, it is the Body of Christ who lives it and who carries its meaning in the modern world. The question which vexed the modernists, what is the place of the good in a world determined by mechanization, must be answered by Christians in a new way through the power of their creative imagination.

The Conflicts of Modernity Taylor’s narrative of the forces which contribute to the formation of modern identity offers much insight into our current situation but also unveils areas of tension and possible breakdown in modern life. He questions whether the denial of transcendence can put in danger the most valuable gains of modernity, such as the primacy of rights and the affirmation of life.55 Can the approaches offered measure up to the challenges they purport to meet? Where are we now? Taylor offers three coordinates of opposing dilemmas which mark this new point in the journey.56 The first has to do with modern Charles Taylor, “A Catholic Modernity,” in Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 167–87, at 181. 56 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 495–521. 55

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moral standards. Moderns affirm universal human rights—to life, freedom, citizenship, and self-realization. These are not dependent on things like gender, cultural belonging, civilizational development, or religious allegiance, things which always limited them in the past. Moderns as well are committed to justice and benevolence, the alleviation of human suffering in all its forms. The modern moral order is one of working in society for mutual benefit. However, underneath the agreement on moral standards is uncertainty and division regarding the moral sources which constitute them. While there is agreement that the modern moral order should organize society for mutual benefit, he questions whether there is no further obligation to “higher” or eternal norms. What prevents the moral from being reduced to the economic? What checks the notion of mutual benefit from being skewed to a privileged few? The second concerns flows from conflicts over disengaged instrumentalism and Romantic and Modernist protests against it. All protested that an instrumental society with a utilitarian value outlook creates a commercial, capitalist, bureaucratic mode of living which empties life of its richness, depth, or meaning. The eclipse of deeper meanings is linked to the loss of substance of our contemporary man-made world. Moderns have the tendency to set aside solid lasting and often expressive objects of the past for quick, technologically engaging and distracting commodities of today. The more ephemeral quality of modern objects raises doubts about what grounds human living. Hannah Arendt puts it this way, “The reality and reliability of the human world rest primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent than the activity by which they are produced.”57 Along with this the individual has been taken out of a rich community life and now entered instead into a series of changing, revocable associations, often designed for specific ends. Public life is impacted by this climate. Civic ideals have to face an instrumental society which isolates individuals from one another, each in pursuit of personal goals. While based on freedom, this isolated lifestyle saps the will to maintain this freedom and undermines the community needed for self-rule on which freedom crucially depends. The stress on creative imagination, epiphany, and the realities Romantics and Modernists saw were “cures” to this situation both add to the uncertainty and division regarding moral sources and the possibility of the overcoming of the effects of these modernizing phenomenon. How can we have both: the greatest degree of philanthropic action with the minimum hope in humankind itself? Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Edition, 1959), 83: as quoted by Taylor, Sources of the Self, 501.

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The third area of concern addresses the possibility of human fulfillment. Beyond the question about the sources of our moral standards, and the one which opposes disengaged instrumentalism to a richer fulfillment, there is the question whether these moral standards are not incompatible with that fulfillment; whether morality does not exact a high price from people in terms of wholeness. While public morality tells moderns they are to be concerned for the life and well-being of all human beings on the face of the earth, they are to further social justice among peoples; they are to subscribe to universal standards of human rights. Taylor asks, how do we respond to these demands? Feeling inadequate, bad, guilty for not being able to meet them? We may get a “high” if in some project we feel for the moment we met a need, the sense of self-worth which comes from this. Or perhaps we are happy to be freed from the persistent feeling of being overwhelmed and having failed. But it is quite a different thing to be moved by a strong sense that human beings are worth helping or treating with justice, a sense of their dignity or value. This is a coming in contact with the moral sources which originally underpin these standards. The original Christian source is agape, the love God has for humans which is connected with their goodness as creatures. Following this love is at the heart of discipleship. How do we do so given the change in plausibility structures which Taylor has gone to lengths to describe? Christians believe they participate through grace in this love, and by doing so, hope to see good in others and in common efforts to do good because of this first love God has for them and the world. Christians find themselves doing good, hoping for good, and dancing in this world, while at the same time asking where is the music coming from and why doesn’t everyone hear it? Is there really a Music Maker? How does faith in the cross-pressures of our times make a difference?

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The Step of Faith Searching for the Face of God in Modern Life

Evelyn Underhill (1873–1941), poet and mystic, affirms that all human beings have an upper floor, a capacity for God. Our ground floor, how we are biologically conditioned, is also created by God. However, to see beyond the limits of fleeting urges and changing moods, we need to meet the “I” inside, who hungers to be in communion with a spiritual universe. Our own eternal spark which will last forever is met in its everlasting quality in every moment of our freedom, as our “I” holds the world at an arm’s length and decides to be. In her book Mysticism (1911), she defines mysticism as a search in our everyday world, not as an exceptional human experience limited to a few, or a rejection of our humanity. Rather mysticism is the art of union with Reality and the mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or lesser degree—or who aims at and believes in such an attainment. Including both saints and stumbling seekers, each person is called to participate in the spiritual life, and to know the art of union with Reality with our fellow seekers. Spirituality is not opposed to religion but at its heart, and therefore of vital concern to our daily lives. It is at the core of our lifelong search for something behind and beyond the fractious, conflicting life of desire.1

The Dance of Faith and Creative Imagination Erik Erikson acknowledges that we need faith to grow and develop as persons. Human faith is the capacity to go out of self in love rather than into self in egotism.2 Coming to religious faith is an acknowledgment of God’s goodness and God’s involvement in human life. The Christian basis of the goodness of being lies in creation. The goodness of the world is not something quite John Kirvan, Grace through Simplicity: The Practical Spirituality of Evelyn Underhill (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2004), 10, 23–44. 2 Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1963 [1950]). 1

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independent from God’s seeing it as good. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God’s seeing it as good, loving it, is response to not only what it is but what makes it such (Gen. 1:12). Human beings can find a mirror for their own lives in God seeing things as good: a seeing which also helps effects what it sees. However, to embrace that the world is good requires a change in our view toward the world, a movement from skepticism or fear. Such change of vision requires grace. Grace is not a thing, nor just extra energy; it is a relationship. To have a relationship with God or with another human being, a person must be open or have a desire for it. Love for Augustine precedes knowledge, when we love another, we see them differently. With love, things become evident which are otherwise hidden. Religious faith, a relationship with God, involves knowing, loving, and expression of the relationship in service. This triad of head and heart and desire brings a difference in life. Coming to faith today is different than in the past. Taylor points to a sense of the place and power of the creative imagination in coming to faith for the modern believer. Today people are not just passive before God, there is a way people can perceive they “cooperate” with God. In modern times human creative imagination is now part of the good of things. We can recognize that the transformation which occurs in us as we acknowledge goodness in life actually helps to bring about the truth it reveals.3 Believers who see themselves as dependent on God for this transformation as well as nonbelievers who reject this dependence, both share openness to transcendence; however, they participate in it in different ways. Kierkegaard sheds light on the difference between belief and unbelief, when humans turn to embrace what is good. He calls this the difference between aesthetics and ethics. Instead of just an aesthetic transformation, moving from one finite thing to another, embracing the good found in life, the ethical draws the person deeper. The person attains a higher accomplishment by choosing themselves in the light of infinity. In making an ethical choice, a person chooses two things. First he chooses what kind of person he wants to be, oriented toward what is good, or the contrary; what is convenient or self-serving; and then she expresses this primary choice in a specific action. In making a concrete choice of the good, the ethical man or woman chooses themselves. The choice is infinite, it is not for the sake of any finite thing, but on the contrary, all finite things get their value and significance from this choice. All things in one’s life may be the same, but if they are chosen in light of the infinite, they are no longer absolutes, as what defines one’s final goal; they are simply relative to a wider life project. On the surface, it may be that Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 449.

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the detail of one’s life does not change. However, why the person chooses what they do changes. They now live for the infinite. This change is purely inward, it is a change which transforms a merely outward life and gives it inwardness. This choosing of ourselves, placing ourselves in the infinite, lifts us out of despair and allows us to affirm ourselves. The aesthetic man or woman faces dread because he is at the mercy of external things, the ups and downs of life, yet internally she can sense she is meant for something higher. In choosing oneself, a person becomes who they really are, one’s true self, with an infinite dimension. The Christian tradition holds that the Spirit of God dwells within each human person. In making an ethical choice in light of this truth, the person becomes in touch with this reality. And through this, an individual senses themselves as worthy to be loved and chosen, as they too are connected to the Center of goodness in life. Through choice the person attains self-love and self-affirmation. They do this, not needing a world of perfection. What will transform them is an ability to love the world and themselves, to see it as good in spite of the wrong. We do not leave the world to love God; we accept responsibility for its good and evil. Seeing the good empowers, and becomes a moral source. While a sense of modern dignity is one that is disengaged, free, and reasoning, Taylor points to the potential of human creative imagination as a power of epiphany and transfiguration. Taylor suggests this power of affirming the goodness in the world and in oneself and others can help realize the good by recognizing it.4 The possibility of this dance of faith in secular society, however, is contested today. While the mystic and poet can approach religion and union with God with simplicity of approach, those who study the function of religion in modern society offer various explanations for both the search and role of religious identity in our times.

The Search in the Modern World The search for the face of God in modern times is not simply the same as the past. In contrast to the human encounter with God as a “journey” in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the image of pilgrimage does not always fit a modern view of life. As moderns, our “shrines” shift from day to day, and a built in obsolescence is planned into our creations. A sensible person might question setting a destination at the Ibid., 447–55.

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beginning of life’s journey, as Bunyan’s character Christian, and then measure progress by the shrinking distance to the goal. It is likely that the image of a pilgrim is not an icon of modern life anymore. Bauman suggests vagabonds and tourists are the ones who seem to “catch” the chances our times offer and the ambushes they hold. However, are they good models of discipleship? A vagabond, for instance, does not know how long he will stay where he is now. Rather he will read the signs and will make a stop over here and there. What he does know is the stopover will just be temporary. What keeps him on the move? He is propelled by a tension between disillusionment with the last place and hope that the next place he has not yet visited will be free of the faults which drove him from what he has already come to know.5 In a free space, the vagabond structures the space he passes through, as well as dismantles it as he leaves. He is pushed forward by hope untested and pushed from behind by hope frustrated. Each structuring is episodic, temporary, and untethered to any broader vision. The tourist shares with the vagabond the knowledge she will not stay for long at the place in which she has arrived. Nothing structures the importance of the places she visits. Nothing beyond “her time” links together the order or pattern of her journey. Her curiosity, sense of artistic interest, desire for novelty, amusement, or pleasure “structures” the tourist’s world. She does not live with the uncertainties of the vagabond, or his need to survive. According to Bauman, the tourist pays for her freedom. She can pass through a country, observe yet also disregard its native concerns or needs. Instead of taking in the meanings of the people, she can construct her own understandings of the situation, be independent of it, and quit a world which does not fit into her wishes. She can sample exotic food, observe someone else’s daily routines, and take pictures. Bauman finds the reusable videotape a good symbol for this lifestyle, as it can be used and erased for the next adventure. While not all travel fits into Bauman’s image of a tourist, nor the need to move from place to place, the life of a vagabond, his “ideal type” of both, captures an element of modern life.

Pilgrimage Pilgrimage conveys that life involves travelling among other human beings; and here lies its tension as an icon of the journey of modern life. Physical proximity involves moral proximity, or responsibility. For the vagabond or the tourist, there is freedom from moral duty or responsibility. As a tourist, one can sink into a wave of people who simply “pass through,” life. Little is Zygmunt Bauman, “Morality in the Age of Contingency,” in Detraditionalization: Critical Reflections on Authority and Identity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 53.

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expected of a tourist, one does what others do, as one is just passing through. One’s uniqueness as a person is hidden by the anonymity of travel. There are no ties; one is given a free pass to enjoy oneself. Bauman argues that vagabonds and tourists are not just inventions of modern times, or the postmodern era. Every age has had its drifters. What is new is they are no longer marginal conditions. They slip into our imaginations and become ideals of daily life, standards of happiness, and a successful life in general. The “feel good” society suggests that instead of a holiday being a break in routine to make routine livable, entertainment is now the norm and the routine, becoming the measure of what is worthwhile and a commodity to which one is entitled.6 “Pilgrimage” is a more countercultural term because it suggests there is a commonality of human living, I am not just on a journey; humanity shares a common one. The community, not my ability to pay as a tourist, is the pledge of the individual’s security. Being for others, rather than the vagabond’s search for an unhindered life, is the seed of every home. Bauman’s identification of the vagabond and the tourist reflects a culture far from the traditional one religion has typically offered to the human community. However, they are powerful cultural motifs of the changed conditions in which our search for God takes place.

New Conditions for Meeting God Throughout history, people have offered various reasons to believe and ultimately practice a religion. Religious belief has been proclaimed as a solemn march of obligation to save one’s soul, a duty of diligence which marks the life of the elect, a path to perfection, an annihilation of self to order one’s passions, and a necessary discipline for good citizenship and national harmony. Arguments which attempt to prove the utility of religious belief have never been ultimately persuasive, and are unlikely to convince through argument anyone to believe today. Faith and religious identity today are still vibrant across the world. To explain why, we must go deeper to uncover faith’s essential identity in freedom and as well as its inherent communal character.

Secularization Premodern Western European Christendom was structured through a double dualist system of “worlds.” On the one hand, there was “this world” Ibid., 56.

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and the “next world” (heaven or hell). On the other, there was a “religious” and a “secular” sphere within “this world.” These worlds were mediated by the sacramental nature of the church, which belonged to the two worlds, and therefore could mediate sacramentally between the two. The claim that the religious realm was superior to the secular realm was generally accepted. Secularization is the historical process whereby the dualism in “this world” and the sacramental structures of mediation between this world and the other world progressively break down. The separation between “this world” and the “next world” for a time remains. However, from this time on, there is only one world, “this world,” the secular world. Religion will have to find its place in the secular world, and not the other way around. Jose Casanova puts it this way: “If before, it was the religious realm which appeared to be the all-encompassing reality within which the secular realm found its proper place, now the secular sphere will be the all-encompassing reality, to which the religious sphere will have to adapt.”7

Middle Ages While the preceding paragraphs describes the social reality of medieval Christendom, it does not define necessarily the religious life of individuals living in this space. What about their religious beliefs, practices, experiences, or the private dimensions of their search for God? The public dimension of individual religiosity meant membership in the church, and this was practically 100 percent. While Jews and Muslims were allowed to live in their separate spheres in the Middle Ages, membership in the church was compulsory. Even dissent or disagreement was not a rejection of Christianity rather a call to its reform or return to a purity of its origins. Life in the secular world was regulated according to Christian principles and carried out, at least theoretically, by Christians living Christian lives. It is probably erroneous to assume people lived more Christian lives then than at the present time. There is little evidence that is true. What we know is the structure was Christian, not individual devotion was stronger. It may also be overstated to assume that medieval society was organized solely in accordance with official Christian ideals. Alongside the strong Christian influence was a knightly and courtly feudal culture as well as an emerging bourgeois culture in free cities. We could also add that religious culture itself, especially monasticism, participated in the emerging precapitalist system, contributing not only scientific study but some of the practical tools of the Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 15.

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market which are taken for granted today.8 This blending of church, culture, and belief, and of cultures within what was considered the “secular world” contributed to the civilization which we simply call the Middle Ages—a period of time we often paint “religious” with too wide a stroke. The process of secularization is commonly regarded as a “falling from grace” from the religious world of premodern Europeans to a spiritually lackluster modern life. Jose Casanova claims that such an unfounded assumption which conceives of secularization as the progressive decline of religious belief and practices in the modern world arises from an eighteenth-century myth which sees history of the progressive evolution of humanity from superstition to reason, from belief to unbelief, from religion to science.9 A more nuanced picture can be drawn by turning to key social scientific interpretations which grapple with the changed situation of religion in modernity. While not providing a total picture of this complex history, they can provide some tools to consider the new conditions in which we come to belief today.

The Collapse of the Synthesis To understand how the modern world underwent a process of secularization, the perspective of religion can serve as a starting point. The viewpoint, set by the church in the Middle Ages, was reality was separated into religious and secular realms. The official perspective, largely dictated by the church, was everything in the secular world was simply not religious. Sociologists use the term “differentiation” to explain what happened to this synthesis. Four developments within society made this synthesis no longer tenable: the Protestant reformation, the formation of modern states, the growth of modern capitalism, and the early modern scientific revolution. The collapse of religious walls allowed new space for the undifferentiated secular spheres to define themselves. Sociologist Max Weber claims each sphere could now follow its own “internal and lawful autonomy.” This process would find each sphere clashing with each other as well as with the charismatic religious ethic of brotherly love of the church.10 If religion was removed from the analysis, differentiation simply between the spheres had Stefano Zamagni, “Catholic Social Thought, Civil Economy, and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in The True Wealth of Nations, ed. Daniel Finn (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2010), 95–116. 9 Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 17. 10 Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in From Max Weber, eds. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 336. See also Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 20–5. 8

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unequal results, with the state and the economy becoming more lawful and more autonomous than others. Instead of the one center of religion in the Middle Ages, modern society now had two organizing centers, the state and the market. Religion became just another sphere, also structured around its own autonomous internal axis but falling under the force of the state and the market as the dominating influences. The separation of politics into the apparatus of the state and its legitimation through various styles of democratic rule, and of the economy into a network of interacting markets based on the freedom of the individual to buy and sell, produced the capitalist societies of the modern period. This development also involved the separation of a public sphere of the political activity of citizens in the formation of public opinion from a private sphere of personal interest. In this sphere religion is considered to be a private interest, and adherence to it is seen as one option among many, similar to choosing one item to purchase rather than another.11 Sociologist Robert Bellah captures the tensions this modern situation places on belief, as he notes that in contemporary society both church and family have less power than previously to buffer the impact of the state and the market on the formation of values.12

Weber and Durkheim Both Max Weber and Emile Durkheim were major influences on the social scientific schools of thought which studied the changed role of religion in modernity. Their perspectives could be summarized by their starting points. For Weber, key to understanding the change was individual religiosity. For Durkheim, it was the identification of a force beyond the individual that was the most elementary component of all religion.13 These “vague powers or anonymous forces” are of the essence of what is meant by the sacred. People gather in groups and in that experience move beyond the confines of their personal experience to that of the power of the group. Religion in this sense of always a group, collective affair in which the individual experiences a heightened sense of self—a “collective effervescence”—a moving beyond the self, releases a different world to the individual, the effect of merging individuals. Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), 30. 12 Robert Bellah, “Is There a Common American Culture?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion vol. 66, no. 3 (Fall, 1998), 613–25. 13 Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion? trans. Alex Skinner (London: Paradigm, 2008), 51–64; Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 [1912]). 11

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People interpret this experience as coming into contact with a force beyond themselves, and an attachment is formed to the conditions in which they encountered this experience. What is connected to this experience is sacred, what is separated is profane. For Durkheim there is no religion without a unified system of beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community. Hence the rituals of religion are central to the social function religion plays, as the experience of sacredness they create is attributed to preexisting powers, which people believe they have encountered at the time of their gathering. The sacredness of sacred things or practices is not rooted in their substance but is due to the fact that they are interpreted by the group as embodying this principle of sacredness and its access. Weber on the other hand was more interested in his work in the consequences of systems of religious belief rather than these systems themselves. It is possible to see Weber as a follower of William James who insisted the personal religion was primary, while all communal aspects of religion—“worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization”—are secondary.14 Weber named individual charisma, “the personal gift of grace,” as the essential and elementary form of religious life. Weber sees the goal of all spiritual methods and activities as the assurance of grace in one’s life. All religious practice has this focus.15 Religion uses rational forms to “pass on” so to say proven methods or paths to this assurance of grace, or what we call spirituality today. Personal charisma can only be confirmed and maintained, however, by the recognition of others. Religious roles and institutions are the result of the “routinization of charisma.” Charisma, in this sense, is an intersubjective and social category. It establishes a relationship between leaders and followers which is the foundation of the transformation of charisma into institutional religion. Jose Casanova clarifies, “Without its institutionalization into some kind of elementary charismatic community, personal charisma remains an autistic, sociologically and historically irrelevant experience.”16 While charisma is a mysterious power which also attracts people to a person and makes them obedient to their will and commands, it eventually requires some institutionalization into a charismatic community. Weber notes that the charismatic person is often experienced as someone with William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Penguin, 1982), 28–31. See Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 40–66. 15 Max Weber, “Different Roads to Salvation,” in Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers, ed. and Intro. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 275. 16 Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 44. 14

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superior powers and in some instances, as someone having divine powers. A charismatic leader, for instance, creates a community and begins a movement of people who accept his or her word and submit to their authority. To make this charism available to people living at a distance from the leader or to hand it on to future generations, the original charism is institutionalized in rites, symbols, or sacred writings and ritually communicated in a group of disciples and their successors. This institutionalization of charism always implies a certain weakening or cooling of the original charism. The fervor of the beginning is lost in the next generation. Yet, the charismatic power of the founder is eventually transformed into traditional authority invested in religious institutions. Weber finds the origin of religion itself in this charismatic dynamism which begins with the charisma of the individual.17

Finding God in Solitude or Collective Experience All attempts by subsequent sociologists to reduce religion to one of the two poles by excluding or explaining the other as a derivation of the former have been unsatisfactory. Mapping the development of religion from primitive to collective to modern individual religion has also led to a dead end. Solitude and collective experience have both been sources of religious revelation in the history of humankind. Researches have built on these key insights of Durkheim and Weber, yet have also pointed out that the religious and the collective are not necessarily coextensive. It is simply a matter of human experience that much religion is individual and private as well as much collective effervescence and many public ceremonies have no religious meaning. What seems sure in this brief overview is that coming to faith in modern secular society will not be motivated by a compulsory move from the group, nor will it be sustained over the long term by private devotion alone. Even the modern turn to a spirituality which is “private,” in “I am spiritual not religious,” is an unsatisfactory image to rest one’s imagination if it means the absence of a public function of religion and a practice absent of community, as purely private. Robert Bellah in his study of American individualism and religion saw that moderns tend to believe that all religions and all individuals worship the same god under different names and language, only modern individuals reserve to themselves the right to name this god and to worship him/her/ it in their own language. One woman interviewed named her religion after herself, “my own Sheilaism.”18 Bellah noted the logical possibility that such Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church, 47–8. Robert Bellah, William M. Sullivan, Richard Madsen, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 221.

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an approach could lead to millions of American religions, one for each of us. Moderns in this sense believe in many gods, not as the ancients did in the Pantheon as idolatry. The cultic form of modern polytheism is human narcissism. I make up my own religion. Casanova notes, “In this particular sense, the cult of the individual has indeed become, as foreseen by Durkheim, the religion of modernity.”19 It seems moving forward this approach has to be distinguished in our imaginations from a personal faith, which is necessary to meet God in modern times. Such a “cult of the individual” can leave us as the vagabond or the tourist religiously, simply moving from disillusionment to unfounded hope, or with a religion of convenience.

A Foundation From Which to Start The communal nature of the search for God becomes evident if one recalls the socialization process by which many religious people are given a “foundation from which to start” extraneous to their personalized faith experience. The working of a communal form of life which requires organization, roles, and sacrifice is part of the socialization process. To place the church in this context can retrieve it from the dichotomy of a purely public-private definition. To say, the church in secular society exists only in the private sphere is not sufficiently nuanced to capture the reality of the church in this new moment. On the one hand, in many first world countries, the church exists apart from the state and is distinguishable from its role in civil religion. On the other hand, since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has publicly acknowledged in Dignitatis Humanae, the document on religious freedom, the recognition of the inalienable right of every individual to freedom of conscience, based on the sacred dignity of the human person. The church abandons its role to coerce the truth; rather it takes up responsibility to inform consciences, not dictate them. Today’s church calls for a new living of the dogmatic conception of authoritative tradition and the principle of freedom of conscience. Today’s public church no longer imagines itself as imposing its agenda upon society or having a mission to press its global normative claims on autonomous spheres of life. It embraces the democratic process of the modern state. However, this is not an affirmation of the church as invisible, or merely private. An invisible church is not realistic if one sees the passing on of faith as a communal activity. People do not baptize themselves; they are baptized into a community which precedes them. The possible effect and visibility of a believing community in a secular society is real; it is even reinforced by Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 53.

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the experience of failures as well as success. A functioning faith community today can challenge the hegemony of the state and the market as the sole determiners of our global future. Kathryn Tanner remarks that the cohesiveness of Christian life is not that it creates a separate culture with uniform behavior, but it provides an abiding reference point for the direction of one’s life, both in and out of the Christian community. Cultural identity today is more a hybrid, where gospel ideals are lived out in relationships of resistance, appropriation, subversion, and compromise.20 One does not need to agree with all the normative premises of religious critiques to recognize their value. They serve to expose the relative and temporary historical character of most which passes for modern developments and cultural norms which appear uncontestable. Religion is an important public voice in society, and in some cases, the only voice of protest against disregard of human rights. While the vagabond and the tourist do not carry an image of the spiritual journey today, neither is the traditional image of the pilgrim fully communicable in a global culture of indifference. However, there are experiences of modern life which can lead a person to recognize God.

The Turn to Transcendence German sociologist Hans Joas argues that human values in life are formed by a process which offers clues as how to proceed religiously, when neither the model of vagabond, tourist, or pilgrim mark our path. Simply knowing there is a God is not sufficient today to evoke a faith commitment. A value commitment, like religious belief, does not arise from the justification of rational argument, but from experiences of self-formation and selftranscendence. These experiences push the person beyond themselves and evoke the feeling that what has experienced is “good” based on a sense of subjective self-evidence and affective intensity.21 Joas does not see religious faith as simply a preference, as one prefers one value over another. It is not based on utility, solely on the calculation of the affinities or advantages of selecting one religious community over another. In his words, “It is phenomenologically inadequate to classify the actual experience constitutive of religious faith as a ‘choice.’”22 Rather religious faith is based either on

Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 25–9, 58, 98. 21 Joas, Faith as an Option, 85. 22 Joas, Do We Need Religion? 29. 20

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traditions internalized in the process of self-formation or on experiences of self-transcendence. These experiences involve a type of passivity. As William James pointed out, they are characterized by being deeply moved or seized by something, one experiences self-surrender. It is an encounter with Dante’s love that moves the stars. While such experiences require interpretation, it is also evident that the experience does not emanate from religious and cultural interpretations but goes beyond them. Something new happens, something deeper, something that a former conceptual framework does not hold, a leap of faith is required which transforms us and our understanding, and leads to greater familiarity with the desirable, beyond previous desires.23 The willingness to follow, to surrender one’s self, is not the same as a rational choice between preferences. Rather these experiences form a type of “transcendent data,” deep values which are more than long-term preferences or preferences for a higher order. Rather they are reflexive standards by which we evaluate our preferences. They are emotionally laden ideas of the desirable rather than desires as such.24 Charles Taylor identifies the passivity in these experiences by contrasting strong and weak desires. Our weak desires are pragmatic, and involve decisions around execution and availability of the means of fulfillment. If I am hungry, I will search for something to eat. A strong desire is experienced not just arising from the self but as a given with an independent existence which places a demand on us. We feel moved by some higher good; and we sense we are moved by what is good in it rather than that it is valuable because of our reaction. What moves us is we sense its point as something infinitely valuable.25 What has changed in modern experience is not so much the essence of religious experience, as the context for a decision of faith. People today live in a different cultural space with more questions and complexity. Because of the dominance of secularity many have lost contact with an inner experience of faith. Simply the noise and pace of modern society distract from any See Denise Lardner Carmody, “The Desire for Transcendence: Religious Conversion,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 57–73. 24 Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 29. See also: Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, trans. John Drury (New York: Orbis, 1984), 73. Karl Rahner uses the term “transcendental” to distinguish what we live implicitly without putting it into words, or without openly recognizing its source in God’s grace, while what we express explicitly is “categorical.” For instance, we can live an option for generous love without putting it into words or without recognizing its ultimate source. See: Michael Paul Gallagher, Faith Maps (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2010), 42. 25 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), 74. 23

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“hearing” in the first place. Religious customs and interpretations which could be tools to interpret these deeper experiences often appear remote, tired, and incapable of nourishing the spirit. These conditions challenge the discovery of what Christians hold is the universally present experience of God. Another particular characteristic of the modern age which distinguishes these times from that of our ancestors is the secular climate of contingency.

Faith Commitment in an Age of Contingency While the social sciences, aware of their limits, try to avoid rash generalizations about the state of society and seek secure knowledge backed by a type of methodological rigor, media often rises to the need of the public for analysis and interpretation of the events of the day. People who want more than cable news to interpret the state of the modern world might even turn to those who offer a “deeper analysis” of the state of the modern world; how is it different than what has gone before? Themes such as the “tech age,” the time of the “me-too” movement, “post truth” society capture aspects of the times. But after gleaning the kernel of truth each one embodies the reader is often left with the question, but which society are we really living in? A particular analysis which can integrate these various interpretations of our current state of affairs, at least in first world situations, is the suggestion we live in an “era of contingency.” Since our interest is to reflect on the changed conditions of faith, this perspective may bring particular light. We call contingent that which is neither necessary nor impossible. It is what is, but does not have to be. Contingent in this sense is the counter concept of necessary; its precise meaning depends on the meaning of necessity. In life, the contingent is what life throws at us, both the good and the terrible.26 A theory of contingency characterizes the present age by underlining the increase in options for individual action. Used on a larger theoretical scale, it also conditions popular theories of how the modern age developed through the dominance of any single factor such as the economy or culture. Various modernization theories can give some insight into the conditions in which religious faith can be lived, but none are conclusive. Using the lens of contingency to view the modern world suggests that the variety of options presented and followed in the interaction of relationships between the state, religion, and culture creates different modernities in the world, not a single one. It thwarts any idea that there is a master trend—namely as modernity increases religion decreases—rather there are different modernities across the Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 30.

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world with different relationships with religion. Culture can be conditioned by state and religion. The state can be conditioned by religion and culture. Religion can be conditioned by state and culture.27 All produce different expressions of religion, and empirically attest to the endurance of religion in a variety of conditions in the modern world, despite popular predictions of its demise.

The Vagabond and the Tourist in an Age of Contingency On an individual level, the world of the vagabond and tourist would not be possible without the world of contingency. The range of options once left only to the idle rich or those who ignored civic responsibility and lived on the survival fringe of society is now mainstream in contemporary life. To characterize our age as an age of contingency conveys the massive increase in individual action options and the growing number of experiences that result from this massive increase. Not all classes have the same amount of options. Some people see having a lot of options as an opportunity, others a threat. People today are confronted with a variety of religions and value systems, and ways of life. Technological advances enhance individual mobility, styles of communication, dating practices, and options available in choosing a partner, even biological reproduction and social construction of family life.28 Contingency, however, is not simply randomness, it is more complex. In premodern philosophy, necessity was understood as a well-ordered universe. When the scientific revolution replaced the image of a well-ordered cosmos with that of a casually determined universe, governed by the laws of nature, it became impossible to find metaphysical certainty. If “moorings” were linked to this prescientific view, contingency took on the sense of randomness but also called on the practice of the free will to reject it. It was believed one could no longer be certain of truth beyond scientific truth. There was a call to free oneself of religion, as it was a block to the rationality needed for life. Religious faith became identified with immature or insecure knowledge, a misguided attempt to solve life problems. Religious faith was construed as an attempt to find meaning in face of hardship, and could even be a distraction from effective action regarding oppression, as Marx’s “opium of the people.” Religious faith was also depicted as haven where no doubts could exist, and if they did, were to be suppressed by authorities. A religion embedded in a premodern world was one that modernization could be expected to weaken. Joas, Faith as an Option, 71. See Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, for examples of these relationships internationally in five case studies. 28 Joas, Faith as an Option, 73. 27

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The underlying understanding of religious faith went something like this, “In desperate circumstances, some believe, people develop compensatory fantasies that limit their capacity for independent critical thought, or ruling powers exploit the situations, deploying religions to anaesthetize the public.”29 Naming the experience of contingency can help correct this inadequate view of religious faith. Today religious faith can be understood primarily as trust forming in modern life rather than only acquisition of knowledge “about religion.” Faith can be expressed more as an experience of certainty before suffering and joy, as well as that which can provide insight into the truth of individual autonomy rather than the restriction of this autonomy. For some the increased options of modern living are seen as liberating; but contingency can also be experienced as the increasingly burdensome challenge of making decisions. The wealth and plurality of experiences produced by other people’s choices and freedom may give life an increased intensity, but it may also be threatening. The lack of gun control can increase personal options, but also give rise to the mass shootings which have become commonplace rather than rare. The freedom of individual choice may build an increasingly affluent life for some, but it may also contribute to a reduction in population, the creation of global warming, and the weakening of public consensus on the requirements of civility. As Richard Rorty remarks, “In the context of contingency, all fixed norms and values evaporate, and a fathomless relativism holds sway.”30 The vagabond and the tourist become the norm. What this means in concrete terms is the development of religious commitments is occurring in an intellectual environment in which contesting claims for the meaning of life fluctuate between extremes. For some there is an intense need for fundamentalism of some sort, the tribalism of “vagabonds around a campfire.”31 Others require a departure from all metanarratives: whether teleological, historical, or evolutionist in nature. Religious commitment in this climate therefore needs to find relationship with God in light of contingent certainty. Contingency does not mean the impossibility of stable commitments to individuals and values but openness to the changed expression of them which societal conditions require. Beyond relativism, faith commitment today requires openness to discernment on an ongoing basis as to how the gospel impacts the now, and an adhesion to a community of witnesses who testify to the acquisition of that vision.32 In this process the continual renewal of religious faith can be experienced through its practice before the tasks of Ibid., 15. Ibid., 76. 31 Bauman, “Morality in the Age of Contingency,” 57. 32 Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, 81. 29 30

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contingency. If religious faith is based both on traditions internalized in the process of self-formation and on the experiences of self-transcendence then both community, learning from others and their witness, and praxis, actually doing those actions which take one beyond self, mark a commitment which is capable of surviving under these conditions. Contingency makes possible the vagabond and the tourist, but religious faith requires a “dance” which goes beyond their limits to contribute to a moral community. In this sense, modern religious faith can be a form of commitment to other individuals and values that are commensurate with contingency and faithful to the experience of God in our midst.

New Faces of Religious Commitment One new face of religious commitment today is the retrieval of faith as “believing trust.” St. Augustine is quoted as saying, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe.”33 Previous models of faith assumed faith came in two stages, first an influx of rational information and then a type of religious assent. Believing trust is marked by openness to mystery and the priority of love over knowledge.34 This trust is not incompatible with reasoned knowledge of the Christian tradition, but one cannot assume it will always flow from knowledge alone, as it is a matter of the heart. Faith in this sense is more God’s doing than ours. Faith perceives God’s light in life (Jn 1:1-18). Faith participates in the ongoing self-disclosure of God, who gives light and life to daily existence. Faith in this sense is an experience of God’s light and love. This manner of finding God meets the modern need of autonomy and self-direction, but also transforms it. A tendency of modern life is to get caught up in the practice of life, without reinforcing the grounding of one’s operations. Encounter with God in believing trust retains all modern characteristics of search, analysis, and self-direction but goes beyond and changes them. The cultural model of daily practice is based on personal initiative and autonomous decision making. This is intensified in an age of contingency when people are charged not only to keep some moral order but to take responsibility to define their goals, practices, and rules of modern living. An impasse moderns meet is the impossibility to bestow on oneself the ultimate validity which can only come from God. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar claims the mystical tradition contains a path to respond to this modern dilemma. This tradition testifies Augustine of Hippo, Sermons 4:11. Gallagher, Faith Maps, “Balthasar,” 53.

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that one’s true identity in God is revealed to each of us over time in continued encounters with God. The mystical life, direct encounter with God, is not reserved for special saints or those with unique spiritual gifts. Rather it is part of the Christian life for all who are open to it. While moderns live their lives in the shadow of the Enlightenment and its project to locate daily moral choices in rational or utilitarian terms alone without reference to any ultimate basis of the meaning of life’s possibilities and limits, he offers another way. Von Balthasar’s approach suggests not only something about the identity of God in our lives but also what is involved in the search for God in modern times.

The Grace of the Dance Von Balthasar’s approach to faith focuses on beauty as a deep dimension of God and a central icon of the experience of faith. God’s beauty invites us to a kind of awe, akin to the experience of great art. The full beauty of God’s love is found for Christians in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the Kenosis of Christ. When a person finds the supreme revelation of God’s love, they also meet the possibilities and limits of each human life. Meaning and direction is found in the simultaneous recognition that love is the core of everything, and that God who is beyond all words and imagining is at the heart of this love. God’s love is like the smile of a mother to her baby which awakens the child to a relationship which is already there. The core of faith is like the return smile of the child, an awakening to a gift already received and that continues to be received. For von Balthasar love comes before faith, and faith means acknowledging a love already surrounding us.35 Faith in God therefore is not an intellectual exercise alone but a centering of one’s life in a relationship. This faith gives one a new identity. While we have many roles in life which give us a personal and public identity, our relationship with God grounds these identities at a deeper level. While traditional theology, like that of Thomas Aquinas, sees the action that represents the fulfillment of a human life as the knowing, willing, and loving the absolute, for von Balthasar it is becoming a “self ” in relation to the Absolute, to relate the unique “I” that is one’s identity to the absolute which is the marker of human fulfillment.36 One understands oneself most deeply not through the isolation of modern individualism, but by entering into a relationship. We receive Christ’s love and then we act. We surrender to God and then make choices. Ibid., 59. Christopher Steck, S.J., The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 76.

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This is quite different than the self-realization of the autonomous person. Instead there is a giving of self to God and a reception of self from God. The person asks how does this decision look in God’s eyes, not simply the God of the commandments, but God who loves and calls me to my true identity? This is the twofold movement of interpersonal love: Christ moves toward me, a creature, in self-emptying, and the human being reaches toward God. Here the person allows himself or herself to be changed by this encounter, and to allow emotions, ideas, plans, and strategies to be altered by what one learns in this personal exchange. This is not an encounter for spiritual specialists alone. It is a model for the daily life of Christians in postmodern society. It is the realization that even though we desire to “raise ourselves,” no Herculean efforts of our own can possibly achieve it. We are oriented to an ultimate destiny for our fulfillment which we cannot reach solely through our own powers. Rather human fulfillment has two dimensions according to von Balthasar. We desire to overcome the meaninglessness associated with an age of contingency, to achieve a personal identity grounded in the absolute and gain self-possession through interpersonal love.37 Personal freedom is at its highest when one is able to grasp one’s deepest identity and not just know it but express it to the other. At a spiritual level, this occurs by invitation only, and is freely given. God’s way is to awaken through love a free response that embraces God’s freedom and with it God’s vision of the identity of each person.

The Dance of Christian Modernity The extraordinary women who were founders of modern dance—among them Martha Graham—recognized the capacity of their sisters to express ecstasy, joy, harmony, and other positive states of being.38 Body movement provided a language that was not only nonverbal but often articulate in ways that words could not be, or which took verbal meanings to their deeper identities. The clarity of response of these dancers, which reflected a true connection between delight and their freedom of movement, also expressed, both in seriousness and play, an astonishing and captivating collective connection in their movements. Moving beyond sentimental illusion, and manufactured “drama” of modern media and “causes” more orchestrated than embraced in the heart, dance was to express the possibility of life beyond the humdrum Ibid., 72. Ann and Barry Ulanov, The Witch and the Clown: Two Archetypes of Human Sexuality (Asheville, NC: Chiron Publishers, 2015), 62.

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of a dissociated modern existence. Beyond the vagabond and the tourist and their “buffered existence” which never engages real life, the dancer expresses both the openness to what is real and the interconnectedness necessary to move together in interdependence which characterizes the possibilities for Christian existence in the modern age.39 Christian ethical response is a reply to something outside the self. The call of conscience is a link to the transcendent as God’s invitation precedes our human autonomy yet also engages it. In modern life, moral experience is often aimed toward hopeful change in society, and is directed toward what is not yet established or real. In this sense, many moral choices are exercises of hope. Unlike a traditional modal of efficient causality, which rests its sense of conscience in measuring the appropriate means to certain ends, modern living requires this but even more. The Christian conscience could mistakenly be reduced simply to keeping the rules, the important clear boundaries between proper and improper choices. Yet this is not enough. The attractive power of the future, key to the modern person, offers possibility, and leaves us free to consent. The moral experience of contingency requires a sense of responsibility to take on new problems, to reach out to the suffering of people beyond the boundaries of biases, and to create solutions to problems without ready answers. In a pluralistic society it requires dialogue and exchange with those who do not sit around our campfires. Along with a call to a moral rectitude based on the gospel and its traditions, the modern Christian experiences their freedom to consent or dissent to an opportunity that presents itself. As lovers of God, as disciples, they can experience God may be inviting them to take the next step. God’s invitation activates rather than usurps human freedom (a classic challenge to religious identity in the modern age). For the modern Christian, morality is more than external obligation or a rule we impose on ourselves at the risk of being otherwise inconsistent (Kant). Rather it is a dance, or an identification, of a response to and acceptance of an opportunity for good. As a dancer who has mastered the mechanics of movement, it is the capacity to express that mystic connection between valued emotion and expression in real time. Yet, despite these wider paradigms of understanding the challenge of our modern times, morality is also concrete, enmeshed in the details of daily living and the life cycle, and involved with one’s place in the global complexities of our times. The modern person must somehow navigate the tensions of initiative and obedience, autonomy and community, identity and diversity. They are called to the generosity of the helping project as well as the long suffering of the uninvited and not anticipated obligation which flows Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel (Chicago, IL: Loyola Press, 2016).

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from committed connections to others. This gestalt of the experience of a moral summons can be daunting, and the life of the vagabond and tourist can appeal. The traditional challenge of the Good Samaritan is now to love a neighbor who is not just next door but the whole world, in a scale of complexity which makes right and wrong a challenge to discern. In this context, Christians seek the room and grace to dance. The experience of contingency can be an enemy or a promoter of the Christian life. It can so enhance the import of the choices of others and the pressure they impose, that there is the temptation to live just in the now, as if the now is all there is. Why be burdened with duties and commandments and obligations? Why search for self-sacrifice, when you don’t have to? On the other hand, the age of contingency can require of us new skills— which open life to new satisfactions and results. While we may recognize the profound differences in worldview and interests had with those with whom we work in care for the “other,” they can call us beyond ourselves in new ways. There can be a new mutuality of consciences. We can learn to live with the limits of our own identity yet be faithful to it, and hear the perspectives others bring to common problems. We can look together for what we have in common, and build on those goals. Dialogue among people of various religious beliefs can offer to the other the right to exist. Rationalists cannot expect religious people just to be silent; the affective backing of a religious tradition, its particular binding power has to be retained, not dismissed.40 Very importantly, there is need for opportunities for involvement for many different kinds of people, not just traditional leaders, which will require the kind of investment which will take all seriously. In an age of contingency an element of increased freedom enters into possibility of the attachment to people, values, and religious communities. Attachment depends on the person’s free consent. In modern times, this consent must be periodically reconfirmed, to a greater degree than in the past. It is imperative that the practice of religion allows a greater inclusion of decision making and creative input of diverse peoples in order that it is possible for it to be a core framework of life. They must be invited to the dance.

Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 32.

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The Dance of Religion Do We Need It?

Since the eighteenth century, it has become possible to imagine a fulfilled human life without religion. People today expect a complete full life in this life, during the time of the passage from birth to death. They presume they do not need the next life for fulfillment, this life is enough. There is no higher good beyond human flourishing. This option was not in the public imagination in past centuries. For many of the people of our times it is an unspoken but assumed framework for how life works. A key question in understanding Christian discipleship today is how to link religion and modernity. If we do not follow the secularization theory, that as modernization increases, religion disappears, where do we look for a healthy interpretation of the role and meaning of religion in modern life? Taylor describes the shift in the place of religion in society as the move from a time of enchantment, where religion was everywhere to one of disenchantment, a secular existence in which this world is all that exists. What are the possibilities for re-enchantment, a reconnection with the transcendent in terms of modern secular experience, we may ask? For a true re-enchantment to take place, it needs to happen on many levels: individual, social, and ecclesial. To explore the possibility and shape of re-enchantment, we first need to ask, do we need religion at all? Taylor predicts the road ahead for religious practice is mixed on all these levels. While a prevailing rhetoric in culture is dismissive of religious faith, some will break through presumption. They will acknowledge the realities in their lives which cannot be explained through the immanent frame of the system of science, the state, reason, and human achievements. These individuals will “believe again” and will make up a convinced and adult segment of the church population. Another group will not be moved by the cultural narrative, and will “believe still,” or find they never had a reason to doubt, finding themselves simply practicing the Christian faith and grateful for it. A third group will be a mixture of the two, in which a cycle of search, membership, reexamination, and repeated reinvestment will be

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more characteristic of their journey.1 All three may bring to the church a new style of discipleship driven by the necessity to constantly shape their lives and create new forms of community to express Christian values in this age of contingency.

Imaging Re-enchantment While it is unwise to reduce religion to its function in life and society, a thoughtful understanding of its role and contribution is important to imagine what re-enchantment might entail. In the nineteenth century, William James in Varieties of Religious Experience Today captured the ambivalence which can be felt about religion and life in the modern age. The experience is what it feels like to stand in the open space of modern life and feel the winds pulling you now here, now there. While many today reject “master narratives” of the meaning of life that religion once provided, it is also true that modern accounts of life provide benefits for humankind as well are riddled with “thinness” and lacunae about important aspects of life. People are attracted to modernity yet also struggle to manage the ambiguity and lack of moorings it offers. Taylor argues that these pressures form a cross pressure, the vague rumblings of anxiety for which believers and unbelievers lack words. Religious identity does exist in secular society, but differently than in the past world of enchantment. A world of disenchantment does not necessarily mean an end to religion. It just means for moderns to imagine something “beyond,” they cannot rely on the same type of an “enchanted world” of spirits and meaningful causal forces which existed in past centuries. Modern Christianity, in Catholic and Protestant forms, does not rely on the enchanted world for identity, even though its denial of it is partial rather than total. Some aspects of religious living reflect its sensibilities in the form of mystery, a sense of higher time and the like. Taylor puts it this way, “We have moved from an era in which religious life was more ‘embodied’ . . . into one which is more ‘in the mind,’ where the link with God passes more through our endorsing contested interpretations—for instance, of our political identity as religiously defined, or of God as the authority and moral source underpinning our ethical life.”2 Christians live in the same immanent modern frame as Charles Taylor, “The Church Speaks-To Whom?” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, eds. Charles Taylor, Jose Casanova, and George T. McLean (Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012), 17–24. 2 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 553–4. 1

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everyone else; however, they find God in it. They engage in belief feeling the cross pressures of the surety once confirmed by the enchanted world and “adrift” and “closed” feeling of the secular world. This is a transformation in religious life itself. Karl Rahner captures this state of affairs theologically in his essay, “The Spirituality of the Church of the Future.” He affirms that the practice of religious faith in the future will lack the harmony with other aspects of life it once held in the past. In his words, “The spirituality of the future will not be supported or at any rate will be much less supported by a sociologically Christian homogeneity of its situation; it will have to live much more clearly than hitherto out of a solitary, immediate experience of God and his Spirit.”3 If Rahner spoke to Taylor, he might suggest that this God-human encounter may not be direct, and at times hard to identify, like hearing “silent music.” But one place it is likely to occur is through the mirror of self-reflection in conscience. When the modern asks, why did I do that?, it might not be a question of owning a moral mistake, but one of questioning the source of a generous deed—especially in a society with contesting belief systems about the meaning of human fulfillment. With little in society to promote acting beyond selfinterest, God in one’s life might become more evident in the silent witness of conscience and the sacrifice it entails than in the assurance of a collective religious exuberance. Again in Rahner’s words, The solitary Christian meets the experience of God and his liberating grace in silent prayers, in the final decision of conscience, unrewarded by anyone, in the unlimited hope which can no longer cling to any calculable assurance, in the radical disappointment of life and in the powerlessness of death—if these things are only voluntarily borne and accepted in hope, in the night of the sense and the spirit.4

Modern Approach to Religion Even the place of religion in society is interpreted with a different lens in secular times. Experience proves religion is not a human universal which only governments can suppress; people today freely abandon it as unnecessary. For some, there is no real rejection of God or religion; it is more common they are not bothered by the question at all. However, modern experience Karl Rahner, “The Spirituality of the Church of the Future,” in Theological Investigations, 20 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981), 148. 4 Ibid., 150. 3

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attests religion is not dead. In spite of the malaise believers feel arising from the lack of recognition of the transcendent in public life, their belief, and practice persists. We find a continuing attraction to Christian commitment even in face of rival stories of the meaning of life, and across the world we witness new expressions of religious commitment. While Max Weber’s conflation of religion and enchantment closes the door to the possibility of religion in modern form, relegating it to the realm of the magical, his is not the only possibility. Taylor suggests that once we set aside Weber’s mistaken notion, still an active cultural belief, and acknowledge the persistence of religious belief in modern society, we are faced with new questions. The desire on the part of believers for re-enchantment, however, has to go beyond the interest to increate religious devotion. This in itself cannot undo the shift in plausibility structures that characterize our age. We cannot return to an earlier cultural age in which religious life was more “embodied” and the presence of the sacred could be enacted in ritual or seen, felt, touched, even walked toward in pilgrimage. Going through the motions of public religious identity is not sufficient. People need to ask, how does religion enter into modern life today? Taylor implies a clearer path to re-enchantment is to recognize that our modern age possesses greatness as well as danger. A “world without religion” may not be the ideal world its advocates suggest. Moderns need to face the “thinness” and lacunae of the grounding of our modern ideals, and ask what kind of religion could help us manage the ambiguity and lack of moorings it offers. In this sense both believers and unbelievers are challenged.

A Religion You Would Not Want to Erase It is not just the presence of religion, but the continual renewal of religion in the modern age which is implied in the question, do we need religion? Those who seek to transform or eradicate religion as a service to modern living do not always meet the challenge its absence creates. The question of the future of Christianity, how to be religious and modern, is divided too often between religious fundamentalism and hard secularists, the later simply assume Christianity has no future, and is replaced by modern initiative and progress. The former either condemn or affirm the modern world en bloc, as both conservatives and liberals do so from different vantage points. Neither can cope with the reality of modern times where the horror of Hiroshima lives alongside Doctors without Borders. Neither is positioned to respond to what reflects the life of God in modern society and the doors which close in the face of God—due to the fact that their ideological frameworks limit their vision. Christian discipleship in secular society must focus on how religion

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helps humans to recognize what is good in modern life and promote it, as well as name the face of evil in modern times, and check it. Religion is not the central organizing factor in modern society, yet those who desire to support its practice and renew it must inquire how it can contribute to these essential questions of life which every generation must address.

Naming Good and Evil Philosopher Susan Neiman claims that Auschwitz, in its magnitude and horror, could not be explained within common definitions of good and evil of the time. These definitions at the time of the Second World War were created as hybrids: formed by both religious traditions and cultural ideals. People recognized Auschwitz as moral evil, yet its magnitude far exceeded the evil the intentions of individuals are able to cause. All the improvements in a “civilized” society in social sciences, political science, international systems, and alliances were ineffectual in the recognition and containment of the carnage at Auschwitz. In fact, their resources were employed to fuel its efficacy. Auschwitz occurred right under the noses of the international community, and in a country marked by two major Christian communities, Catholic and Lutheran. The progressive tools of modernity thought to be the highpoint of human civilization, “seemed hopeless in coping with the event as they were in preventing it.”5 Auschwitz revealed something about human nature and its possibilities in an age of contingency that humans hoped not to see. We observe today that a modern form of evil is characterized by its power to subject its victims to a process designed to destroy the very concept of humanity within them. Forms of contemporary evil destroy not only its victims but its perpetrators, who lose their own humanity in the process.6 It denies its victims all the conditions of having sacredness, a sacrosanct absolute value, independent of all individual forms the human being may take. Even more difficult to discern is evil in its banal form. Routines of thoughtlessness and inattention allow massive evil to be done in our day by ordinary people who are so caught in their own biases they do not recognize what they do is evil.

Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 257. 6 John Perry, S.J., Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005). 5

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In an age of contingency, when more and more choices are ours to make, the experience of life is more fragmented than cohesive. Life can appear to be bleak and fragile. Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Redemptor Hominis remarks that a context of religious experience today is human beings are more creative, yet inherent in their creations is their capacity to destroy people and civilization as a whole (RH 15.2). Religious identity in this situation has to address the need to be whole in the face of the banality of evil and the feeling that evil is inevitable. The future direction of Christianity has to include engaging with the powers of evil in people’s lives which keep their humanity in check, yet doing as believers. Because the modern world is both sinful and redeemed, Christians can bring to the discernment of good and evil insights centered not just in ideology but within an awareness of the mystery of God’s love in which they share. The words of the catechism of the Catholic Church say this well: Without the help of grace, men would not know how to discern the often narrow path between the cowardice which gives in to evil, and the violence which under the illusion of fighting evil only makes it worse. This is the path of charity, that is, of the love of God and neighbor.7

The Christian community, as other world religions, has traditions and resources to make this discernment. Protestant theology understands grace in the face of the problem of sin. Catholic theology through Aquinas understands grace before the problem of human finitude; as finite people we cannot bring about the fulfillment of our being. Both perspectives help to illumine how the doctrines of sin and grace set a backdrop for the uniqueness of religion in the gestalt of forces which seek to create the world in a more human way. The contribution of religion will likely not provide all the information for this conversation; but its involvement in this common human endeavor seems essential for the survival of the peoples and the earth. For the believer and the unbeliever, secularity is the context in which our moral, spiritual, or religious experience and search takes place today. Yet a by-product of these new conditions of belief put an end to the naive or automatic acknowledgment of the transcendent, or of goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing on this earth. This loss of naivete, true for both the believer and the unbeliever, can become the very condition for the re-enchantment of religion in secular times. Hearing the silent music of God’s reality, and its Cathechism of the Catholic Church, Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, John Paul, Bishop (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994 [1889]), 462.

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implications, in a world often deaf to its message, is a mission and creative challenge for discipleship today. It is a mission of dialogue with all people of good will and one of learning from those also who do not share their faith. The renewal of religion and its re-enchantment transcends the explanation of the secularization debates. Taylor rejects the secularization narrative for two reasons. First, it is an inadequate picture of our state of affairs because it assumes there is just one modernity, when in fact there are “multiple modernities,” if we take globalization seriously. People have developed under different demands, aspirations, and cultural systems—Asian, African, Latin America, Pacific-Rim, European cultures all have unique identities and cultural relationships to religion. Second, the subtraction approach to modern life explains modernity as a way human beings have lost, or ridden themselves from earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge. Humanity is like an orange which has been peeled from a nasty impeding skin, and what is left is more pure and more authentic. On the contrary, Taylor argues that Western modernity and secularity arise from new inventions, and newly constructed self-understandings and practices. It has been constructed. Religion has not been peeled away; rather some of its aspirations have been shifted to places which cannot fulfill them. The denial of transcendence, however, can put in danger the most valuable gains of modernity, such as the primary of rights and the affirmation of life.8

Modern Identity and Search for the Good Modern identity is more a collage, than a portrait. It developed out of earlier pictures of human identity, yet its genesis stems from new modes of thought as well as complex historical processes. While there is no one modern identity in a global, multicultural world, identifying some of its main elements in the West alert us to the significance or lack of importance these qualities have in other cultures. In general, Taylor indicates four characteristics which would distinguish a modern person from one who lived in earlier times: a sense of inwardness, a high priority on freedom, individualism (the individual is the only real thing), and embeddedness in nature. All are assumed aspects of life in the modern West. As we have indicated, Taylor argues that the modern self was constructed out of a process whereby collective imagination turned away from the cosmic hierarchies that guided the ancient and medieval world, in which God was Charles Taylor, “A Catholic Modernity,” in Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 181.

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central. This world interacted with us, and we had the capacity to relate to this other world. It was an enchanted world. Spirits in this world could impact our lives. We could petition spiritual entities to act on our behalf etc. (This world is not dead, it is just not the public world.) We became disenchanted by moving to the inwardness of the individual, locating in human reason, imagination, understanding of nature, the source of knowing what was good. The other world was cut off. All the characteristics of the modern self, developed in search for the “good,” a moral vision, which was detached from the limitations and constraints of the old order and the power of the cosmic system. However, humans gradually drifted from the centrality God held in this old order. The modernization process also led to high ideals which laid expectations on the modern self. Moral aspirations of the modern age of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of the ordinary life evoke a continual demand for universal justice, equality, self-rule, and beneficence. While at times moderns despair that they live in a godless age, the truth is modern culture carries a sense of moral obligation which is almost unprecedented in human history. People have all the power, so they have all the responsibility. Moderns place a high priority on ending suffering in society, and since their world is global, this universal benevolence extends to a vast number of people.9 Taylor cautions that at the crossroads of our ideals and our modes of modern living there is an inner conflict. Even though there is a general agreement on these standards, there are profound rifts when it comes to the constitutive goods, the moral sources, which underpin them. If this life is all there is, what are the moral sources to renew and transform the world as we know it? Moderns understand benevolence for one’s family or circle of intimates, but universal benevolence? On what basis would someone reach out to this demand, especially if this life is all there is? Some may be motivated by a line on their resume, a sense that meeting these standards is a mark of a decent civilized life. Or they may simply feel guilty or a hidden shame if they admit they are not moved or care at all before all these needs. The desire to overcome this feeling, at least occasionally, might stir an occasional contribution or act of service. All these motivations, however, fall short of the task in the long haul and cannot maintain the sustained effort needed for the reforms people idealize. Taylor sets the table for us to understand the dilemma we face as modern believers and unbelievers in a secular society,

Many moderns contest this vision of the global society, as worldwide resistance to migration testifies.

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feeling both the challenge of faith or the ideal of universal benevolence and the lacunae of being modern.

Agape, God’s Universal Love The type of moral stretch which represents seeking universal justice or benevolence has been upheld generally in the West through firmer foundations than those circulating our cultural air. A transcendent vision of agape, God’s universal love for all has been its reference point. We participate through grace in this love, and by doing so, we see good in others and in the efforts to do good because of this first love God has for us and the world. The modern moral order is one of working in society for mutual benefit. While we agree as citizens that the modern moral order should organize society for mutual benefit, this implies for some there is no further obligation to “higher” or eternal norms. What prevents the moral from being reduced to the economic? What checks the notion of mutual benefit from being skewed to a privileged few? How can we reconcile a society that calls for a high degree of philanthropic action yet is crippled by a minimum hope in humankind itself and fear humans may destroy the earth on which we rely? The fact that human dignity is the religion of modernity is defensible in the sense that the cry for human dignity has reached such importance today, but does the universal demand for it constitute it as a religion? Does it replace religion? It has no cult and no community of the faithful.10 While the cry for human rights involves interplay among state, civil society and values, certainly religion has and must make a continuing contribution to its establishment in face of dissenting forces. But what difference does religion make?

Is Religion a Choice? In an age of contingency, religion can appear to be one choice among others. However, even moral action and self-respect is linked in the Christian life to awareness of a Divine love and grace. Life is not worthless, according to Christian tradition, but neither is it entirely one’s own achievement; it must therefore be lived with humility.11 The age-old charge that religion “creates” pride in being morally superior to others is fueled by the notion that religion is a choice, like any other choice of value. The context of a consumer society Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion? trans. Alex Skinner (London: Paradigm, 2008), 144. Ibid., 123.

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can feed the illusion that religious identity is one choice among others, a preference for a style of faith, a selection among options.12 On the contrary, Hans Joas argues that the will which responds to religion is distinguishable conceptually from a rational choice between preferences. Faith is itself a state of grace, humans can aspire to it, but we cannot coerce it. Religious faith is based either on traditions internationalized in the process of self-formation or on experiences of self-transcendence.13 An experience of self-transcendence is the experience of being moved beyond the self by another, a situation, a personal recognition of something of which one was previously unaware. In other words, the person is in a new place; experienced as a better self, a truer self, or a hidden self that is not as positive as once thought but is integrated into a fuller sense of self. The will expressed in religious response is one of surrender because religious experience is marked by a type of passivity: one is moved or seized by something, one experiences self-surrender. These experiences require interpretation. While people know they have experienced something, they do not know often what it means. Religious experience is not something which flows from previous cultural or religious interpretive patterns. Rather it calls for continued interpretations. Therefore, generations reinterpret traditions, establish new connections, and devise new, creative articulations, maybe even religious innovations.14 Religion has and continues to be a framework of interpretation of religious experience. Its persistence is mirrored by the core insight it affirms. William James analyses the faith of the religious person not as holding something to be true in a cognitive sense, a belief that might be shaken by discursive argument, but rather as an attitude to reality underpinned by the sure sense that a greater power is present. He compares faith with the vibrancy felt by lovers: “A lover has notoriously this sense of the continuous being of his idol, even when his attention is addressed to other matters and he no longer represents her features. He cannot forget her; she uninterruptedly affects him through and through.”15 The experience is marked by certainty and enlightenment hard to put into words, along with a sense of the beauty of the world that can lead to awe. Joas remarks, “James repeatedly contrasts the condition of faith with the tendency for the color to leak out of the world

See Vincent Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Society (New York: Continuum, 2004). 13 Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 29. 14 Ibid. 15 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 66. 12

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of those suffering melancholy and depression.”16 Conversion and prayer is marked by a non-volitional character, as it is a communication with the power from which the individual’s life force flows. It is a power which cannot be forced, but must graciously reveal itself. However, the source which prompts “dancing to silent music” reveals its presence. Values, on the other hand, and religious values specifically, are not longterm preferences or preferences of a higher order but reflexive standards by which we evaluate our preferences. They are like the “transcendent data” we use to weigh our preferences.17 They are emotionally laden ideas of what is desirable rather than desires as such. These values are developed through important relationships, and they provide important “data” about life and its meaning. Value commitments do not arise from rational-argumentative justifications, but from experiences of self-formation and self-transcendence, from experiences that push people beyond self and contribute to the sense what they have experienced is “good.” Over one’s life course, we have to place faith in others in order to learn from them. We observe, consciously or unconsciously, how their values have brought them satisfaction in life. We take on the practices which form those values in our own lives. In this way we internalize what we have learned, and we try out what we have observed. Our sense of what is “good” therefore is marked by a sense of subjective selfevidence and affective intensity.18 Living the gospel therefore is reflected in the example of the community, ritualized in the liturgy, celebrated in the sacraments, mediated through the church, and anchored in a tradition of witnesses, saints, martyrs, prophets, teachers, theologians, leaders, and advocates for justice. Beyond morality, Christian life is witnessed to by expansion of horizons as to what human life is for, if God is it. The initial religious experience is personal. However, Karl Rahner captures the need for community which arises as a next step. There needs to be an interpretation of what has happened in the experience of being moved by the Real beyond oneself. Faith in God, as personal and mysterious as it is, is always entered into historically, in a time and a place. A consequence of being human is we seek God, pursue mystery through ritual, rites, dogmas, and prayers.19 Religion is necessary, not just because it arises from a felt human need and thus can be dismissed as a need if not felt, as a preference might be. Rather, the only way to enter into one’s own transformation to Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 53. Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, trans. John Drury (New York: Orbis, 1984), 73. 18 Hans Joas, The Genesis of Values, trans. Gregory Moore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 85. 19 Declan Marmion, A Spirituality of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1998), 57. 16 17

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fulfillment, or follow a spiritual path, is in time, in the shaping of one’s own autobiography in community with others. If God shares God’s Self through revelation, Scripture, then we must ask, where is the group in time that lives by this reality.20

What Kind of Religion? Peter Berger’s sociology of religion argues that the mere fact today that the believer experiences so many different kinds of religion, as well as protests there is no need for religion, has created a “cognitive contamination” in the modern mind.21 In modern society a number of cultures often live a close quarters, and encounter one another frequently. What results from this peaceful coexistence of cultures and religions is “cognitive contamination” or a mixture of diverse lifestyles, values, and beliefs. This constant exposure calls into question the assumed truths a person once had, and often leads to a type of relativism—the conclusion that all convictions and values are of equal worth or equally unfounded. Religion in this modern context is no longer a type of inheritance which is a “given” in a person’s life, but rather a choice, a project of the person’s ongoing construction of a meaningful life. Pluralism for Berger leads to secularization, and secularization signals the privatization of religion. Since modern life is made up of an ongoing cross-fertilization of pluralism and secularity, Berger predicts religion will increasingly become more privatized and eventually decline. Berger claims that Christian communities deal with this inevitable situation in four ways. The first approach is one of negotiation; cognitive compromises are made with modernity in order to preserve the core of faith. Some would see this as a seed of liberal theology. The second is a capitulation in which even the core of faith is gone. The third is an attempt to segregate believers from this environment, in a type of sectarian or religious ghetto. The fourth is to engage in a religious crusade to reconquer society in the name of religious tradition.22 None of these scenarios seem to indicate a constructive path for religion in the future. In fact Berger predicted and has since retracted that the twenty-first century would not likely see any major churches or religious communities left, and the only thing which might survive would be small sects of believers resisting worldwide secular culture. “Faith,” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner, Vol. 2 (London: Burns and Oates, 1968), 313. 21 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, Doubleday, 1967). 22 Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 22–6. 20

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Jose Casanova rejects Berger’s thesis and demonstrates the persistence of religion in modern society, but in forms of different relationships between culture, religion, and the state.23 The fact that there are other religions or secular worldviews other than Christianity does not make Christian discipleship impossible. The fact that moderns live in an age of contingency does not jeopardize the development of commitments. But it does influence the nature of the commitments capable of surviving under these conditions. The question which the new situation raises is, if the secularization narrative offers a subtraction theory regarding religion and modernity, as modernity goes up, religion goes down, what kind of religion would a believer not want to subtract? Believers freely choose to live religiously in modern society because they love God and value religion, but what kind of religion? The secularization theory has had such a long “run” in our cultural imagination because it contains a grain of truth. Religion will disappear if it is magical, superficial, illusionary, or based just on external practices to begin with. Faith which lacks formation and depth, and is detached from a true freedom of spirit will not last. However religious faith in the Christian tradition affirms not just having some values but the following of Jesus Christ. This is an invitation to desires or goals which are intrinsically worth fulfilling, yet beyond the capacity of our inner sources alone to bring this fulfillment. We affirm Christianity as religion, not just as an option, but as having a meaning—worth choosing. Faith, as practiced within religion, in this sense is neither useful nor a symptom of weakness or misery, but an opening up of ways of experience. Both believers and nonbelievers experience moments of self-transcendence, but some lack a framework to interpret them. A young doctor goes to Somalia as a volunteer for two years to help with aids patients. One interpretation is she represents the best of the profession, the other is she is stupid and should be getting into practice at home and building her reputation. Interpretation is not without consequence. Specific interpretations provide the precondition for certain experiences. Life today can be so filled with noise, distractions, and the desire for material goods that the question of the deeper value of choices, beyond their consumer or entertainment merit, never really arises. Theologian Bernard Lonergan would say we live at the level of common sense where the business of the moment and patterns of thinking prevent us from raising ultimate questions, or even recognizing their significance. This atmosphere feeds

Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

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the skepticism that there is anything worth pursuing by religious practice.24 Incredulity can also exist regarding the supporting forces in our culture which facilitate that deeper questions are never raised. People feel not belonging to a church leads them free to pursue their own goals and values, freed from the indoctrination of a larger community. The reality may be that the forces of the market and the state really are forming their choices far beyond their awareness. Without a community of contrast in their lives, there is little to buffer the unconscious presence of other cultural influences in their lives. Perhaps their freedom is not as free as they assume. In other words, the will to believe can affect the possibility of belief—as openness to belief has a role. To have certain experiences which lead to belief, one must be willing to believe. To foster a religion you would not want to erase has to arise from a personal will to believe. Second, a religion one would not want to erase has to be followed because one acknowledges a need for salvation. To feel this need, one’s sense of adequacy has to include an awareness of dependency and need for God and others in one’s life. Today there is a heroism of unbelief. Some argue that they have no need for religion since in their view unbelief requires of greater purity of spirit than the weakness of belief. Face the world as it is without the security blanket of God. Human progress and welfare will change the world. We complete ourselves through self-expression and choice. We are not transformed, we simply change. The economic attitude that we “pull ourselves up with our own bootstraps” has a spiritual corollary, I draw from deep within myself and change. Partnering with God has nothing to do with it. Such heroism in a world where its goodness can be contested through experience over time can be a thin cloak in the chill which results.

Languages of Religion Religion therefore cannot be a list of nuggets of transcendent truth that can be detached from those who live them. It needs the witness of a community which carries its ideals in face of the realities of our societies. John Henry Newman once said that belief is like a cable made up of many strands, not like a rod which can be broken. Today we recognize that many nonreligious realities feed the will to believe, to still believe, and to believe again. The witness of a good life is given a second language through religion. A strong religious identity might not be the first language of life for many people who come across our path. Like many of us with a foreign language, we know a few phrases, but are not articulate. The call to self-transcendence to a well Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 13.

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lived life is fostered by family, tradition, and other sources, often without the consciousness of religion. But when religion is practiced as a language of interpretation of meaning, and the meaning of religion is witnessed to in the practices of daily life, then there is a heuristic circle of meaning that fosters a religion you would not want to subtract. Some of the firefighters who went up the stairs in the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11 came from a tradition of public servants that went back generations. Family mediations of tradition in the military, industry, commerce, agriculture, the arts, medicine, education, and others provide similar interpretation of the direction and interpretation of meaningful life, through example. These life experiences are bridges to the divine and in themselves convey a world and values beyond the self. Theologian Bernard Lonergan calls these “forces which promote our development from above,” our families, the institutions, value, education, life models, and culture context which give us a basis from which to start. Religious faith which one would not want to erase has to be based on deepening understandings of these ways God has already provided for the good in people’s lives, and lead them to practices, communities, and involvement which will allow them to respond with greater consciousness and intentionality. People need to be invited into the creeds, codes, and ceremonies of religion which bring to these life experiences the deeper meaning they have in their relationship with the Divine. A religion you would not want to erase has to deal constructively with the problem of evil in this world. For Christians, this means it has to offer the solution that God has provided, not just a technical strategy but one framed in the paschal mystery of Christ. This response is deeper than the moralism of exclusive humanism or simply one which points to the utility of religion in serving human need. It has to be more than a theory or an idea; rather it must release an emotional energy that moves people at the levels of deeds. God’s truth must change our lives, motivating us to a self-sacrificing love and opening us to transforming change.25 It must answer the question, why am I dancing to silent music, and why must I?

Law of the Cross Bernard Lonergan offers a framework for understanding the core of the Christian life, through his explanation of “The Law of the Cross.” God decided to take away the evils of the human race not by an act of power but by Jean Higgins, “Redemption,” in Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 201–21.

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transforming those evils into a supreme good through the working of a just and mysterious law of the cross.26 The scriptures testify to a pattern or “way” of salvation that applies to life today, even though our context is different than biblical time. Sin produces its own evil effects in human life. Scripture witnesses that those evils can be transformed into something beautiful and good, and God blesses this transformation. The law of the cross shows itself in Jesus’s life in the following way—the reality that his suffering and death are the result of sin; his acceptance of that suffering and death out of obedience and love; and the reality he transforms the evils into something morally good. God’s raising him from the dead is the affirmation that God’s love for the world was mirrored in Jesus’s own. What happened in Christ’s life is a general law for all who follow the Christian life. A religion which you would not want to erase responds to those who dismiss Christianity with the charge it denies the joys of human fulfillment, glorifies human suffering, or as Nietzsche claims, is “a religion of slaves.” It differs from those who see Christianity as simply distracting people from the responsibility to solve the problems of their moment in history, as Marx’s “opium of the people.” Paradoxically, these critics of religion point to the direction a religion you would not want to erase must take. The practice of religion cannot be reduced to moralism or the total self-reliance of exclusive humanism with religious trappings. It must have the markers which ground it in the transcendent love of God. The Reign of God in human affairs entails mercy as the Father is merciful, love of enemies, and forgiveness. The law of the cross is only for those with the freedom of spirit to respond and adopt it as the law of their lives, as disciples of Jesus Christ. It is the deepest exercise of their freedom, to turn themselves toward God. The intelligibility of the mystery of redemption is the victory of God over evil in history precisely through the absorption and elevation of the plane of living that is only possible through this grace. The result is not just the transformation of the person, but the transformation of the world, redemption operative in history.27 This does not mean that a religion you would not want to erase and the goals of human flourishing promoted by exclusive humanism are not compatible. In the midst of promotion of human flourishing there is even a deeper meaning available, and a more profound support offered to promote investment in this struggle—the possibility of union with God. The matter Bernard Lonergan, S.J., De Verbo Incarnato, 524, as quoted in Vernon Gregson, “Theological Method and Theological Collaboration II,” in Desires of the Human Heart, 112. 27 See: Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), 152–68. 26

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of the return of good for evil transforms the evils of the human race. People cope with life affected by original sin, burdened by actual sins—personal sin and the wounds of being sinned-against—life in situations entangled in the effects of sin, what the tradition calls the sin of the world. The capacity not to return evil for evil but to shift through grace the entire plane on which human relations unfolds, transforms life alienated from God, fragmented and divided both individually and socially. Religion which promotes and strengthens such a manner of life not only provides hope for the next life but draws people into the quality of relations in divine life which aids concrete manifestations of love in the systems in which life occurs. God’s gift to human history is this supreme Good which transcends history and our notions of human flourishing. This project of life requires a communal response. A religion which you would not want to erase calls Christian communities to worship, prayer and socially transformative action; to engage in works which create the new psychic and social integrations needed in our secular age.

The Church in a Religion You Would not Want to Erase A religion which you would not want to erase requires an open and dialogical church, not a closed system. While each Christian communion must have an institutional identity and conscience in the midst of secular society, this identity needs to be expressed differently than in previous periods of history. Many might ask, does the public witness of the Christian life have any added value or distinguishing characteristic today? Karl Rahner suggests that the public witness of Christian virtue is significant as a distinguishing element of the work of the Spirit, as the manifestation of gifts of grace for the common good, or charism, in the Christian community. This orientation of Christian virtue for the common good is one outward sign of the nature of the church as a society of revelation, of the creed, of witness, and of mission.28 Beyond the goals of exclusive humanism, the path of conversion to the needs of the other in the Christian life has value not only along the path of human flourishing but in witness to the holiness of the church. The church, who bears witness to her own nature as one who both demands faith and provides the basis for it, must exhibit this identity in its Karl Rahner, “Observations on the Factor of the Charismatic in the Church,” Theological Investigations, XII (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 83.

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interactions with secular society.29 Rather than one who has all the answers, she must be in dialogue with society as a whole to meet the problems which are common in each society. The church must bear witness to the truth of the gospel in a manner which witnesses that the Spirit of God continues to enable the holiness of life specific to the challenges facing a particular community. As an agent of hope, the church is called to enter into dialogue with those in society with whom it has differences both in worldview and in interests. It does so restricting itself to the peaceful resolution of conflicts through agreed upon methods of how to proceed. Differences in this manner of dialogue therefore become no longer a reason for conflict itself; rather the rules of how to proceed and the willingness to keep them become a contribution in themselves to peace in a society.30 In a society where difference becomes a door to tribalism and violence, this essential witness of the church is a witness to transcendence and essential to its mission and identity. John Paul II cautioned that failure to search for the truth of human dignity in its transcendent and permanent nature undermines the vision need for essential political conditions in our world. Only a belief in the transcendent nature of human life, for instance, grounds openness in public administration, the rejection of illicit means in order to gain or increase power, respect for the rights of political adversaries and others.31 The core institutions of religious belief find new meaning in constructive dialogues and effective movements of advocacy which foster human dignity and justify human rights.32 At the same time such witness in the church fosters the individualization of religion necessary in an age of contingency. In a climate of belief and unbelief Christian response goes beyond joining a group and resting simply on the power of association; another response of faith is needed. Rahner claims, “In such a situation the lonely responsibility of the individual in his decision of faith is necessary and required in a way much more radical than it was in former times.”33 The Christian must make a decision of faith, at times contrary to public opinion. Not even the public It is acknowledged that in light of the international scale of the sexual abuse crisis the church struggles to fulfill its primary mission. 30 Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 31. Joas here refers to this norm as “proceduralization.” One can see how a triumphal or dictatorial approach would militate against this. On the other hand, a conformist denial of key institutional values would also militate against the “added value” possible to be offered by the church. 31 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), no. 101:151. 32 Judith A. Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2010), 147–70. 33 Rahner, “The Spirituality of the Church of the Future,” 149. 29

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opinion of the church sustains such a solitary decision; rather the church itself is sustained also by individual decisions of faith, lived out of a wholly personal experience of God and God’s Spirit. This type of religious practice, mysticism of the ordinary life, is not the mysticism reserved for the saints and those with privileged spiritual experience. Rather it is a genuine experience of God arising from the heart of existence, and open to all people of faith. A church in a religion which you would not want to erase is therefore not only an open and dialogical one but one who searches with all people of good will for common values. People of different value traditions search for what they have in common rather than what keeps them in part. Hans Joas comments, “Thus in dialogue with one another, every world religion can, for example, develop its own potential to justify human rights and the ideas of universal human dignity.”34 In this way, the church witnesses to the presence of God not just as one mystery among others, as the Mystery which undergirds all life, who can never be fully known or grasped: “The concept of God is not a grasp of God by which a person masters the mystery, but it is letting oneself be grasped by the mystery which is present and yet always withdrawing itself.”35 For Christians, Rahner sees this reality of mystery as the ground of all those elements we see as distinctive elements of church practice: the necessity of catechesis, worship, study of Scripture, and focus on church teaching. These resources are for a purpose; through them a person is able to interpret his or her experience of God, and meet God in Jesus Christ in the church without dismissing the Spirit who moves beyond it in love for the world. The church in a religion which you would not want to erase fosters the means necessary to approximate to an ever greater degree the deep modern moral ideal of universal benevolence. In the words of the Our Father, the fulfillment of the prayer “thy Kingdom come” is not just in the next life, but in this one. Taylor remarks that one of the lacunae of the modern age is modern people believe they hold in a type of “exceptionalism” among the generations of humankind. They have been freed from the constraints of the magical thinking of religion and adopted an ethic one ought not to believe what one has insufficient evidence for. They, because of responsible rational freedom, are up to the challenge to meet the demands of human progress and welfare as well as the sacrifices involved with human betterment. They are simply more courageous and morally solicitous than those of past generations. Their

Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 32. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), 54.

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own powers of disengaged reason and creative imagination can meet the demands of universal justice and benevolence in a globalized world.36 Yet the Judeo-Christian tradition only finds response to the challenge of universal concern through grace. While all the abovementioned forces are natural and spontaneous, they simply locate the substitute for grace in the inner impulse of nature.37 For Christians it is grace and nature, our gifts and God’s ability to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, which is the answer. It seems that the church in a religion you would not want to erase would “mind the gap” in modern life where its ideals outstretch the moral sources of their realization.

New Challenges of an Age of Contingency An age of contingency confronts people with situations which are new, which do not follow a pattern of living in more traditional periods where social conformity held sway. Today people have to find out what they wish to do, should do, and are able to do on almost a daily basis. They not only have to recognize values but create a value framework in which to live. A new type of empathy is required to attend to the unique situation of the “other” in the pluralistic situations of our day. Race, class, and gender are at the heart of much human suffering. At the same time, communication failure, greed, lust for power, and possessiveness cripple efforts for change. Religion can fuel the personal and communal energies necessary to offer sustained attention to the sacrifices needed to reach modern ideals for ourselves and for the world. A religious vision has a sense of sin which can account for the capacity and range of human destructiveness, beyond the particular alienation which political systems can define. Religion has a language of grace which can go beyond human efforts alone to create the necessary change. Above all, religion speaks of the heart necessary to make a difference in this world. Pope Francis reminds the world that this is a time where Mercy especially is a lens on the meaning of the gospel. Today we can take on a matrix of life in which the expectations of our lives so fill the day that attention to suffering beyond the personal is dulled. The church can take on this same attitude. We can act as if there is no need of God since the world in which we live works relatively well, even amid difficulties. Belief in rational society or technological power blocks any felt need for religion beyond its function to mark an event of life or death, as Taylor, The Secular Age, 539–93. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), 410–13.

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custom might direct. Religion in this sense becomes solely therapeutic, aimed only at overcoming personal suffering or assuring personal happiness and prosperity. Such a religion is humanly created, fills a social need, but does not embrace a religious posture. In an age of contingency it is possible to live in an elective universe where humans can fill all needs without a deity. Religion is seen as unnecessary or weak, and often a convenient and culturally correct one is preferred. A church based on such practice is incapable of representing the gospel or challenge its members. Its vision of human flourishing is often limited to its own operations, and not the needs of every human being.38 A religion you would not want to erase is one which maintains the vision that the universal is embedded in the particular and the particular features of a culture can be judged in the light of the universal. Black theologian James Cone comments on the role religion has in overcoming the impasse of human finitude and apathy before the ideals of our modern age through its witness to transcendence. Religion must be able to point to something in its living that is not simply a religious legitimation of the values of the society in which it lives.39 A church which you would not want to erase has to provide ways for people to keep responding in meaningful ways in experiences that make a difference. By choosing to involve themselves in situations which transcend the limits of societal attention to suffering, they initiate and create situations, perhaps not full answers to our societal problems, but partial solutions. The church can provide relationships and structures where such investment can be reinforced today in new ways, beyond the boundaries of the past to help people see what they contribute in secular society through the lens of the gospel.40 Perhaps one of the more contentious claims of critics of religion is their portrayal of religion fundamentally at odds with modern life. In this view, religion denies the joys of human fulfillment. It offers an either-or approach to life: choose the spiritual or the material. Mortify yourself regarding the ordinary joys of human living. Live only for heaven and miss what this life can offer. In order to appear religious, set ideals low enough that the joys of this life are not jeopardized and in the end practice a religion which is simply a desire to spiritualize values which can be found elsewhere, and more realistically achieved. Chapter 5 will examine these claims and how they nuance the practice of Christian discipleship today. Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 53; and see also 43. 39 James E. Cone, Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology (Grand Rapid, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 118. 40 Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows, 191–7. Pope Francis’s vision of the church as a polyhedron suggests such a change. 38

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5

The Way of Jesus and Human Flourishing Salvation and Atonement

For Christians, Jesus Christ is not a superagent who performs and makes possible our salvation, but is the very locus of salvation itself. Since the early church, the mystery of who is the Jesus of the Gospels and how he brought about our salvation has been at the center of Christian reflection. The second letter of Peter claims that salvation consists in our existing in the immediate presence of God, partaking in his very life and even nature (1:4). But how does the presence, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ impact human reality in the Christian perspective? How can Christians claim that Jesus not only effects our salvation but is our salvation? The question of Jesus and our salvation takes a unique turn in secular society. The world of exclusive humanism does not sense a need for salvation; union with God is not part of human flourishing. A world of “enchantment” which conveyed meaning beyond what human minds attribute to it does not exist for many moderns. The waning of a sense of the Great Chain of being, which provided the “givenness” of an ordered world leaves people searching for ways to find meaning. For others, knowledge of this world unveils an excess, a depth beyond the facts, which anchors them in strong evaluations which can be universally shared, and gives sense to life. Those for whom the answers of exclusive humanism are not enough, and the models of the past unconvincing, search for a re-enchantment which responds to modern sensibilities, and is centered in the faith of the Christian tradition.1 Understanding the Christian doctrines of “salvation” or “atonement”— the making us right with God—in terms that speak to the modern person is important to this search. Both doctrines address a process and a state of being in the Christian life. For a Christian, being created is not something which only defines human existence in relationship with God, others, and creation, Christians hold that humans are constantly being created. Human beings are Charles Taylor, “Disenchantment-Re-enchantment,” in Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 300.

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neither self-explanatory nor self-sufficient. Human existence is coexistence, as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, “my consciousness and feeling of myself . . . is incommunicable by any means to another man.”2 The irreducibility of every human is a consequence of being created in the image and likeness of God. While past descriptions of the person focused on human faculties, intellect and will, their use, speculative or practical intellect, and their activity, practical execution, or theoretical investigation, today people are more aware of the role that freedom plays in making a person what they are to be. Men and women can build up or destroy their character, can achieve a type of human authenticity, or can fail at that task. The Christian vision of creation, fall, and redemption is an icon of that interior drama which goes on in the heart of each believer and each community. These beliefs frame an understanding of the human person as a center of freedom, essentially relational, and hearers of something beyond the self. At the “radical” core of the human person is a dynamic for self-transcendence, through it a person structures and constitutes themselves. Yet the path of this transcendence is dialogical. Revelation conveys the goals of human life, life in union with God, others, and creation. Our inherent drive for meaning and value is central to our path to know, love, and serve God. For Christians, the meaning of salvation and atonement is fundamental to understanding human flourishing. These core realities in Christianity have a long and complex history in the tradition. They also carry misunderstandings and historical distortions which have impacted the practice of Christian spirituality. It is not always clear to even the practicing Christian just how Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection are connected to their salvation or how they connect themselves to this mystery.3 This confusion is compounded by living in the cross pressures of modern society and its general sense of metaphysical naturalism.

The Search for Transcendence Taylor defines metaphysical naturalism as the belief in modern culture that reality is only a matter of natural forces and nothing exists beyond the natural

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., A Hopkins Reader: Selections from the Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. and Intro. John Pick (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1966), 396. 3 This is the import of the work by Cynthia S. W. Crysdale, Transformed Lives: Making Sense of Atonement Today (New York: Seabury, 2016). 2

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world.4 Both believers and unbelievers share this cultural background; and it forms the setting for believers to discover how their lives have an intrinsic relation to its transcendent source. The spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola offered insight into this essential question in the 1500s. Ignatius sees the human person in the image of God, most like its creator in the use of his or her freedom.5 Freedom enables the person to imprint on the world the image of God which is within them, through the love which makes God apparent.6 Unlike exclusive humanism, Ignatius claims that through grace, human freedom attains this capacity. Rather than grace limiting human freedom and autonomy, as Enlightenment thinkers charged, Ignatius affirmed that when God is the foundation of the person, both God and the person maintain their appropriate autonomy. The Enlightenment rejected this view. Thinkers charged that any authentic philosophy should either dispense with faith altogether or force religion to ground its beliefs in a fideism outside the “limits of reason alone.” However, without a link between faith and reason, how can God reveal and how can humans discern God’s meaning? How can humans and God share life?

Nature and Grace The Christian understanding of nature and grace wrestles with this divide. The classical solution is grace builds on nature. Augustine framed human nature as not a stand-alone reality; it is created for divine intimacy. His Confessions begins with, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”7 Christian theology tells the story of the divine-human relationship as one of creation, fall, and redemption, divine grace enlarging the human desire for good and the freedom to pursue it. The scholastics acknowledged that human creatures have an intrinsic capacity for intimacy with God and a corresponding desire for it—that is, grace both presupposes and builds on nature.8 Contemporary theologians do not present human nature in a static, or essentialist manner.9 He characterizes modern culture in this way in Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 5 James J. Connor, S.J. and Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center, The Dynamism of Desire: Bernard J.F. Lonergan on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006). 6 Stephen M. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence: An Essay on Nature, Grace and Modernity (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 9–39. 7 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. F. J. Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943), 3, Book One, 1 8 See Summa Theologica, I 1.8 ad 2; 6.1 ad 2; I-II 99.2 ad 1. 9 Brian Dolan, “Nature,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, eds. Joseph A. Komonchak et al. (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), 710–13. 4

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The nature of God, of Jesus Christ, the Son made flesh or of other humans all are depicted as dynamic and open to relationships. Images of each are offered with the free and living, giving, receiving, and sharing sheer gratuity and joy of own God’s life.10 Grace is God’s gift of Godself. It is the divine calling of human nature to achieve its highest vitality under the dynamism of being a responding person living through grace. In this understanding, person and nature are interacting dimensions of the human being, which is the capacity for God.

The Nova Effect Taylor claims there has been a decoupling of grace and nature in the modern age. Instead of the language of nature and grace, Taylor refers to the language of fullness. The drive toward transcendence exists today in human experience, but it remains buffeted by a wide range of interpretations. Taylor puts it this way: We all see our lives, and/or the space wherein we live our lives, as having a certain moral/spiritual shape. Somewhere, in some activity, or condition, lies a fullness, a richness, that is, in that place (activity or condition), life is fuller, richer, deeper, more worthwhile, more admirable, more what it should be.11

The Christian believer finds this fullness ultimately in God, although they share the life goals of “fullness” of society: health, family, education, career, and the like. For the unbeliever, the source of these same goals may be found in Nature, in one’s own inner depths or in both. What is common for both the believer and unbeliever is the power which moves one toward a greater realization of this fulfillment is often challenged by an experience which does not fit into one’s current interpretation. Life throws us a curve, and what results is an experience of exile. Whatever interpretation we have placed on life, or of its fullness, or the power of its source, is contradicted. These contradictions create a situation of tension. Some lives exhibit fullness on another basis; or an alternative model of fullness draws one away from a previous path. Taylor charges that moderns live their lives in a condition of doubt and uncertainty, in a cross pressure of transcendence and immanence. He calls this the “nova See Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016). 11 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 5–19 at 5. 10

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effect” of modern living. An explosion of ethical, religious, and atheistic options surrounds us with explanations of a meaningful life. In our secular age, the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable and imaginable for masses of people. This is the crucial link between secularity and a self-sufficing humanism. Ultimately when religion responds to the challenge of transcendence, it has to account for a vision of life as going beyond the bounds of its “natural scope” between birth and death, an offer a transformation beyond merely human perfection.12 This is a tall order. For the Christian, it is even more important that their understanding of the meaning of salvation in the Christian life is well grounded. Today Christian faith and spirituality must answer the claims of atheism and the trend to locate technical knowledge as the broker of truth, claiming anything which cannot be proved in terms of this style of thinking is meaningless. It is interesting to note that mysticism, a phenomenon which in the past was associated with the spiritual elite, a minority experience, is named by Rahner as key to the future of the church.13 By contrast, Taylor sees exclusive humanism, the core which was held only among the elite in times past, is now a probable understanding of human life for the masses.14 While these are generalities, they indicate the tremendous shift in the conditions of belief which has occurred. Ideas such as atonement, sacrifice, the cross, redemption, and mortification if not rightly understood can seem like arguments for the mutilation of humanity as a necessary response to the reality of a divinity. In the following we hope to address these areas with the help of theologians who have reflected at length on these mysteries. By looking at the nature of dualism, a brief history of atonement thinking, as well as areas of human experience which can lead to the experience of transcendence, we hope to address some vital aspects of this complex question. The aim is to deepen understanding of our beginning assertion that Jesus Christ is not a superagent who performs and makes possible our salvation, but is the very locus of salvation itself.

Dualism Various forms of philosophical and religious dualism were influential both outside Christianity and among certain groups of Christians since Ibid., 20. Karl Rahner, “The Spirituality of the Church of the Future,” in Theological Investigations, 20 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981), 148. 14 Charles Taylor, The Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 18. 12 13

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the beginning. Dualistic thinking impacted understanding of what was accomplished in the atonement achieved by Jesus Christ on the cross. One group that practiced this dualistic tendency was the Gnostics. Gnosticism is the teaching based on Gnosis (knowledge), the knowledge of transcendence arrived at by the way of interior intuitive means. It arose during the time of the first- and second-century church. It formed a religious movement which claimed that salvation was based on secret knowledge conveyed to the elect by a heavenly revealer.15 Gnostic “knowledge” set Gnostics apart from others whose faith was placed in “public” scriptures as the Jewish Law, the canonical Christian gospels, or the well-known teachings of Greek philosophers. Gnostic teachers claimed that they, not the bishops, possessed the secret revelations which Jesus communicated to individual disciples after his resurrection. Only Gnostics would be saved, because only they would be incorporated into the heavenly “church.”16 Gnostics had a dualistic view of the world. They posited two absolute philosophical principles; one that was the source of goodness/light and the other that was the origin of darkness and evil.17 These metaphysical principles were hostile to each other. In the gnostic view, the created world emerged because a flaw or fall happened in the heavenly realm before the earth was created. Because of this mishap the material world was cast in a negative light. Instead of being created good, as the Hebrew scripture testifies, the earthly world was demon-ruled by a Demiurge, a lower-level heavenly being-cast out of the heavenly abode. Earth was created as a prison to keep humanity from discovering the true divine world above this one. Human nature mirrors the duality found in the world: part made by the false creator Demiurge and part consists of the light of the True God. Gnostics argued that most humans, excluding themselves, are ignorant of the divine spark within them. Some are even incapable of a heavenly destiny, as they are simply “material” beings ruled by passions and the evil demonic god who dominates the world of matter. Only Gnostics through their superior knowledge were going to reach salvation. Christian writers rejected the gnostic claim that creation is the instrument of a malicious god. The gnostic argument that only they represented “authoritative revelation” was also refuted by the church fathers, who wrote Pheme Perkins, “Gnosticism,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, 421–3 at 421. Pope Francis refers to modern Gnosticism as “a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism” that shuts the door to God and a truly transformative reception of the Gospel. Pope Francis, Gaudete et Exsultate (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2018), 35. 17 See Robin Ryan, Jesus and Salvation: Soundings in the Christian Tradition and Contemporary Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), 51–4. I borrow from Ryan’s presentation of how the early church in its soteriology responded to dualism. 15 16

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extensively against the Gnostics. There were no “secret meanings” buried in the New Testament writings which had to be revealed by the secret knowledge of a gnostic teacher. By the end of the second century, the various gospels and revelations which were put forward by Gnostics as true tradition were all rejected by the church. The church set the canon of the New Testament, only the “four gospels” contain apostolic tradition. While Gnostics argued that their understanding of salvation represents the true meaning of Christianity, their dual nature of the world and of the human being clearly marked their views incompatible with the gospel message. We find gnostic imagery in John and Paul, which shows that early Christianity grew in the same cultural milieu as Gnosticism, yet fashioned its identity uniquely in a nondualistic way. As Robin Ryan puts it, “In Christ, the Word of God truly became flesh (John 1:14) and thus the material world was the place where God’s saving purposes were accomplished. The world of the flesh and spirit is the fitting realm for the Son of God to embrace in the incarnation”18 The church in the early controversies regarding the meaning of Jesus Christ and his role in salvation had to counter a dualistic worldview. Dualism obscured the meaning of creation by one creator and Christ’s identity as proclaimed in the gospels. The early Christian writers demonstrate how the doctrines of creation, incarnation, and redemption are intertwined; the meaning of Jesus Christ and his role in our salvation has to be distinguished from a dualistic worldview in order to proclaim the Jesus Christ of the gospels. Dualistic thinking gave rise to a docetic view of Jesus Christ, the Greek term “to seem or to appear.” Docetism held that Jesus Christ only seemed human; he only had the semblance of humanity while remaining essentially only divine. The humanity of Jesus and his suffering and death were only an appearance: “The crucifixion was simply a deception put over on the demonic powers and their associates in this world. They nailed an empty body, ‘Jesus,’ to the cross. The spiritual Christ has already left the body and in some gnostic accounts stands by laughing.”19 Jesus had the human experiences as accounted in the gospels, including suffering, while Christ was not implicated in such experiences.20 The heavenly Christ never experienced the passions of the material body; there was no bodily resurrection, as such a material reality of a body can never become part of the heavenly world. The crucifixion was not the means of salvation; rather salvation came through revealed knowledge which unites the soul with its heavenly counterpart, thus one can follow the redeemer out of this world. Ibid., 53. Perkins, “Gnosticism,” 422. 20 Robin Ryan, C.P., God and the Mystery of Human Suffering: A Theological Conversation Across the Ages (New York: Paulist Press, 2011), 95. 18 19

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For the Gnostics worship of a crucified Christ was untenable, “In her worship of the Crucified the church wanted to make one thing clear: God is faithful to his redemptive purposes in history even if that means assuming fragile humanity and dying the death of a slave on the cross.”21 The church in her councils and through her leadership and writers sought to keep a balance between the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. Their struggle to express the full meaning of the incarnation comes down to us in the Apostles and Nicene creeds. They insisted upon the humanity of Jesus, the effectiveness of his death as atonement, the resurrection of the body, the adequacy of the canonical writings as revelation, the effectiveness of the sacraments, and the possibility of salvation for all believers rather than of the elite who possessed “knowledge.” Theological interpretation of the meaning of Jesus Christ in our salvation sought to keep this core balance while communicating it within the thought systems of the people of their times.

Anselm and Atonement Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) reflected on the mystery of salvation for people who lived in a feudal structure. There were strict lines of separation between the ranks of serfs, knights, and lords in the feudal society. The modern game of chess models this social structure. A debt owed to another could only be fulfilled by someone of equal rank. A serf could not repay a debt to a lord, without the mediation of someone of equal rank to the person offended. In such a climate the truth that Jesus atoned for our sins, key to the New Testament testimony, had to be explained. Belief in Satan and demons was widespread in the early centuries of the church. The Synoptic gospels depict Jesus as tempted by Satan, as well as casting devils out of people, in combat with the forces of evil that rob men and women of life. Many who came before Anselm characterized Christ’s death on the cross as a ransom paid to the devil who held humankind hostage.22 Anselm countered this approach saying Satan was not due any satisfaction for the sins of humanity. The only party wronged by human sin was God, who is holy and infinite. This debt could not simply be overcome through penance or by the fact that Jesus became human in the Incarnation, as was held by some early thinkers in the church. Paul Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004) as quoted, ibid., 95. 22 The notion of ransom was well understood by people of the time in its relationship to the practices of slavery. 21

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Anselm thought within the political-social context of the legality of the feudal order. Only someone who was also infinite and holy, Jesus Christ, could satisfy that debt. Jesus Christ had to willingly sacrifice himself, as the sinless God-man, in order to fulfill this debt. By dying on the cross, Jesus restored the order in creation which was disrupted by the sin of Adam. This formulation is known as the satisfaction theory. Anselm’s formulation has been significant and influential in Christian life. Because of its legalistic stress on redemption as satisfaction, it has also clouded the deeper mystery conveyed by the scriptures, and is hard to understand for someone who lives outside the feudal order. Anselm’s formulation was sounder than the pedagogy which followed. “Catechesis” of the redemption tended to portray the rift between God and humanity, as God being upset with humanity because of their sin, and receiving satisfaction of “hurt feelings” from Jesus’s suffering in the passion. This certainly portrays God in rather questionable terms, and certainly not as a loving God who from the beginning desired the reconciliation of humanity with Godself. Does God derive pleasure or satisfaction from death and suffering? This God appears more concerned about slights to God’s own dignity than the sufferings of a death-filled world. Thomas Aquinas altered this notion of satisfaction. Thomas brings into the center of his conception of the redemption Christ’s active personal love that embraced his whole life. All the activities and mysteries of Jesus’s life are redemptive: incarnation, life, ministry, passion, death, and resurrection. This love was especially manifest in the passion of his crucifixion. Jesus saved us because his love was greater than the hate out of which he was crucified. It was not his physical suffering which was meritorious but the love behind it. Because of the superabundance of his love, Jesus merited redemption for those united with him in love.23 Christians have pondered for centuries how Jesus represented all humanity in the cross and resurrection, and how Christ substituted for humankind in his suffering and death. Jesus is depicted as taking the place of humans by bearing the guilt and suffering humans deserved. Jesus does this on our behalf. Luther describes this as a “happy exchange”; Christ bears our sin and we in exchange share his righteousness. Calvin used the prism of criminal law. Christ, as a substitute for humans who have broken God’s law, submitted to suffer the due punishment for sin. Vicarious satisfaction and penal substitution were key to these traditional understandings which have shaped Christian practice. See Francis Schussler Fiorenza, “Redemption,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, 836– 51, at 843.

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Modern theology has reacted to in inability of these images to meet the modern spiritual needs to relate redemption, relationship to Christ, the Christian community, and the world. Criticisms of the traditional theory have taken several directions. Some criticize theories of redemption as “magical.” They convey a union of God with men and women which offer salvation automatically, without any subjective response on the part of human beings. Others from a black, feminist, pacifist, or ecological concern question how people can name themselves as active Christians, saved by Jesus Christ, yet not bring any critical bearing on these major rejections of care of the other or the cosmos. Does the meaning of salvation in Christ carry any obligation in these areas? Is a personal notion of salvation an adequate interpretation of the New Testament witness to salvation in Christ, how about its relationship to nature, human relationships, and the cosmos? Feminist theologians question if atonement theology which hinges on suffering or punishment as the central cause of salvation promotes concrete abusive practices.24 Others ask how the heart of the gospel can incorporate violence as the solution to the problem of evil and sin?25 Those who seek to retrieve the political and social images of redemption within the tradition raise other questions. They assert human history is a history of suffering and guilt. What moderns call the history of progress is actually a history of victims, who remain invisible unless the vision provided by the meaning of redemption evokes solidarity and remembrance of those forgotten, those on the underside of history. They argue there is no theoretical solution that can unify suffering, history, and redemption except a concrete following of Christ.26 A memory of Jesus’s suffering provides an interpretive frame to transcend the focus on the privileged of history rather than its victims. Beyond these controversies, moderns ask, how can something which happened long ago affect today? How can we as moderns connect to this core message of Christianity, that through Christ we are saved, when secular culture itself professes we have no need of this redemption? These questions only approach rather than exhaust the contemporary search to create new For a response to this concern see: Kathryn Tanner, “Incarnation, Cross and Sacrifice: A Feminist-Inspired Reappraisal,” Anglican Theological Review, vol. 86, no. 1 (2004), 35–56. 25 J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011). 26 Johannes Metz, Theology of the World (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971). He argues that the history of the person of Jesus Christ does illumine for us the question of our relationship to the world. Metz reminds Christians that Christian faithfulness is neither a self-initiated project nor a flight from this world. Rather the eschatological dimension of Christ’s redemption means God gives a future to all the fragments of love and meaning they seek to bring into the world. The cross is involved not only in the energy it takes to use our power for good but also when humans are impotent in the face of suffering. 24

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ways to understand the work of Christ in salvation history.27 A response to these concerns has to return to the scriptural testimony to the meaning of the redemption in order to retrieve from it direction to the interpretation of this mystery today.

Scriptural Testimony and Human Experience If transcendence is the experience of being drawn beyond one’s present state, being met by a reality beyond one’s own doing, and religiously understood as movement toward the mystery which grounds one’s life, is it possible to speak of doors to this experience? Scripture testifies that when people met Jesus of Nazareth, they were touched at this level of their lives. While they may have been attracted to how Jesus preached, “he speaks with authority, not like the scribes”; or his miracles, “who is this who makes the lame walk and the blind see”; or how he fed the multitudes, “they remembered the loaves,” the core experience of Jesus was in him they discovered salvation from God.28 Jesus did not want people to just be drawn to his person or his deeds, he wanted them to know that the Kingdom of God had come upon them through him— this was the experience of salvation and the focus of his life and ministry. Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx claims that this experience began with an encounter.29 From this encounter, people were led to the meaning of salvation in their lives. Salvation, for Schillebeeckx, is experienced as salvation from something negative—a condition or a reality—and salvation for something—a positive way of being and living. The classical way of understanding this movement is a freedom from sin. Since Vatican II, freedom is also understood as a drive to better the conditions of human life (GS 30). The salvation brought to us by Jesus Christ is meant to free us from all forms of alienation, whether social, economic, or political. The council states that we should not reduce the salvation brought by Christ simply to an impetus for social reform, but we should find in its freedom the commitment to social responsibility.30 This suggests that the encounter with the presence of Jesus Christ today is multidimensional. It is not just at the level of meaning, nor at the level of freedom from sin and concern about the afterlife, nor can Crysdale, Transformed Lives, 1–9. Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 25. 29 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 19. 30 “Earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom. Nevertheless, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the kingdom of God.” Gaudium et Spes, 39. 27 28

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it be reduced only to action for social justice. It is a “thick” encounter with many faces. As a thought experiment, let us explore three dimensions of this encounter, as doors to our awareness of call to transcendence. Let us examine how the biblical testimony testifies to the content of God’s saving action in our lives in regard to them. The scriptures testify that God in Jesus initiates us into something new, and our openness to this newness is key to our participation in God’s gift of salvation. For those of us who cannot meet Jesus on the street, who do not have the experience which is noted in 1 John 1–2, “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-this life was revealed”; we need to turn to experiences we do have in modern life which lead to this important encounter with our salvation.31

Gratitude and Happiness Life offers us times of happiness and gratitude for it. Friendship, health and healing, material sufficiency, peace, time with family and friends, experiences of the beauty of nature, participation in the arts and culture, broadening times of travel and new relationships bless many lives. “Bookmark” experiences of graduations, weddings, births, vacations, professional and academic achievements all can open the door to a wonder at the goodness of life. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar claims the meaning of Christian revelation is opened to us through how God communicates with us through experiences of beauty, goodness, and truth. These experiences are doors to “the perception of the divine self-manifestation.” The spiritual capacity to find the divine, especially to see God in the person of Jesus Christ and his Spirit in them, comes through grace. The response of faith in these experiences allows grace to enliven a connaturality with divine realities, deepens a taste for God, and becomes the basis of a correct discernment of spirits.32 Theologian Karl Rahner claims that human beings meet God in the experiences of everyday existence, as they learn to listen for the possible Self-manifestation of God, as communicating with them in human terms.33 Religious faith is connected to a human search for meaning, not only of one’s life but of all of life. In his terms, the experience of faith in the Spirit In the following, I draw from Ryan’s work with Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord and his elaboration of the various theologies of salvation found in the New Testament. See: Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 38–47. 32 See Avery Dulles, S.J., The Assurance of Things Hoped For: A Theology of Christian Faith (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 147–51 at 149. 33 Stephen Duffy, The Graced Horizon (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 209. 31

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of God is the positive and unconditional acceptance of one’s own existence as meaningful and open to a final fulfillment, “which we call God.”34 No one comes to religious faith simply through the drives of human life. Religious faith is a gift, not a personal achievement. Rahner describes God communicating in grace within the structure of human knowing and loving, which is limited, yet open to what is ultimate.35 The desire to acknowledge the mystery which ties our lives together and provides the deeper stream in the current of our years is part of the gift of salvation, as living in union with God. At the heart of this experience is a sense of “gift”—while our effort to avail ourselves of the good things of life is essential to their reception—at another level, we also as humans experience things could be otherwise. The contingency of being human sparks gratitude—we know we do not produce all the goodness which comes to us. Sociologist Hans Joas claims there are human experiences of selftranscendence, which are not identical to religious experience or experiences of the divine, yet are bridges to the divine. They convey a world beyond the self: a world not entirely under our control.36 There can be a sense of fusion with nature, a conversation with another which goes beyond small talk, giving one the feeling of being “really understood” at a deep level. We move beyond the boundaries of self where some part of oneself is left in truth with another. A deeper experience is “falling in love,” a strong feeling of closeness of being drawn to another, a recognition of oneself in the other, of acceptance by the other. One is drawn not just to another’s qualities but a deep sense of the whole person. We can feel a sense of obligation to another, be moved in compassion by their need, and find ourselves in a new place. Life moves us beyond ourselves.37 The various theologies of salvation found in the New Testament offer us a good idea of its understanding of what redemption through Christ Jesus is from and what it is for.38 Theologian Paul Tillich claims revelation is not the uncovering of information, rather the unfolding of a relationship. For this reason, it is possible to bring to the New Testament testimony our own experience and derive its deeper meaning. Revelation mediates to us the

Karl Rahner, “The Certainty of Faith,” in The Practice of Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 32. 35 See Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, 151–5. 36 Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion? trans. Alex Skinner (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 7–11. 37 These deeper experiences also are involved in the human experience of “calling.” See Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), 87–113. 38 Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, 477. 34

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mystery of God’s love and promise for the world. In this sense, it is not data that we might easily gather by our own rational and scientific efforts.39 In the following we will explore how all the themes presented in the New Testament concerning redemption speak to a core human experience and need. None of them can be omitted from a contemporary understanding of salvation, because they no longer apply to the modern self. We will begin by asking how the experience of gratitude and happiness finds a response in these early Christian perspectives on salvation.

New Testament and Gratitude and Happiness The testimony of Christian scriptures regarding the meaning of salvation cannot be contained in our brief reflection. However, we can draw closer to how followers of Jesus experienced the presence and power of God in Jesus ministry, death, and resurrection by bringing our own interpretative experiences to this the New Testament witness. Key to the reading of this testimony is it is not the case that God had to be reconciled to humanity or to the world: “The saving act of Jesus is not accomplished over against God but is from God, the God who has made (and continues to make) the wellbeing of humanity God’s own deepest concern.”40 Jesus is God’s countenance turned toward us, God’s love for all humankind, and the entire gospel, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection, is an expression of this love. So even our simple concerns like experiences of daily happiness and gratitude are part of this mystery. Several themes in the New Testament regarding the meaning of the salvation brought to us in and through Jesus speak to our experience of happiness and gratitude. Salvation is integral to the basis of true happiness and gratitude. Salvation itself is portrayed as life: “I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). The gospel associates the fullness of life, or what we might call today human flourishing, to joy. The familiar announcement of the birth of Jesus connects the arrival of Jesus first to joy: “Do not be afraid, for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people, to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Lk. 2:10). Christmas time in families and communities is a time to retrieve this mystery and allow it to make a difference in one’s attitudes and posture toward life. Beyond optimism, joy is the knowledge, even amid doubts, that life is meaningful; even death itself, and all that seems death-dealing in our world, does not have the last word. See: John F. Haught, “Revelation,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, 884–99, at 898. Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 49.

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The apostles themselves experienced this joy. On the road to Emmaus they encountered the risen Lord, after recognizing him at the breaking of the bread. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Lk. 24:32). Later, when Jesus appeared to them and showed them his hands and feet, the place of his wounds, to confirm he was not a ghost, they responded: “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence” (Lk. 24:41-42). The New Testament also images salvation as the gift of freedom, freedom for others and for the community. It mirrors that much of the deepest happiness and gratitude in life is linked to core relationships, which are not simply given, but require investment. Salvation is to know and act on this; understanding freedom in a manner which is consistent with the human call to transcendence. While the societal concept of freedom says success and upward mobility will stem from an individual autonomy which will be rewarded with having to depend less and less on others or be influenced by their wills.41 The biblical testimony claims differently. Modern culture lacks a language of meaning when life’s negative experiences occur.42 While the “optimism” of modern culture views faith, salvation, and religion in general as extra baggage on a non-conflicted secular journey. The freedom promised in the gospel and its capacity to give joy offers purpose, not license as the way to happiness. Paul writes, “For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather to serve one another” (Gal. 5:13). The public manifestation of being redeemed in the New Testament is love of others (1 Jn 3:14). The core of our most profound gratitude flows from the commitments and mutuality of our deepest happiness and associations. We are freed to love, and for community. In the New Testament, there is the consistent understanding that communion with Christ also entails communion with others. The Eucharist itself is for life in community (1 Cor. 10:16-17). It seems fair to say, even in this brief examination, that the language of salvation in the gospels speaks to our desire for happiness and sense of gratitude in life.

Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 143. 42 Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991), 40–91, 529ff. 41

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Encounter with Evil/Suffering and Contrast Experience A second door to awareness of our call to transcendence and the gift of salvation is often unwanted. It is the core experience of encounter with evil and suffering. There is no area of our experience where we are most in need of the peace and courage, part of God’s gift of salvation, than in “contrast experience.” Schillebeeckx claims, as we have seen, that people become aware of the search for fullness or desire for transcendence in their lives indirectly— even by accident. This awakening is evoked through negative experiences not just positive ones. Both believers and unbelievers experience something amiss in the world. Continuing war and famine, shifting markets and forced migration change the lives of millions. A visit to the doctor’s office can bring a challenging diagnosis for oneself or a loved one. Families fall apart and violence marks the streets of modern cities, Third World poverty, disaster, and political unrest make it impossible for people to find a home in this world. Yet people often choose to make things better, believing love is worth their effort, and act from a vision of a better life which fuels their energies.43 This desire to reach out to the world to improve it is a reflection of the human experience of transcendence. In face of evil, in life or in the world, we reach for more. But what is the basis of our hope? Often the effort to move beyond ourselves, improve our world, and shape our lives, opens the door to the need to do it again. Yet people still seek to make sense out of the world, even in face of the fact “that things go intolerably wrong.”44 Belief that the world makes sense in the face of the experience of its complexity is the basis of every attempt to make it so and to assume responsibility for it. This meaning concerns not only of our lives but of all of life. Karl Rahner claims that faith in the Spirit of God is the positive and unconditional acceptance of one’s own existence as meaningful and open to a final fulfillment, “which we call God.”45 Faith concerns not only a way to live in this world but the human search for meaning in it. Salvation, therefore, is not generated by history alone, an easy life or things going our way. Rather faith responds to God as the ground of our lives in spite of all evidence to the contrary. We can see that salvation is not something we do, it is what God does. Our response and efforts are first grounded in this gift. This is the experience of salvation to which the gospel testifies.

Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 22. 44 Susan Neiman, Evil in the Modern World: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 322. 45 Rahner, “The Certainty of Faith,” 32. 43

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The New Testament authors interpret salvation in Christ also through the image of “rescue.” Through Jesus, believers experience rescue from various forms of oppression. Paul reminds the Galatians that Jesus “gave himself for our sins that he might rescue us from the present evil age in accord with the will of our god and Father” (Gal. 1:4). Paul echoes the exodus tradition of the Hebrew scripture where the people of Israel were delivered from slavery under the Egyptians.46 Scriptures also portray salvation as reconciliation after a dispute and even as legal aid. The direction of the reconciliation between God and humanity because of sin is not one of God being reconciled to humanity, as if God needed some apology for human behavior. It is humanity who is reconciled to God. In Rom. 5:8, Paul shows the initiative in this reconciliation is God’s: “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Paul indicates God’s motive for reconciling action is the divine love for humanity.47 Through Christ human beings become friends rather than enemies of God. The meaning of salvation is also communicated as a defense against condemnation, even as a legal defense. The New Testament speaks of Jesus’s saving work as advocacy on behalf of humanity. In Jn 14:16, Jesus promises to give his disciples another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will be with them always. This suggests that during his earthly life, Jesus himself acted as their advocate. Key to the experience of suffering and evil is the vulnerability one feels before it. The New Testament testifies that the risen Christ is the defender and advocate of the human cause with God. The notion of salvation as legal aid fills out the notion of salvation as an assurance backed by the advocacy of Christ himself.48 Finally, before the experience of evil and suffering in the world, the New Testament presents salvation as the renewal of humanity and the world, and victory over alienating powers. Paul tells Christians in Rome that they were baptized into Christ’s death in order that they “might live in the newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). The book of Revelation portrays the One who sits on the throne saying, “Behold, I make all things new” (21:5). Experience of the intransigence of evil in society, webs of communication, and the levels of structural sin can make the New Testament accounts of demons, as the personification of evil, seem simplistic. However, Christ is identified in the New Testament as the victor over hostile powers, however we imagine them. The author of the Ephesians names the power of God in raising Christ from the dead and seating him, “far above every principality, authority, power, and Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 39. Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, 483. 48 Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 42–3. 46 47

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dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come” (1:20-21). Yet the victory of Christ over the powers of evil will not be fully realized until the end of history. Christ is the “firstfruit” of those who have been raised from the dead. At the end of the world, he will hand over the Kingdom to the Father, “when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:24). Thus for believers, even though victory over evil has been already accomplished through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and in Christ is our hope before evil and suffering, working toward liberation from evil and suffering is a lifelong task.49

Experience of Limits, Finitude, and Guilt Paul Tillich connects the experience of anxiety to one of self-transcendence. Anxiety can be the experience of one’s own finitude. This sense of finitude does not always come from looking at the situation of the world, experiencing the failure of a project or facing disappointment from others before whom one is vulnerable. A sense of finitude or experience of limits can also be experienced through an honest appraisal of self. Walter Conn writes of Tillich’s reference to “ontological shock” as a moment of personal recognition of our own selfabsorption which blocks the way to self-realization: a “jarring conviction”— rather than an intellectual awareness—that I am cheating myself of the chance to reach the inmost possibilities of my being.”50 Beyond the insight that not everything is under our control, or the narcissistic illusion that our person and opinions are the center of reality, we learn we are limited both in who we are and in what we can affect. We watch a friend or family member go down a destructive path, we can intervene, but know ultimately, we cannot stop their path. Anxiety arises as we face the limits of existence itself: our own finitude and eventual death. Anxiety flows from a sense of our vulnerability before life and the sureness of death, as we observe the ebb and flow of a sense of meaning in our days, or find ourselves engulfed in guilt. We can feel guilt and remorse, realizing that we needn’t have done something or should have done more. We accept responsibility despite feelings of inner alienation, a lack of oneness with our better selves, and a sense of unrest within. A guilty person knows she can repent. He can try to repair the damage. She can make restitution; if necessary ask for forgiveness to heal the relationship. Peace of mind can return; life can go on. However, none of these can happen without others. Because we are finite we cannot Ibid., 46. Walter Conn, Christian Conversion: A Developmental Interpretation of Autonomy and Surrender (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 74.

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bring about the fulfillment of our being by ourselves. Constant striving alone cannot resolve the tensions evoked by this core seeking. Karl Rahner writes about the “hopelessness of guilt.” This can be the case when we express sorrow for something, yet realize we cannot undo the harm we have committed. Some can feel “they are and will for all eternity remain persons who have betrayed their love and fidelity.”51 By our own power we cannot always move past these experiences. Yet, these life moments can open us to an experience of transcendence. Rahner argues that this experience of the hopelessness of guilt reveals that the basis of hope for forgiveness can be found in grace, in that which transcends human freedom.52 As faith assists us to reach out to life through love, more than the visible encounter occurs. St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee.”53 In our search for fulfillment, in spite of our finitude, we are engaged by mystery, which is more than a motivational drive; it is a presence which confirms us, even in our incompleteness. Through this reach of faith a person “opens his heart to the nameless presence of a grace and favor still perhaps undefined.”54 The modern Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr captures the modern predicament of human finitude and guilt in the context of contemporary optimism and belief in human potential. Niebuhr claims, Christianity “claims a higher stature for man” but also “takes a more serious view of his evil.”55 Sin in human life is the human response to the anxiety people feel about being both free and dependent. The human response, on the one hand, is to avoid finitude and dependence by placing too high a value, almost absolute value, in one’s own power, some status or idea. The result is the sin of pride and bias toward a wider or humbler view which would provide perspective.56 On the other hand, some people avoid freedom, they “escape from freedom” by losing themselves in partial goods, like material things, sex, power, following the crowd, or the like.57 The result is the sin of sensuality. Here, Niebuhr does not mean sex, but taking the line of least resistance, turning over one’s power of self-determination to another, an ideology or a group, draining energy into Karl Rahner, “Reconciliation and Vicarious Representation,” in Theological Investigations, XXI, trans. Hugh Riley (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 259. 52 See: Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 107. 53 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions of St. Augustine, 3 Book One, I. 54 Karl Lehmann, “Transcendence,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, Vol. 6 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 281. 55 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human Nature (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1941), 18. 56 For insight into bias see: The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 28–35. 57 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Avon Books, 1969). Fromm argues that if humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. 51

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lesser goods. The very creative power of freedom, apparent to the modern person, has within its own dynamic the trap of sin. At the same time, the modern dilemma is the conscience of a modern person is alert to the call toward a universal benevolence and the alleviation of human suffering. However, our proclivity to sin draws these aspirations into contingent and relative goals, like money, domination, class privilege which take our first purposes off track and weaken possibilities of success.58 Niebuhr argues that it really is not possible to separate these two aspects of the human condition; human motivation contains mixed, tangled, and often counterproductive elements that sabotage even our best efforts.59 We hear this echoed by Paul in his letter to the Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (7:15). Paul finds in himself two laws: a will to do what is right but also another active law which is destructive: “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Rom. 7:22-23). Paul asks who will save him from this condition, this finitude, this inability by himself to direct all his powers. His answer is “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25). Salvation as expressed in the New Testament can be understood in light of this dilemma. It is presented as justification and sanctification. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinners, who are estranged from God, who have become unjust in the sight of God, are brought into right relationship with God through the death of Jesus Christ. As a result of what Christ has done for humanity, the sinner stands before God as upright. The free gift of justification is received through baptism, through which sinners are liberated from the death-dealing power of sin, a source of modern anxiety, and brought into the life-giving realm of grace (Rom. 6:1-11).60 Sanctification, being made holy, is the ongoing work of this grace, as they belong now to Jesus Christ. Having died to sin in baptism, they are now “living for God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). Does this mean there is no longer the human dilemma of finitude and guilt? No, the gospels of Matthew and Luke portray salvation as the forgiveness of sin—a response of love to the human condition. Schillebeeckx affirms that this same theme is prominent in Paul and John.61 Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29).The gift of forgiveness is made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus as because of him and Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 281. Ibid., 184. 60 Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 42. 61 Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, 488–9. 58 59

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through him, sinners are accepted by God. Because those familiar with the gospels understood the notion of sacrifice as an element of the God-human relationship, the death of Jesus is understood as a sacrifice which wiped away the sins of humanity (Rom. 3:25). Another image of the effect of Jesus death and resurrection on the human condition is one of ransom. The practice of ransoming a slave or a prisoner of war, or even the property of a close relative was in the imagination of those who lived in gospel times. To interpret God’s saving action in Jesus in terms of being ransomed conveys Jesus did for us something we cannot do for ourselves. This does not mean we have no part in acting on this gift, but it does convey what Jesus did for us is a gift of redemption, beyond what we can do for ourselves, yet one in which we participate. The author of 1 Peter reminds his readers, “conduct yourself with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb” (1:17-18).62 In summary, this brief overview of the meaning of salvation in the New Testament shows the ways that the followers of Jesus experienced the presence and power of God in a unique way through his ministry, death, and resurrection. They encountered Jesus in his ministry and experienced new ways to see their lives. Their new life was confirmed by witnesses to his resurrection. New communities of faith formed the early church and many witnessed with martyrdom to the truth of Jesus Christ in whom they placed their trust. Also our experiences of gratitude and happiness, encounter with evil and suffering, and experience of finitude, limits, and guilt can be doors, among others, which can lead to this encounter with the mystery of our salvation and the power of God in our own lives. The doctrine of the atonement, salvation, and redemption holds this mystery in the language of the church. Yet how Christians understand redemption affects their conceptions not only of God and Christ but also of the human self and the world. In conclusion we will look at a contemporary interpretation of this mystery which seeks to address the modern spirit.

Karl Rahner: Jesus Christ as the RealSymbol of God Karl Rahner addresses the New Testament testimony concerning salvation in Jesus Christ in a manner which speaks to the life concerns of human See Ryan, Jesus and Salvation, 40.

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flourishing of the modern person. He anchors redemption in the context of human freedom. He avoids the fatalism suggested in descriptions of Jesus’s mission as one of satisfaction before an angry God, through assumption of humanity’s place in a sadistic punishment for human sin. Themes of satisfaction, representation, and redemption are expressed in a manner which conveys the testimony of scripture and the tradition of the church while addressing the concerns of modern life. God’s saving will does not originate with the cross, although full reconciliation between a sinful world and God will inextricably involve this event. Christ’s cross and life are one salvific event because they are the results (rather than the origins) of God’s desire to save.63 The cross is more than a merely revelatory event of God’s forgiving love. Rahner upholds the dogmatic truth that my redemption is dependent on Jesus and his cross, but does not picture Christ on the cross doing something for humans as their proxy.64 Rahner includes the role of human freedom in this process. In his words, It is precisely through Jesus that it is possible that I myself, by the power of God’s self-communication, am really able to aspire to God, to have faith and hope in him and to love him; in other words, that I can really perform the highest act that can be expected of a human being given the highest possible requirements. Through Jesus my own freedom itself contains the possibility of redemption, liberation, and sanctification the like of which cannot be conceived in a higher, more tremendous or more radical way.65

Rahner wants to make clear that Jesus accomplishes our salvation in a way that does not render us passive objects credited with the fruits of his free act, in our place.66 Instead of a passive salvation, he argues humans must realize the gift of their salvation with total, not just partial freedom. Freedom and grace grow in direct rather than inverse proportion. There is a coextensive and noncompetitive nature of God’s grace and human freedom. The selfredemption Rahner implies is not the same as exclusive humanism, or Pelagianism, the belief we do not need God’s grace to take the first steps toward God.67 The relationship between the “objective redemption” brought Brandon R. Peterson, Being Salvation: Atonement and Soteriology in the Theology of Karl Rahner (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 30–1. 64 Karl Rahner, “The Christian Understanding of Redemption,” in Theological Investigations, XXI, trans. Hugh Riley (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 248. 65 Ibid., 248–9. 66 Peterson, Being Salvation, 39. 67 Taylor defines exclusive humanism as positing earthly life is all there is and denial of the transcendent source which is the object of religious belief. See Taylor, The Secular Age, 19–21. 63

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about by God, especially in the Christ event and “self-redemption” which is our appropriation through God’s grace is expressed through Rahner’s understanding of Jesus Christ as the Realsymbol of God. Jesus Christ, the Mediator, is the supreme representative of humankind in his redemption, but he is not a substitute for the use of our freedom in its appropriation.

Symbols and Realsymbol We claimed that Jesus Christ is not a superagent who performs and makes possible our salvation, but is the very locus of salvation itself. Rahner upholds this approach through a representative soteriology which is person centered. This means the person and work of Christ are unified in how Christ is our representative in his saving action. The Incarnation, Christ becoming human, was not a means for a superagent Christ to perform a particular salvific act. Christ’s gathering of disciples, ministry, passion, and death is all at the service of bringing humans to himself. All of Christ’s actions, not just his passion and cross, are at the service of drawing us to union with Christ. This means more than approaching Jesus as a moral example. We are meant to be incorporated into and participate in Jesus Christ himself, not just follow him as a moral ideal. Discipleship is this “dance,” this union with Christ, is a union which reflects his insistence that the modern Christian will be a mystic: “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). Jesus began in his person a new humanity, and men and women share in that humanity through union with him. Jesus Christ in this sense is the authentic human before God. Similar to the Fathers of the church, Rahner understands the work of Christ as not just an agent but the locus of human salvation.68 If salvation consists first and foremost in Christ’s person as the locus of salvation, human reception and appropriation of salvation does not consist merely in being “credited” with the fruits of his death on the cross. Salvation, initiated by God with Christ himself, is entering into a relationship with him. The passive connotation of “being credited with” the fruits of Jesus’s death on the cross can be misunderstood to remove responsibility from the Christian. Rahner shares concern with critics of an understanding of atonement that so credits human beings; that it becomes compatible and comfortable with a racist, militaristic, sexist, and classist understanding of modern life. Brian Daley, “He Himself Is Our Peace (Ephesians 2:14): Early Christian View of Redemption in Christ,” in The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer, eds. Stephen Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (New York: Oxford Press, 2004), 146–76. As quoted in Peterson, Being Salvation, 42.

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Theology of Symbol Rahner uses a theology of symbol to convey his understanding of the work of Christ in our redemption and our connection to it today.69 Any theology of atonement or redemption has to be able to answer the question, how can something that happened so long ago affect life today? Rahner utilizes the term “Realsymbol” to show both how Christ’s humanity is revelatory of God and how the church and the presence of Jesus Christ are linked. Commonly, a symbol is used as a way to indicate one reality represents another. The relationship between the two realities is extrinsic, one simply indicates the other. Realsymbol means more. If one entity is a Realsymbol of another, it is so in virtue of an intrinsic relation between the two. Realsymbol mediates and communicates the very presence of that which it symbolizes.70 An original one expresses itself in an “other” in such a way that the other communicates the very presence of the “original.” This means more than “stand for” or “points to,” as the gospel tells us John the Baptist pointed to Jesus. Rather there is a true unity. Rahner applies this idea of the Realsymbol to explain the Incarnation. The Logos is God’s self-expression in eternity which in turn self-expresses within history in the person of Jesus Christ: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Christ’s humanity is not a uniform which the Logos dons and uses as a sort of “mouthpiece.” Christ’s humanity is the result of the Logos’ act of exteriorizing with the world. Christ’s humanity is intrinsically related to the Logos and genuinely revelatory of God.71 The church in turn is the Realsymbol of the presence of Christ. This symbol of the grace of God contains what it signifies. The church does not merely designate but really possesses what was brought definitely into the world by Christ. This is “the irrevocable, eschatological grace of God which conquers triumphantly the guilt of man.”72 In this sense the church is the abiding and ultimate sacrament of the world’s salvation: “Wherever and however the Church is this ultimate sacrament of salvation for the world, there Christ is present in his Spirit.”73 In this sense the church is the persisting presence of the Word in space and time; it continues the symbolic function Karl Rahner, “Theology of Symbol,” in Theological Investigations IV, trans. Kevin Smyth (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1968), 221–52. 70 Peterson, Being Salvation, 52. 71 Ibid., 56–7. 72 Rahner, “Theology of Symbol,” 241. 73 Karl Rahner, “The Presence of the Lord in the Christian Community at Worship,” in Theological Investigations X, trans. David Bourke (New York: Seabury, 1977), 71–83 at 83. 69

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of the Logos in the world. The sacramental life of the church is a deep form of this expression. Rahner’s Jesuit roots influence his understanding of Realsymbol. The Ignatian mystical tradition holds that God is always mediated through created realities, especially through people and events. The fourth week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius urges the Christian to “find God in all things.” Rahner’s spirituality holds that human experience of God is always mediated, explicitly or implicitly by the humanity of Christ. His great interest in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus focuses on Jesus’s human heart as the center of his self-realization as well as the center of his corporal self. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is precisely devotion to that love of God which has been made present through all of the life of Jesus Christ.74 Rahner would concur with Schillebeeckx that Christ is the primordial sacrament of encounter with God.75 Since the Logos became flesh, things of this world are not just “means” to reach God; rather they can mediate the presence of God himself. There is an intimate link in Rahner’s early dissertation in 1936 between the concept of Realsymbol and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Patristic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus focused on the origin of the church emerging from Jesus’s pierced side. The early Christians found in the Symbol of the pierced heart of Jesus all they understood about the love of God for the world, expressed through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Today devotion to the Sacred Heart again can link the person of today with Jesus’s own heart, the source of the spirit and the expression of his love which was opened to us on the cross. Rahner expresses one way a historical reality can be present to a different time, how events of Jesus life can, as symbols, be present to today’s Christian. We began with the thought: for Christians, Jesus Christ is not a superagent who performs and makes possible our salvation, but is the very locus of salvation itself. In Chapter 6 we will ask how desire for salvation is impacted by modern debates whether in choosing discipleship of Jesus moderns are faced with a choice between a “spiritual” life and a lifestyle which is detrimental to their own humanity.

Peterson, Being Salvation, 66. In “Theology of Symbol,” Rahner asserts that the proper object of devotion to the Sacred Heart is Jesus’s human heart. Jesus’s physical heart is a Realsymbol of his love. See 221–2. 75 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God (London: Sheed and Ward, 1987). 74

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Any sense of Christian discipleship and spiritual practice flows from an understanding of how God and humans relate, and beliefs about how to have a closer connection between God and ourselves. Christian asceticism refers to the practices which focus on the development of a more in-depth relationship. The term “Christian asceticism” comes from the Greek word askesis, which means exercise, training, discipline. It refers to activities and lifestyles which intend to increase the desire to live the gospel, and the ability to do so. Over time, Christian asceticism has both helped people find God and drifted into excesses based on misunderstandings in Christian teaching and culture at large. This confusion stems from various sources. An image of God and the God-human relationship can be faulty or incomplete. There can be uncertainty whether human desire leads to God or away from God. Lastly, an incomplete notion of the human self can overemphasize only one dimension of human experience. All of these can contribute to an “eclipse of desire” or a hiding from recognition in one’s own life or in society of the energy which underlies our relationship with God. Widely held understandings of atonement in the Christian community often convey a distorted image of God, as well as stray from their biblical foundations. The “penal substitutionary view of atonement” conveys a focus on punishment, as in a court of law; and “substitutionary” suggests Christ suffered death in place of what we should have suffered. Both imply a type of transaction whereby an exchange took place, instigated by God the Father and carried out by God the Son, which clouds God’s saving will toward humanity from the beginning.1 An equally problematic approach conveys the message of redemption and atonement through the lens of a worlddenying dualism. The body and the world are evil and only the immaterial spiritual soul is good. Both interpretations suggest Christ’s death changed Cynthia S. W. Crysdale, Transformed Lives: Making Sense of Atonement Today (New  York: Seabury, 2016), 3. Crysdale links this view to late English puritanism. However, it is likely it floated in the broader culture and impacted various Christian circles, despite more nuanced confessional doctrines.

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God’s mind or appeased God’s wrath. God is pictured as thinking the most important thing about human beings is they are flawed through original sin. Richard Dawkins, a scientist and atheist, charges that “the atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity is vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent.”2 Christian practice based on this image of God can emphasize a fear of God and God’s punishment to the point where its abandonment is a relief. For Christians, desire for God is centered in God’s own goodness. The impetus of desire for God is God, its object. Desire for God is recognition of God’s goodness. However, in the human imagination desire often gets detached from its object. Asceticism, as a practice to strengthen desire, can become just a duty if detached from its object, but can be a response to something real if linked to its Source. Desire for God is not the same as other desires. It is not simply one desire among others, but a central and integral desire of one’s life—even though it can go unrecognized. When desire for God is detached from it Source, attention to religion is easily perceived simply as a duty. Asceticism based on a sense of duty alone can become an exercise in self-will, not one which builds a God-human relationship, and for most will be put aside as too much trouble. In ancient and modern times Christian ascetical practice involves a sense of the human “self.” The use of the term “self ” in ancient writings did not delineate between a false self and a true self—as in modern psychology. If there is only one self, a false self, asceticism promoted a rejection of the self, which lead to ascetical practices sinking into rituals of self-rejection.3 This was a false asceticism. Linked to a faulty notion of self was also a rejection of the body. We find negativity toward the body and the material world in non-Christian systems like Stoicism or Buddhism, but also in forms of Christian asceticism.4 Throughout the history of Christianity, there has been a tendency in the human imagination to regard the “spirit” world as above or beyond the material world. This led to the assumption one had to “leave the world” to find God, rather than resist the world caught in sin, as portrayed in the gospel of John. Some ascetical practice promoted a rejection of the body and human sexuality, calling it “the flesh” in the “world, the flesh and the devil.” “Flesh” in the New Testament, however, meant the human person acting apart from grace, caught in a cycle of pleasure seeking and avoidance of pain, which impedes their freedom to love. However, in ascetical practices in the past, this more nuanced understanding was reduced too often to a Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 287. This takes the Christian notion of original sin and separates it from a sense of God’s saving grace. 4 See Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Oliver Freiberger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2 3

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rejection of the goodness of the human body, and its relationship to the soul, or the spiritual dimension of the person. There can be confusion regarding the meaning of “self ” today. Taylor claims the modern person, as a center of desire, needs a “strong sense” of self. He argues that a modern sense of self as one who is disengaged, representing to itself an objective world which it can instrumentalize, is too “thin” of self to explain human desire. The self is not just a bearer of preferences but a subject of significance, a “thicker self.” Human persons are beings for whom things matter, have meaning, in a way that accounts for response of love, appreciation, self-esteem, and sacrifice. Personal agency in this sense is more than just controlling and planning. This self can be affected by what is not itself, and can respond with freedom.5 Encounter with what we experience as something “real,” beyond the boundaries of ourselves, can occur in moments of true communication, feeling understood or appreciating another, service, being moved by the suffering of another, self-awareness, or simply gratitude, knowledge that life could be otherwise. All of these experiences can touch our “real self,” lead to an encounter with God, as the Other who is Real, who frames the boundaries of self in a new way. True desire behind a healthy Christian asceticism rests in this understanding of self.

History of a Human Ideal and Spiritual Path Asceticism involves a lifestyle of self-discipline. It expresses through some form of self-denial or simple living—a means for spiritual improvement and development. However, its practice is not reduced to these traditional terms. We also find that ascetical practice is not limited to religious motives. People today refer to wellness, or well-being, which conveys some aspects of ascetical experience. Modern society pays attention to the body and offers ways of conservation, interpersonal disciplines, and technique to focus energies. These ascetical practices can be shared with those who take them on as a religious expression. Those in ecological circles urge reducing one’s carbon footprint. Political commentators suggest a new civility to promote better government. First world societies are filled with diet plans that not only promote personal beauty but ongoing health, fitness, and general well-being. Mental health experts call on practices of mind control and Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1, 97–114. See also Margaret A. Farley, “How Shall We Love in a Postmodern World?” in Changing the Questions: Explorations in Christian Ethics, ed. Jamie L. Manson (New York: Orbis Books, 2015), 143–60.

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mental focus to promote emotional health. Even meditation and its secular counterpart in psychological, physiological, and neurological consciousness movements bare a similarity in difference to its practice with a religious core.6 The idea of asceticism for moderns is a hybrid: parts express the demands of transformation called forth by faith, and others are requirements for wellness which are shared by believers and unbelievers alike. Over time why one engages in these practices gives them a distinguishing quality.

Early Ascetical Practices Greeks used the term “asceticism” mainly for athletes and philosophers. Athletes had to train hard for competition; philosophers for the sake of wisdom had to spend more time in contemplation. Worldly pursuits were to be avoided in order to develop character and virtue. Some philosophers held that as people gave up their pursuit of the passions, they gained the character and wisdom often dissipated through worldly pursuits. People moved away from vices through discipline and toward virtue. There was a “freedom from” which led to a “freedom to.” Throughout religious history, the practice of asceticism is tied to drawing closer to the divine. John the Baptist was thought to be a Nazarite, noted for separation from society, not cutting his hair, and avoiding wine. The Gospel of Mark introduces him living in the wilderness, clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, one who “ate locusts and wild honey” (1:7). In the early church, ascetical practices were seen as preparation for martyrdom. In the first three centuries of Christianity, being martyred was a distinct possibility for many, so the church encouraged people to prepare with fasting, prayer, and in some cases celibacy. As the persecutions passed by the fourth century, people began to seek a more intense Christian life by moving out into the deserts of Egypt and the wilderness of Syria to deepen their connection to God. Anthony of Egypt is the first figure of this Christian movement. He gave up his family wealth and went to live the ascetic life in the Egyptian desert at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century. His life, Life of Anthony, is one of the earliest chronicles of asceticism as a lifestyle. The age of martyrdom ended when Constantine recognized Christianity as legal in the Edict of Milan (AD 313); however, asceticism continued, in its own right, beyond its use as a preparation for martyrdom. North African bishop Cyprian distinguished between “red” and “white” martyrdom. He William Johnston, Silent Music: The Science of Meditation (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 29.

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describes a red martyrdom that is the result of the flowing blood of the martyrs and a white martyrdom that is the product of labors. Martyrdom and asceticism were held in esteem as Imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ; the first as the shedding of blood, and the second as imitation of the trial of Christ in the desert, doing battle with the forces of evil. Both martyrdom and asceticism were seen as graces. Martyrs were not encouraged to give themselves up for martyrdom, rather were only to endure it as a grace and a calling. Tertullian suggested the best response for those facing martyrdom was to flee and hide. Even though ascetics took on their practices freely, unlike those who had to face the necessity of martyrdom, the same reliance on grace was urged in their practices. Asceticism in its truest Christian interpretation was more than simple self-assertion. It was an imitation of Christ.7 Monasticism developed during the fourth and fifth centuries in the Mediterranean world. The times were ones where a few were affluent and many were enslaved. Asceticism tended to be practiced by the wealthy, aristocratic, and socially prominent.8 People left the lecture halls of Rome and Athens, government positions and successful enterprises, prosperous families, and great estates and searched for true wisdom. Communities formed around spiritual fathers or mothers, or inspired by the Acts of the Apostles were more communal in form, with a central authority. Benedict of Nursia (480–547) drew together different currents of the monastic tradition in his Rule for Monasteries. Throughout the Middle Ages rules were developed which outlined the ascetical practices which attempted to refocus the drifting and indulgences which still occurred in the monasteries, despite the fact their purpose was to draw closer to God. Obedience to a superior was offered to curb the will, stability to counter drifting and wandering, fidelity to the rule to move one to constant conversion. A healthy liturgical life, labor, and time for reading to nourish prayer were to support monastic life and give it balance.9 The great mystical writers of the monastic tradition elaborated on the heart of Benedict’s intention in the fostering of monasticism: “We shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.” This link between asceticism and desire is important. It was to not only express love of God but enkindle it. Over time one’s “moral tastes” were to See Isabelle Kinnard, “Imitatio Christi in Christian Martyrdom and Asceticism: A Critical Dialogue,” in Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Oliver Freiberger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 131–49. 8 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 410. 9 See David W. Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013). He argues that liturgy is capacitation for participation in the Body of Christ. 7

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change: from desire just for the ordinary pleasures of life to desires, equally valid but often submerged in daily life, which led to a deeper spiritual life.

Middle Ages The asceticism of the Christian monastic tradition found its heart and true meaning when the Rule became a school of love. Medieval writers centered everything on love and were practical contemplatives who rooted mystical love in everyday monastic life. The practices of asceticism were not simply the power over self, encouraged by the Greeks and the Romans. For medieval women and men, such as Claire and Francis of Assisi, one becomes one’s true self through conformity to the model of true humanity, Jesus Christ. The monastic life, while contemplative and ascetical in its roots, had an immense social, economic, and political impact on society.10 Beyond monasticism, in the midst of wars and religious division of late Western medieval history, significant women listened to the voice of their inner religious experience, which urged them to redirect political affairs. Catherine of Siena advised the pope, Joan of Arc led armies. They witnessed to the inseparability of religious and “worldly experience” which was going to be signature of interpretation of asceticism into the modern age. Medieval monasticism was a hybrid of holiness and various types of hypocrisy which characterizes the history of the pilgrim church. There were continual reforms of monastic life, each aiming to curb the excesses of previous attempts. Some monks placed emphasis on the inner discipline of the will rather than extremes in physical austerities. Disguised corrupt and prideful wills could be hidden beneath austere behavior, yet, on the other hand, good monks could be judged prideful when they were simply seeking a way of perfection according to the lights available to them. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–53) was a Cistercian abbot. This form of monastic life, which formed in the twelfth century, reflected a new interest in understanding the relation of body to the will, action to intention—outer behavior to inner disposition. Cistercians emphasized community rather than the Benedictine approach of obedience to the abbot. Community life was to support the monk, and help them to learn to love God by loving and desiring to be loved by their monastic brethren. They were to live an austere life, apart from elaborate foods and rich clothing. Physically punishing practices such as beating the body (flagellation), wearing of hair shirts, and other forms of self-inflected Basil M. Pennington, OCSO, “Monasticism,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, eds. Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), 670–3.

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suffering were practiced in belief that atonement needed to be marked physically on the body as well as internally on the soul.11 While practiced by both monks and lay brothers, these spiritual practices were shared unevenly among them, lay brothers often being ascribed physical penances, not practiced by the monks themselves.

Reformation and Early Modern Period The Reformation saw monasticism as no longer the special place to experience God; rather God was seen to be present intensely in all of life. Celibacy was no longer the privileged state of life in which to achieve union with God; instead marriage was given a new value and became almost an obligation for clergy. Carmelite reform, initiated by Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross, intended to make religious life a community of loving friends, living in poverty, simplicity, and solitude in order to be completely disposed to God’s action and the needs of the church. Later forms of religious life were established to meet the ministerial needs of a preindustrial society.12 The asceticism practiced followed some monastic forms, but saw the discipline of the work or ministry itself as a measure of ascetic practice. Discipline in class preparation, attentiveness to long periods of nursing the sick, preaching, caring for the poor, called upon an asceticism of active ministry. The rule of monastic life, its disciplines and routines were not the sole measure of fidelity. The public work, which implied a setting aside the routines of the monastery, had its own forms of self-denial. One wonders if this transformation in ascetic practice within religious life mirrored in some ways the transformation for all Christians in the wider society—a movement of the Protestant work ethic, from its Calvinist roots to the practicalities of a new industrial system.13 These forms of asceticism blended with antihuman, antibody, and antiworld movements in the church and the culture. Religiously they were based on misunderstandings of sin and grace. Yet despite these factors, the primary reason for asceticism endured. Ascetical practices in their best light were not to reject that natural constitution of the world, but to respond to the call to transcendence, and the demands of the eschatological reality of Martha G. Newman, “Disciplining the Body, Disciplining the Will: Hypocrisy and Asceticism in Cistercian Monasticism,” in Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Oliver Freiberger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 91–115. 12 Judith A. Merkle, A Different Touch: A Study of the Vows in Religious Life (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998). 13 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958). 11

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the gospel. This was the challenge of discipleship: how to foster the values of the heavenly city in the earthly one. Asceticism was a help to resist sin: sin which impacted the world at large. The truth was that once sin enters into human exchange, its infection spreads to every level of human life—leading to fragmentation and division in individuals, society, and the world itself.14 Ascetical practice was to counteract this reality. Christian asceticism expresses a desire to cooperate with the grace of Christ. This desire to act as well as to rely on grace suggests that ascetical practice alone is insufficient to change the world or the self. When freedom and responsibility are the only element in a God-human relationship, the result is only guilt in the human condition, because we are limited as humans before evil.15 From a Christian viewpoint, Christ alone is the antidote, as savior and redeemer to the world as we find it—the mechanisms of human self-improvement are not enough.16 Effective asceticism is the work of grace, not heroic will power or high tolerance of pain: “Sometimes the strategy is to fight, sometimes flight, and contemporary wisdom emphasizes that all potential obstacles, whether from within, like concupiscence or pride, or from without, like sinful social structures or demonic forces, must be recognized and dealt with in whatever way is wise and prudent.”17 In other words, even though ascetic struggle involves effort and pain, its direction and sustaining power relies on relationship with God.

The Face of Freedom Another way to view how asceticism is impacted by our conception of the “self ” is to examine its ties to human freedom. Modern people hold that being free means no one can force them from without; people can define the direction of their own lives. However, Christianity goes beyond this political assertion to claim that freedom arises from the reality that each person is completely unique and of eternal value. God has a personal love for each human being. This God-human relationship establishes response to God’s love as one’s highest personal responsibility and an essential call of freedom. A common misunderstanding of this responsibility is it only involves the Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm, “Asceticism,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, 64–7. Karl Rahner, “Guilt-Responsibility-Punishment Within the View of Catholic Theology,” in Theological Investigations, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger, Vol. VI (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 197–217, at 197. 16 This is consistent with testimony from the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous: that healing involves the step of surrender to a higher power. 17 Larkin, “Asceticism,” 65. 14 15

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capacity to choose among alternatives, that is, opt for the good and avoid evil. But a theological understanding of freedom offers a “thicker” understanding; the full achievement of the gift of freedom in human life is the embrace of God’s own self. The Christian understanding of freedom gives asceticism its goals and its role in union with God a fuller meaning. If we understand freedom as simply the human capacity of choice among opportunities, ways of acting or objects of desire, then God is one object among others. Ideally, God would have preference in our choice because of God’s special qualities; yet this preference for God would not necessarily flow from the meaning of freedom itself. Karl Rahner, following Thomas Aquinas, indicates that the Christian tradition’s understanding of freedom goes deeper than human choice. It holds that God is the condition and ground of every moment of our lives in the contemporary world.18 God is not just one choice among others; God is the possibility of all choice. God is also not just the condition of possibility of our freedom but its proper object. When we act in accordance with reality in a constructive way, we affirm our relationship with God. When we say “no” and act destructively, we use the very freedom affirmed by God to negate God and our true identity. In this way, freedom toward the people we encounter, or situations which present themselves to us, is also a freedom toward the “horizon” which sustains them. Rahner claims that “freedom-even though it is always exercised on the concrete individual things of experience . . . through this becomes what it is-is primarily and unavoidably concerned with God himself.”19 God in this sense is more than the horizon of our existence, an invisible distant partner; rather God offers Godself to be directly possessed by us in divinizing grace. Ancient philosophers could only imagine the offering of God to creatures through the biblical imagination of creation. In creation, the Trinity turned itself inside out evoking in humans a response of joy and gratitude when they freely return to God all that has been given. The church father called this dynamic activity within God, perichoresis, from peri (“around”) and choresis (“to dance”). Perichoresis means a co-inherence, a dance of love, a mutual indwelling by the three persons of the Trinity. The extension of the Trinity’s love is an act of creation. The return of that creation to its source in God requires a kenosis on the part of Christ, in his paschal mystery. Human response in freedom, through the grace of salvation, marks our participation.20 The church understands our part of this dance, as the free Karl Rahner, “Theology of Freedom,” in Theological Investigations, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger, Vol. VI (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 178–81. 19 Ibid., 182. 20 Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism, 7–9. 18

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choice of our salvation or damnation. This happens when we, as free persons, answer for ourselves, not just through the appearance of our lives, but by our response to it from our hearts.21 This response of our freedom through grace is more than passing a test required good behavior—it is a divinization and sharing in the life of God.22

Freedom in the Real World The church gives freedom a “thicker” identity than its definition in empirical psychology. There is a concrete and developmental way we can speak of “freedom from” personal and societal limitations and “freedom for” goals and opportunities in our lives. Over and above the psychology of freedom, theologically freedom is a mystery that comes only from God and is directed only toward God. Even though we do use our freedom to choose for or against God’s offer of love in the concrete choices of our lives, the church holds we cannot ultimately judge for ourselves, and even less others, our quality before God. While we are still pilgrims on this earth, we cannot have absolute certainty about our state of salvation; indirectly this means it is not possible for us to reflect objectively on our free decisions. In the ordinary natural order, we certainly can judge our actions; this reflects the created nature of our freedom. We are empowered and obliged to decide right from wrong and to act accordingly: “Yet this judging, deciding, risking, objectifying knowledge about freedom does not understand itself as something final, absolutely certain and beyond appeal.”23 We do so in trust before God. If the goal of our freedom is union with God, then a theological understanding of freedom sees it borne and empowered by its goal. Our openness to the ultimate goal of our life is an experience of grace—grasped by faith and fed by the Word of God.

Freedom in Practice We grasp the nature of freedom in the real world when we consider this spiritual and ultimate horizon of our efforts is always mediated by an environment which is often beyond our control. We accept and meet what life provides us, and at times imposes on us. We cope with necessity. For Rahner, Rahner, “A Theology of Freedom,” 183. See Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016). 23 Rahner, “A Theology of Freedom,” 192. 21 22

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the theological meaning of guilt and concupiscence is the situation in which the exercise freedom is always co-determined by guilt—all that is alien both within us and without—lies, deceit, manipulations, twisted relationships, injustice, inequality, and the rest. Our surrender to God is colored by the realization that in the very exercise of our freedom, we encounter ambiguity, power plays, mixed motives, partial results, personal fears, and attachments and unforeseen consequences. All of these forces can be ratified in our choices, and embody our own “no” to God. In spite of these forces, we can embrace the suffering involved in facing them, and still use our freedom to say yes to God. By overcoming and bearing with the difficulty involved we share in the cross of Christ, who did the same with his freedom.24 The salvation we receive from Jesus Christ enables our freedom to respond in the real world, not a perfect one. The guilt situation of freedom highlights that human freedom is free from original sin through baptism, but still wounded by it.25 God does not need to create our freedom completely anew, but our freedom needs God’s loving assistance. We accept this help, knowing at the same time, we are not capable of this acceptance by our own power. The reality of our freedom and simultaneous dependence on God is referred to in the tradition the term “prevenient grace.” This is a grace that precedes a person’s decision to believe in God; it enables a person to encounter God and freely make a choice for God or against God. As part of the mystery of freedom understood theologically, it reveals a God who wants everyone to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), yet also wants to liberate freedom so that our yes to God can come from our heart. We can refuse this grace, yet a yes to God allows God, not just to be a distant horizon of our freedom but to draw near to us in our every decision.26 When St. Paul describes the freedom of the children of God, he means this theological understanding of freedom—freedom made possible and elevated in Christ. It is a freedom from sin, in so far as sin is in a thousand different ways we attempt the free achievement of self-assertion in personal life and in the world without openness toward the love of God. It is freedom from the law, to the extent that the law simply becomes a tool or self-assertion either against God or before God—a law without grace, or a measure of selfexcellence. It is freedom from death, insofar as death is either a condemnation to one’s own finiteness or the finalization of a person’s life of freedom. For See: Judith A. Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2010), 58–60. 25 Rahner, “A Theology of Freedom,” 195. 26 Hans Joas comments that openness to the experience of transcendence is a precondition to the experience. Do We Need Religion? (London: Paradigm, 2008), 13–15. 24

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Rahner, a person’s death recapitulates and integrates the whole of a person’s life within a single and final “yes” or “no” to God.27 The freedom we are given in death is the freedom to surrender to the One, who from the start has been the ground and goal of our lives. In a paradoxical way even those who say no to God in what appears an irrevocable way do so within God’s yes and selfcommunication to their created freedom. The faith community holds created freedom as a whole remains embraced by God’s yes to us, which remains victorious in the history of salvation as a whole.28

Part Two: The Transformation of Desire Modern critics charge Christianity and religion in general, with a repression of human desire. After Freud, human desire in the popular imagination often is limited to sexual desire only. Desire in a wider sense involves a broad economy of sexual desire, food, wealth, power, status, harmony and inner peace, and desire for God.29 To the degree that asceticism places limits on sexual expression and constraints on personal freedom, the modern mentality of mutual benefit and a pursuit of individual happiness has little room for it. Asceticism is thought outdated and unnecessary as it places limitations on areas of economic pursuit and lifestyle. Asceticism is more easily associated with repression, church control, and denial. If freedom involves a capacity to adjudicate desires, this cultural framework overlooks the complexity of what this may involve. It seems to offer the bipolar option of repression on the one hand and promiscuous and libertinism on the other. Balance, moderation, and satiety of desires seem crowded out by an “I want it all” mentality which fuels not only a consumer economy but the moral imagination surrounding a good life. It is hard for a modern person to distinguish which longings they have in life which are truly their own, or what are raised by advertisements on their cell phones. Desires which arise from the human heart are integral to the meaning of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness each person seeks. These, however, may be different from those which are socially constructed by models of success, adequacy, and fulfillment inherited from their time and place in history. Furthermore, we ask, where does desire for God fit into all of this? Brandon R. Peterson, Being Salvation: Atonement and Soteriology in the Theology of Karl Rahner (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 88–90. 28 Rahner, “A Theology of Freedom,” 196. 29 See: Sara Coakley, The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 27

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We find that an understanding of asceticism today is surrounded both by cultural paradox and by a history of practice where its excesses and aberrations are cited to eliminate it as a worthy pursuit. The inherent link in the Christian tradition between asceticism and the transformation of the world is not addressed in modern debates. Universal benevolence, ecological sustainability, governmental civility, and peace seem possible without its restraints. Instead, the morality of mutual respect and authentic selffulfillment alone is called on to direct a life course and to tackle the problems of the modern world. Taylor comments that people today are often oblivious of how the terrible twentieth-century aberrations of fascism and extreme nationalism have also drunk at the same expressivist source as these sources of fulfillment.30 Asceticism joins other areas in modern life which can seem without foundations in the crosswinds of modern living. Freedom is limited in cultural imagination mainly to the throwing off constraint.

“Asceticism” in Modern Life The paradoxes in modern life surrounding asceticism are many. Social critics observe people relax disciplines in their personal lives, yet keep them in their work lives.31 Perhaps the most notorious habit of American workers is their tendency to work long hours. A Gallup report estimates that the average full-time worker in the United States works forty-seven hours a week, one of the highest figures in the world, and significantly higher than the rates in Western Europe. They hardly ever go on vacation or take family leave. They eat at their desks and rarely take breaks during the day. They send workrelated emails after hours.32 This paradox is also colored by the inequality in first world countries and gives rise to perceptions regarding entitlement. Those in the developing world or the inner cities of the first world admit that the casual delinquency of a white suburban teenager can prove fatal to a black inner-city youth. The permissive culture of the financially secure is off-limits to the poor, while at the same time, the upper class attributes poverty to the permissive culture of the “other side of the tracks.”33 Vestiges of past ascetical practice float free in the lifestyle of the vagabond and tourist. The desire for a buffered identity, not only from spiritual forces Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 486. 31 Ibid., 493. 32 Mark Abadi, “American Work Habits People in Other Countries Think Are Ridiculous,” Independent, (UK) November 17, 2017. 33 Gertrude Himmelfarb, One Nation, Two Cultures (New York: Random House/Knopf, 1999), 26. 30

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but from communal obligations is far from the apostolic availability of the mendicant ideal. Obsession with physical fitness feeds the gym industry. A type of “asceticism-light” floats free in the culture, reinforcing the idea of control in a climate of excess. While there are sound programs in many wellness areas, we can also find weight loss programs which offer a slimmer physic by taking a pill and eating what you want. A general ethic of permissiveness, “you deserve it,” moves from a marketing technique to believable in our imaginations. Although many people take on programs of restraint in good faith, with integrity and hard work, this is done in the crosswinds of the ambiguities of societal messages. Sara Coakley finds the desire to get beyond, to actually bring God into the picture as the source and goal of all human desire, is surrounded by this climate of paradox. She notes, “How strangely paradoxical are the different approaches to bodiliness that permeate contemporary Western scientific and medical investigation on the one hand, and cultural investment in bodily ‘control’ and maximization of health on the other.”34 Personal control over a resistant “flesh” filters through popular sports and diet and health magazines, as well as measures to prevent aging. Some even declare a future of transhumanism: the belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology. Others reduce the human phenomenon to a purely natural one, at times ancillary or accidental to the rest of nature. The meaning of human selfhood is debated. Is it just fleshly physicality, genetically coded in particular ways and thus determined in a large extent in its “choice” and activity? Or is freedom a reality where apart from the limits and possibilities of my body, I can desire to move beyond physical needs to a higher aspiration? People question whether sexual bodily desire can be denied in its physical satisfaction without potentially threatening sanity or blocking a fundamental right to human happiness. On the one hand, many moderns resent any church- or family-oriented mention of sexual restraint as authoritarian. Even civil intervention for instance regarding pornography and the like seems like an infringement on a “private” matter. On the other, if an individual transgresses a sexual boundary, especially a public figure, an outcry occurs. The culture dictates that one can have any sexual desire they want, but do not break the law. Is the law sufficient to ensure a healthy relationship of our sexual activity to cultural stability and order; or even for the law to endure?35 Coakley, The New Asceticism, 20. Charles Taylor, “Perils of Moralism,” in Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 347–66. Taylor argues why our moral/ethical life can never be adequately captured in a code.

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Taylor argues that without a framework, or vertical dimension to the law, it is weakened. The same can be said for the Christian tradition of asceticism, as it assumes deeper possibilities for human life. It raises the possibility of the transformation of all desires, and of finding their significance before God, over the long haul. This vertical dimension is beyond the many goods which rules and norms are meant to realize. Yet it forms the background which makes sense of any code. The Christian life cannot be limited just to codes and laws, because ultimately it is about union with God. The tradition of asceticism is a witness to the meaning of the Christian life, beyond the law.36 When the broader goals of asceticism are lacking, its healthy practice also loses its meaning. It is reduced to practices which are open to comments of its critics: it appears anti-material, antibody, and simply an effort of selfmastery. The authenticity of asceticism therefore is not confirmed only by its practices, but in its connection to their original meaning, and linked to their Source. Fasting itself can be indulgent.37 In modern society, we are not free from the issues of our ancestors. Commentators note that a type of unrestrained self-indulgence in the area of food and drink, fostered by advertisement and its promotion, exists alongside sports and dieting programs. The pendulum swings from indulgence to denial. Some popular programs suggest fasting two days a week for fitness and weight loss. One journalist comments that this type of narcissistic combination of self-denial and gratification suits the modern mindset.38 It appeals to the modern buffered self who sees self-control and mastery as a marker of the truth; we run the race of life alone. By contrast, Christian asceticism holds fasting is to promote a readiness for prayer. It is alright that people fast for various reasons. They fast because their cholesterol is too high, they have to take a blood test, they want to look like a fashion model, or the coach of their sports team requires it; some fast because they will not eat animal products. For those who suffer from depression or anorexia, eating styles reflect their mood swings. Yet Christian asceticism goes beyond these reasons. The motive is to become by grace what Christ is by nature. For this reason, Christian asceticism resides in the full spectrum of the Christian life. It operates along with prayer, sacraments,

This does not suggest that a secular society has to embrace Christian asceticism. It simply points to the role a spiritual tradition can play in the broader democratic process between civic life, the life of the churches, the state, and the level of the law. 37 Coakley, The New Asceticism, 22–5. 38 Louise France, “Eat What You Like: The Science That Has Overturned the Diet Industry,” The Times, January 4, 2014, p. 25, as quoted in Coakley, 23. 36

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liturgy, scripture, service, and community.39 It is not something we do alone; we do it in relationship with God, who is both its source and its goal and with others who seek God.

Asceticism, Its Pedagogy and Obstacles: Can There Be a New Asceticism? To free and channel desire toward transformation, the goal of asceticism requires grace, others, and a support system to do it. Obstacles come from within and without. Some today might find Augustine’s reference to the “daily martyrdom of the Christian life” a bit dreary.40 Yet there is truth in his admonition to the church to look to the example of the martyrs for the strength to remain faithful to Christ. Secular society offers imitations of a good life in its ideology and excesses, and believers have to sort through them. Many do not engage in these excesses, nor even have access to them, yet the “background” which frames modern living impacts them. Whatever one’s class of society, there can be the lure of entitlement. Those who have want more, and those who do not, experience the gap between what they see and what is achievable through their resources. There is a martyrdom of expectations; the sense of never being enough. The reality that economy becomes the measure of success blinds moderns to other values of love, family, health, and peace. The deceit about what is truly valuable can also seep into relationship with God. As Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer waited in prison for his execution by the Nazis for resistance to Hitler, he warned against “cheap grace,” the grace we bestow on ourselves. In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer charges that cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline—grace without the discipleship of the cross, without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Christians can presume a salvation, like an account paid in full in advance, which can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of spending it are infinite.41 It is an account of salvation which intellectually acknowledges Christ has done all for us, yet requires little from humans to account to God. Christianity turns into a “gospel of prosperity,” or a rise in status, or whatever

Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism, 10–11. Brown, The Body and Society, xviii. 41 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon and Schuster/ Touchstone Books, 1995). 39 40

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life goals we ascribe to it, and is discarded if life does not concur, or it seems like just extra baggage on the journey.

The Gospel of Prosperity Taylor weaves a tapestry of ideas from the Enlightenment to today that set the conditions for the God-human relationship to be reduced to a single notion of prosperity. Providential Deism acknowledged God provided the order of this world. Humans relate to God by respecting the order of this world, which they are able to grasp morally as well as accomplish. The “narrowing” of Divine Providence is limited to the single end of living this order of mutual benefit which God has designed for us.42 Providence is equated with the modern moral order, and goals beyond the flourishing of this life are omitted. Over time, the role and place of the transcendent is totally reduced. Positively, a disciplined moral order emerges. These ensure high standards of self-control and good behavior in the individual, and peace, order, and prosperity in society.43 The highest goals of human beings, however, are purely human goals. It is plausible to think these ends are within the scope of unaided human powers. Growth in the social sciences and physical sciences bring mastery over evils which once plagued humankind. The humanistic sciences open study of the depths of human experience, once mainly the domain of religious ideas—the realm of mystery shrinks, or even disappears. Taylor remarks, This self-sufficient agent could face down and set aside age-old human fears, of malevolent spirits, of not being chosen by God, of the blind, overwhelming forces of nature .  .  . the buffered identity, capable of disciplined control and benevolence, generated its own sense of dignity and power, its own inner satisfactions, and these could tilt in favor of exclusive humanism.44

The connection with God was rendered impossible or unnecessary. In Middle Ages practice of the moral virtues and the exercise of reason could lead toward a human flourishing—grace could perfect nature.45 However, this connection was broken in later centuries both in the Catholic and Protestant communities. Lutheran and Reformed Protestants shared with seventeenth Taylor, The Secular Age, 221. Ibid., 261. 44 Ibid., 262. 45 Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 271. 42 43

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century Jansenists a belief in the depravity of fallen human nature. There was no “there” there onto which grace could be grafted. The church attempted to develop inward religion of the heart which could feed an approach to the Divine and union with God. There was a spirituality of ordinary life, rather than “apart from the world” evidenced in the work of Frances de Sales, the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, devotion to Mary in the rosary, consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the spiritual practices of Francis of Assisi among others. A balance between this-worldly living and the devotion to God was fostered by practices of prayer and devotion which led to finding God’s presence in the world, and “knowing” it, in a heartfelt knowledge.46 But the church itself slipped into the excesses of a culture in which it was caught: one which held the depravity of human nature on the one hand, and its perfectibility on the other. A type of hyper-Augustinian spirituality was powerful in Jansenism in the Catholic Church and in Lutheran and Reformed Protestant theology. Both found human nature quite depraved. Any hope of finding a connection between human beings and God was seen more as prideful assertion, a delusion, and a reflection of the depraved condition itself. Luther’s justification through grace alone through faith alone held that human passions were only managed if God drove the human will.47 Not only eternal salvation but any real control of selfish desires in this life depended on God’s all or nothing intervention. Brad Gregory comments, “If one retained this view of human beings but dropped the Christian worldview and theology of grace, then having already jettisoned Christian virtue ethics, one would be left with inescapably passion-driven human beings invariably seeking to fulfill their own selfish desires” (emphasis in original).48 The highest goals had to be brought down into the human realm, ends beyond human flourishing had to fade from view, so that enhanced human powers could accomplish them, or at least point to experienced success in realizable goals. People saw that human life could become better organized to bring about human happiness. They also became better educated and enhanced cognitive powers brought insights which enlightened their ordering projects. People experienced they had more power over their lives and the lives of others. They could draw on inner desires for benevolence and sympathy, work toward universal benevolence and justice. Two views Henri Bremond, Histoire Litteraire du sentiment religieux en France, depuis la fin du guerres de religion jusqu’a nos jours, 11 vols. (Paris: A Colin, 1967–68). 47 For example, the transformation of desire was engaged through grace alone. By contrast, Ignatius of Loyola held a transformation of desire was possible incorporating human agency open to God. See: The Dynamism of Desire, eds. James L. Connor, S.J. and Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center (Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006). 48 Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 271. 46

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of human nature vied for a cultural explanation of the sources of human flourishing and the goals of human life: one which found these sources in human rationality, nature, and the new tools of human progress and the other which held a more pessimistic view of human nature, and robbed humans of any potential for union with God. Both views had in common a near-sightedness regarding the sources and goals of human flourishing and the religious need to integrate new awareness of human agency into a life of faith.

Jansenism Jansenism, a movement within the Catholic Church, held a pessimistic view of humanity, and distrust of human nature as a starting point for grace and connection with God. It is named for its founder, Cornelius Jansen (d. 1638), Louvain theologian and later bishop of Ypres, whose treatise Augustinus was published in 1640. Jansenism is often described as an overly rigorist treatment of the relationship between grace and human freedom, an extreme form of Augustinianism, which was eventually condemned by the Catholic Church. Jansen charged that the Counter-Reformation theologians, in their opposition to Luther and Calvin in their insistence on “faith alone,” had erred in the opposite direction by emphasizing human responsibility at the expense of the divine initiative of grace. Jansen felt the Jesuit order was too lax in taking seriously the effects of original sin and concupiscence on the human spirit. Jansen pitted the human freewill dimension of the God-human encounter against divine grace, and in the area of morality took a rigorist position in cases where there is moral doubt about the sinfulness of an action. There existed at the time a moral practice that claimed it was possible in conscience to follow a laxer position if moral authorities held different opinions on the sinfulness of a particular action. Jansenists held that only action above all moral doubt can be performed. They held that contrition in confession demands love of God, not simply fear of hell.49 Jansen’s beliefs that Christ died only for the elect hinted at the elitism which was to mark the Jansenists. Jansenism held that reception of communion should be rare since it was believed that frequent communion for most people would cause moral laxity. It is plain to see how Jansenism and Christian asceticism, actions of self-denial, got confused. Historian David Edwards notes that French

Berulle and the French School, ed. and Intro. William M. Thompson, trans. Lowell M. Glendon, S.S. (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), note 5, 90.

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Christians who were serious about the practice of their faith, and engaged in ascetical practices, often were branded as Jansenists, and as heretics.50

Moralism Jansenism contributed to a legalism within Catholic spirituality which overemphasized the moral code in the Christian life, and measured fidelity with external practices. It shared with Puritanism and later liberal society a type of moralism, which forgets the background which makes sense out of any moral code.51 Instead of being aware of the variety of goods which rules and norms are meant to realize, it led to a proceduralism which focused on process but not on broader principles. In Christianity a creeping moralism neglected the vertical dimension of the Christian life, and led to viewing Jesus Christ simply as a moral example, and not as a redeemer. For Jansenists who denied God’s universal will to save, the graces of salvation were restricted to the outward practice of belonging to the church. Jansenists were condemned by the official church on various occasions. Their rigorist tendency was corrected by the reaffirmation of the validity of “baptism of desire,” a belief held well before Jansenism’s revival of hyper-Augustinian approach to human nature.52 The legalism which flowed from this pessimistic approach to human nature led to a call for perfection in the spiritual life, often one of legal observance. It was counteracted by a call to reform moral theology to a framework based on relationship to Jesus Christ, as the identifying mark of Christian ethics. By Vatican II in the mid-1960s, the rigorism and asceticism which had characterized a pre-Vatican approach to life in the church was set in a new direction by reforms and calls to renewal. Religious were called to move beyond an outmoded institutional framework, to a retrieval of the vertical dimension of their charisms.53 The tendency to lose sight of the broader horizon of human flourishing, the meaning of salvation, a true understanding of the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the sources of the moral life impacted both the church and secular society. The asceticism of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving took its direction impacted by these cultural problems, resulting David L. Edwards, Christianity: The First Two Thousand Years (New York: Maryknoll, 1997), 373–4. 51 Charles Taylor, “The Perils of Moralism,” in Dilemmas and Connections (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 350–1. 52 Walter Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission (London: Bloomsbury/ T&T Clark, 2015), 115–16. 53 MaryAnne Confoy, Religious Life and the Priesthood: Perfectae Caritatis, Optatam Totius, Presbyterorum Ordinis (New York: Paulist Press, 2008), 206, 237. 50

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in excesses and distortions, as well as were fed by spiritual traditions in the church which sought to establish them in modern frameworks.

Cultural Rejection of Asceticism It is not hard to see how a negative assessment of human nature, the practice of asceticism, and a burdensome sense of legalism were intertwined in popular imagination. Attention to the transcendent dimension of life was questioned by Enlightenment culture. Everything which took people out of the path of ordinary human enjoyment and productive activity seemed a threat to the good life, and was condemned as “enthusiasm” or “fanaticism.” Genuine virtues (which are qualities useful to others and to oneself) were distinguished from the “monkish virtues” (celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, selfdenial, humility, silence, solitude), which contribute nothing to, even detract from human welfare. Many in the Enlightenment culture viewed those who practiced asceticism as simply prideful hypocrites who held themselves above others, and avoided the responsibilities of ordinary life. Proposals of goals of life beyond human flourishing were seen as denials of the human right to happiness. Some reacted to ascetical practices aimed at dismissing the hyperAugustinian picture of men and women as sinful. One Enlightenment response was the total reversal; ordinary human, even sensual, happiness is the only significant good. It ought to be pursued wholeheartedly and unremittingly. The very question which original sin was one answer, why is there evil in the world amid the good, was rendered mute.54 The doctrine of original sin and atonement were reduced to the juridicalpenal tone reflected in the moralism of the culture. Under the influence of Jansenism and Puritanism it conveyed a mechanical model that Christ paid for an original sin, paying a fine for us. The framework to address the broader modern questions, to whom for what, was not present. The tone that only a few were saved, heavy emphasis on divine omnipotence, suggested a doctrine of predestination which was repugnant to many. People did not raise the question of justification as it was in the Reformation. In the public mind there was a constellation of attitudes arising from these convergences: a “decline of hell,” a rise of universalism, and a growth in confidence in the human power to do good.55 People turned in another direction.

Charles Taylor, Sources of Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), 332–3. 55 Taylor, A Secular Age, 262–3. 54

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A New Ethic This gave rise not to an absence of ethics, but to a new ethic, an ethic without constitutive goods, but centered only on life goods. The new ethic judged whether people are good or bad by whether they serve the general happiness or not. Life requires commitment to three life goals. First, one must serve the ideal of self-responsible reason, which implies a freedom from authority. Second, one should pursue ordinary fulfillments—production and family life—these above all are worthy of being preserved and furthered. Third, one should seek the modern ideal of universal and impartial benevolence.56 The basis of this new ethic is self-responsible reason, not a transcendent/ vocational call centered in the meaning of life which transcends human flourishing. The nature and moral place of reason shifted, from a partner with faith, to the sole connection to truth. Self-preservation is the common good toward which all energies, forces, and human faculties are directed, not union with God. The tendency to preserve oneself, to desire happiness and love of well-being and pleasure were the impulses which directed human life. Religion was dismissed as asking men and women to deny these impulses in the name of purely imaginary goods and satisfactions. What began in Deism with a providential order of the world drifted in time to an utilitarian worldview which exalted nature to a degree that raw human desire became the guide to happiness. Fulfillment of natural, often sensual desire was the road to happiness. Belief in the harmony of interests suggested that the happiness of each would consist with the happiness of all. Attestations that this is the best of all possible worlds did not meet the suffering of those who could not escape it. Such philosophical beliefs had no explanation for the cruelty of the ensuing centuries, their wars as well as their natural disasters. Cultural thinking also assumed that the enlightenment of reason would suffice to create a love of humankind which would lead people to work for the good of humanity regardless of the cost to themselves. Taylor remarks that in giving central significance to sensual pleasure and pain, and challenging different concepts of order, the utilitarian view made it possible to put the relief of suffering of humans and animals in the center of the social agenda.57 Positively, they assumed people would be simply moved by the suffering and pain of others; mistakenly they assumed when motivation was purified from the superstition of religion it was more effective. They denied there was a gap between human desire and the brute movements of inanimate nature. They tended to do away with the distinction Taylor, Sources of the Self, 322. Ibid., 331.

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of moral and nonmoral goods, making all human desires equally worthy of consideration. In making a strong connection between benevolence and scientific reason, these thinkers felt they were freeing benevolence from its prison of superstition and error, fostered by religion. However, Taylor charges they left little room for “strong evaluations”: the recognition that certain goals or ends make a claim on us, and are incommensurable with our other desires and purposes. Such goals require freedom of choice and the capacity to make such choices. Beyond denial of these conflicts, sidelining strong evaluations also removed a framework by which ordinary desires can find expression and order. Benevolence itself had a similar fate as a moral ideal.58 The Enlightenment promise of health, wealth, and happiness through the powers of rational humanity and the innovations of technology did not acknowledge adequately the many who never shared in its promise of progress.59 It did not attend sufficiently to the moral sources which could support the “new ethic” of universal benevolence. To some degree, misunderstandings of the theory of atonement took on elements of these cultural assumptions. A mechanical understanding of Jesus’s death on the cross as a type of transaction between Jesus Christ and his Father which “paid” for our sin easily crossed over to the assumption that “good” Christians are entitled to salvation, without much effort on their part, or without a need for God. As many of the overstated “invisible” mechanisms of modernity, the invisible hand of the market, the unavoidable progress of historical materialism, the “inevitability” of modern progress, an automatic notion of salvation promises inevitable spiritual success for the “right people.”60 Yet it is not only the modern Christian but aspects of the church itself which surrendered to a modernization process which offers little alternative to mainstream culture. Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer charged during the Second World War that “cheap grace” resides in a church which accommodates this same culture. Catholic German theologian Johannes Metz explains Enlightenment culture promoted an unnecessary and a weak church— one which is convenient and culturally correct. While modern life lacks of language of meaning when life’s negative experiences occur, a church incapable of presenting the Gospel or challenging its members cannot Ibid., 332. Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991), 40–81, 529ff. 60 Taylor, A Secular Age, 183. The short stories of Flannery O’Connor critique this assumption in Christian culture. See: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992). 58 59

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address the spiritual emptiness that such an evasion of life produces.61 Who needs a church that makes demands when life means only one side of life, the sweet without the bitter? The retrieval of asceticism, and its vision, for all in the church may turn out to be part of a revival of the meaning of the church in secular culture. Such asceticism would need to be one for everyone in the church, not a select few; and one that relates to the challenges of one’s reallife journey.

Asceticism for All The church is reeling from an international crisis of sexual abuse among clergy. Family life is also in trouble across the globe.62 We find that the divorce rate in marriage in first world countries continues to rise. The divorce rate in the United States is around 50 percent. European countries are worse off in some instances with divorce rates higher than 60 percent.63 Often income security impacts divorce rate in a country. While “abuse” and divorce arise from different reasons, fidelity in celibacy and in marriage has much in common. Sara Coakley wisely states, “In other words-and this is surely a point of great spiritual significance today-rightly channeled eros, whether married or celibate, is impossible without deep prayer and ascetic perseverance; but it is even more impossible, interestingly, without shining examples to emulate.”64 Is a new asceticism possible? Can we develop an asceticism which attends to the crosscurrents of modern life, incorporates freedom, responsibility, and wisdom, while it depicts love in a manner which promotes and respects true human flourishing? Is a new asceticism a key step in the dance of discipleship of the future? This is a central question for the meaning of Christian discipleship.

Johannes Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 7, 43, 53. 62 Don S. Browning, Marriage and Modernization: How Globalization Threatens Marriage and What to Do About It (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2003). 63 Pamela Engel, “MAP: Divorce Rates Around the World,” Business Insider, May 25, 2014. 64 Coakley, The New Asceticism, 51. 61

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To foster a life beyond the limitations of the modern secular frame, the Christian community needs to witness the possibilities of transcendence within modern culture. As “every scribe who has been made a disciple for the Kingdom” (Mt. 13:52), the church is challenged to bring out of their treasure both the old and the new to meet this challenge. A new asceticism can shape Christian discipleship to meet the cross pressures of modern life. Healing the chaos within both individuals and societies is not just a matter of material progress or spiritual renewal alone; rather it requires a new relationship between the material/body and the spirit/soul of society and the individual. While this healing will produce different results among its recipients— psychic/spiritual healing for some, new doors to maintain sufficiency and flourishing for others—it will not flow from “business as usual”—without personal, social, and ecclesial renewal. Ascetic formation involves a demanding integration of intellectual, spiritual, and bodily practice over a lifetime, sustained by a complete vision of the Christian life and its “ends.”1 In the spiritual tradition, it is the eagerness of God who initiates this impulse and its impacts on self, the church, and society. On the individual level, without this initial spark, the long haul of spiritual practice lacks meaning. Former Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe captures what the ancients testify—yet states it in modern form: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute final way.”2

Sara Coakley, The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 10. 2 As quoted in Kevin Burke, “Love Will Decide Everything: Pedro Arrupe Recovered the Ignatian ‘Mysticism of Open Eyes,’” America, November 12, 2007. 1

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Directions for a New Asceticism The call to “open eyes for God in the world” of Ignatian mysticism finds a response in traditional goals of asceticism. Negatively, it means control of conflicting and disruptive desires, and positive development of a liberty of spirit to love, in new and expanding ways. Past forms of asceticism too often reflected a body/spirit dualism and the assumption that sexual abstinence was its highest expression. Traditionally, sexual renunciation in celibacy was seen as a main way to holiness and a readiness to respond to God’s grace in the world. This suggested Christian marriage was a lesser vocation, as a way to holiness. Marriage was extolled as a graced institution and as a remedy for lust, but it was better to forego marriage (and sex) in order to free the spirit for union with the divine, as well as to free an individual’s time and energies for service to the gospel.3 It was assumed celibacy was also a better path to contemplation. However, these assumptions are questioned today as universally true. Overwork and modern schedules are greater distractions to prayer and a contemplative spirit in all vocations. Sex is normally not viewed as a drain on people’s personal power. Rather sex which integrates reason and emotion, body and spirit, desire and love and commitment enhances the capabilities of the person as a whole. Modern insights into the meaning and role of sexual integration in human life, which understands that sexual fulfillment transcends simply its genital expression, impact theological understandings. Sex is no longer seen as the central focus of the damage of original sin. After Freud modern psychoanalytic theories no longer see sex as the basis for all motivation, rather there can be many motivations for sex. We find that modern ascetical practices can find no support in a simplified theory of sexuality, like “abstinence from sex will make you holy,” nor can it rely on the false assumption that following norms for sexual expression will repress human fulfillment. Christian theology today is less likely to identify marriage with a divided heart and more likely to ponder the ways in which God can be found in creation, whether in nature or in created persons.4 We can see that a new asceticism cannot be centered on the same assumptions which grounded the sexual renunciation of celibacy in the past or other forms of Christian ascetical practice. For that matter, neither can the continuing

See: Margaret A. Farley, “Celibacy Under the Sign of the Cross,” in Changing Questions: Explorations in Christian Ethics, ed. and Intro. Jamie L. Manson (New York: Orbis Books, 2015), 226. 4 Ibid., 233. 3

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positive option of celibacy, as an adult lifestyle in the church, be defended by a false conception of asceticism. Choosing marriage or the celibate life is no longer a value choice of better or best through some automatic calculation; rather one must ask which option is more likely to lead one to a human integration which manifests not only happiness and well-being but the peace that comes with human selfrealization and fulfillment. Both marriage and celibacy only make sense as ways to refine human capacities for love, to find in faith the union that is love, and to express love in action. The goal of both ways is given first in the yearning that prompts it and then in the ongoing desire that sustains it.5 The central rationale for a religiously motivated celibate life today may be found “in the desire to pick up one’s very being and place it down again in utter affirmation of God; and in doing so, in profound love of and solidarity with the neighbor near and far.”6 The choice of a path of asceticism to match our calling is necessary since all great loves are sacrificial loves. There is no “one size fits all.” Without a path of asceticism, we cannot hear a call to understand vocational choice in a deep manner nor can we sustain our choice and its unfolding, before the challenges of the fulfillment and nonfulfillment of every life course. We can easily lose our way in all vocations.

Christian Life and Asceticism All forms of the Christian life are meant to be mystical and radical. The grace of each vocation is received and fostered in the personal engagement and struggle of asceticism. As strategies for human living, ascetical practices are aimed at spiritual living—living beyond the buffered identity of the secular person. They are characterized by effort, method, deprivation, and voluntary suffering. They address the impulses of sin, as well as systemic sin which It is acknowledged that Familiaris consortio 16 ranks celibacy over marriage in terms of the “superiority of this charism to that of marriage, by reason of the wholly singular link which it has with the kingdom of God.” However, from the perspective of the Christian asceticism needed to support all vocations in the church in secular society, and its role in the call to Christian holiness in Lumen Gentium 5, it seems important to recognize that differing charisms lie also within vocations rather than just between them: “This is exactly the aim of asceticism: to transcend every limit, to expand souls by the audacity of love, and to develop the person by means of gifts and charisms.” Paul Evdokimov, Ages of the Spiritual Life (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 69. In this sense a new asceticism echoes the call of the American bishops in 1985 who in their pre-synodal document called for the elaboration of a new asceticism and spirituality for Christians who are in the world but not of the world. This applies to all and is not simply a marker between adult lifestyles in the church. 6 Farley, “Celibacy Under the Sign of the Cross,” 219–20. 5

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abide in institutional structures that fragment society and divides peoples. Ascetical practices also address concupiscence—the invisible energy behind sin; the orientation of human desires toward life goods without respect to their place or subordination to constitutive goals of life. Popularity, power, money, pleasure, security, recognition all are good in themselves. Yet without the ordering of a sense of transcendence, they can cause an eclipse of desire. Desire from the deep parts of oneself is not rejected; it is never even sensed in the first place, because it is highjacked in the pursuit of life goals which are seen as the only goals of life. If life were a swimming pool, many would find that our day is filled with the noise of the shallow end of the pool, the clamor and pace of consumer society. Ascetical practices can alert us that something more profound is possible, arising from another source, the deeper end of our lives.7 This is a challenge in all vocations in the church in secular society. Today ascetical practice also expresses a search for growth in human authenticity and the achievement of human community, especially through justice and peace. In this sense, asceticism crosses all life vocations in the church, single, married, and consecrated forms of life.8 It comes out of life circumstances particular to each vocation and life course; hence it is less prepackaged and more centered on a response to love in one’s historical circumstances. Lastly, it focuses on freedom from sin, both as an agent of sin and as a victim of sin. This second aspect of freedom from sin is especially significant in our times as race, class, gender, nationality, age, and bodily wholeness mark various avenues of discrimination in our society. In this sense, our freedom is given to us always in a context of givens, both positive and negative. It is the task of our freedom to transform the conditions both in our own lives and of others that limit true human flourishing. Asceticism fosters the truth of our deepest self before God and its realization, and the fullness of life promised by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as it applies to the deepest challenges of our age and individual lives.

New Asceticism and Meaning Making One consequence of living in an age of contingency is a sense of an historical rather than a classical understanding of human life. A classical I borrow this image from Coakley, The New Asceticism, 107. Ernest Larkin, O.Carm, “Asceticism,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, eds. Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), 64–7.

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understanding is captured in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. He focused on the one, universal goal of all human persons, and not on the unique “I” that was in journey to the goal.9 A more historical approach is shown in the thought of Bernard Lonergan. He addresses the impact of history on our history, cultural relativity as well as the recognition that humans create their own futures.10 Lonergan recognizes that meanings differ from nation to nation, from culture to culture, and that, over time, they develop and go astray. We become who we are by virtue of our own cultural, ethnic, and personal upbringings. While he does not reject the insight of Aquinas, he also recognizes that we contribute to our own futures by our choices. Human persons and groups constitute the meaning by which they live. Personal and communal habits develop and alter options for the future, in both destructive and beneficial ways. God reveals Godself therefore by entering into the creativity of humankind making itself and its future. Revelation can take on a new understanding as God’s entry into this meaning making. A more contextual, historical understanding of human life impacts how we understand the Christian life, the role of the faith community, and the church. It is no longer enough for the church to list truths about God, somehow it has to mediate God’s meaning into the whole of human affairs.11 The church has to be more than a maker of moral rules; it also must be a nurturer of the heart of human fulfillment, the faith, and hope that lead to love. Lonergan sees an individual Christian life as a process of conversion that underpins all religious living. Conversion is intellectual, affective, moral, and religious. Latin American theologian Juan Luis Segundo sees this process of conversion as the heart of a religious posture to life—the heart of Christian discipleship: “Religious faith in the fullest sense of the word is a faith which is the source of a new meaning structure.”12 Taking context seriously is a feature of the new asceticism and the meaning of Christian discipleship. Conversion in this sense is not merely a change or development, it is a transformation. People see what before was unseen. What was ignored, and of no concern, becomes a matter of high import. Personal values shift; we relate differently to others. New meanings are given even to old practices. While these changes happen in very personal ways, they can be shared in

Christopher Steck, S.J., The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 73. 10 Bernard J. F. Lonergan, “Theology in a New Context,” in Second Collection, ed. William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1974), 55–68. 11 Ibid., 62. See also: Cynthia Crysdale, Transformed Lives: Making Sense of Atonement Today (New York: Seabury Press, 2016), 117–38. 12 Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, trans. John Drury (New York: Orbis, 1984), 71. 9

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community, and be handed down as testimony to religious experience in secular times, indicating paths for practical living.

Modernity and the New Asceticism Asceticism in a consumer society is difficult, because life in society itself will not produce it. Conditions in previous societies provided a different context for the practices of asceticism. The lifespan was shorter and life itself was filled with dangers.13 The sheer fact of external circumstances required modesty in diet; there was little opportunity for most for luxury, travel, entertainments we take for granted or even free time. The Christian life was geared to help people accept the deprivations of ordinary life. If a person went beyond this, in monasticism, this was considered “more.” These conditions gave asceticism the “image” of something heroic and extraordinary. Even though St. Benedict wanted a monasticism which would help “ordinary” men and women live the Christian life, simpler than the practices of the desert fathers and mothers, it was still beyond the common lifestyle. Poverty, chastity, and obedience were “more” than patience with the deprivations of ordinary living, keeping the commandments, and hoping for eternal life. Many of the named saints of former periods were people who were from the upper classes, who were free from the restrictions of ordinary living and who turned their power and fortune to help the poor. In some way these figures are not remote from the conditions which are more generally held by people in the first world today. A benefit of modern life is humans have gained some control over nature by technical achievements, advances in medicine; as well, political movements have enabled social mobility and the like. People today can live without restraint and even avoid the disadvantages which used to be associated with destructive choices. Sexual excesses can be had without pregnancy, the misuse of power will not automatically bring a tyrant’s death at the hand of an assassin, and idleness will not bring debtor’s prison or hunger. Medicine today can even be employed to help rather than restrain the quest for enjoyment.14 But along with the advances of modernity have come new responsibilities. The modern person is more aware of the role and the power they have to shape the world, and their own life course. The overcoming of sin, both While today we recognize this sense of instability exists for many domestically and across the world. 14 Karl Rahner, The Practice of Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 241–3 at 241. 13

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personal and institutional, continues to express the age-old struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Asceticism calls for an integration of these two movements in life, the personal and the social, and seeks to facilitate the openness to God who directs their healing.15 It is erroneous to think that modern life does not still continue to be its own Passion, but in a new form. Asceticism’s path in life in the past suggested simply patient endurance of life’s limits or the taking of extraordinary measures. The question of asceticism today is how to live a life that is moderate, self-disciplined, and pure, as well as to take responsibility for the good of others in a concrete way, amid the excesses which are available. This requires examples and patterns in a contemporary setting which provide a path—a chief characteristic is its freedom and lack of necessity. This will involve a love of God, for God’s own sake—a new asceticism.

Toward the Steps of a New Asceticism God’s grace in us nurtures the spiritual life. In the situations in which God places us we can detect a “graced history”; people, education, the social and religious milieu which contributed to our maturation, our ethnic and national inheritance are gifts God gave us so we can know God. As free gifts they require we accept and use them, overcome their limitations, and utilize their advantages. In face of our “sin-history,” our own, and being sinnedagainst, we also can detect God’s saving love. These beginnings from which to start do not control our lives, nor does belief that “God will provide” remove responsibility for our spiritual lives. The spiritual life has to be cultivated every day; it requires constant attention. The conscious development of believing, hoping, investing, sacrificing, loving, and reflecting on our experience according to the gifts of nature, our personal character, our charisms, and grace requires a continual turning to God and being confirmed in our relationship with God. This is the warp and woof of asceticism. There is a point in our lives, or a circumstance, where the training wheels of our background and moral code are not enough in modern society to sort out the conflicting desires, lacunae, and possibilities of our times. The asceticism of the Christian life goes beyond the tools of a “good life,” according to societal standards, and includes the readiness to participate

Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), chapter one, “Charism in the Christian Life: One Movement or Two,” 2–27.

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in the paschal mystery of Jesus’s own life—to know in concrete ways that human flourishing includes a life of union with God and its consequences. The traditional forms of asceticism in the church are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These key symbolic acts address our relationship to God, self, and others. Yet today a new asceticism is needed to interpret these important avenues of grace to fit a secular age where, in the words of the American bishops, Christians must live in the world but not of the world.16 This is true not only for the laity, single and married, but for the lifestyles of active religious life and the priesthood, as the context in which these are lived is changed radically today. Secularity, exclusive humanism, the ideal of the buffered self, the nova effect—the cross pressures of modernity affect all vocations in the church. The pluralism of human experience, the importance of one’s life course, the impact of race, class, gender, the reality that social context as well are internal conflicts impact the ordering of desires, all call for a more nuanced understanding of asceticism which “one size fits all” does not fulfill. Three steps of a new asceticism must include, first, a sense of the human vocation as including relationship with God. Second, an understanding that one’s life course, not only vocation but “my vocation,” my marriage, my journey has the keys for asceticism in my own life. And third, personal selfknowledge and the conversions it requires is the core truth through which my own identity before God can be received and my practice of asceticism will lead. In the following we will suggest that human experiences which open life to transcendence: gratitude and happiness, encounter with evil and suffering/contrast, and the acknowledgment of limits, finitude, and guilt are key moments where the practice of a new asceticism occurs. Finally, while not exhaustively, we will explore dimensions of an asceticism of gratitude, an asceticism of solidarity and an asceticism of authenticity in light of the beatitudes as key to the steps of which a new asceticism might consist.

Modern Experience and the Paschal Mystery Experiences of gratitude and happiness, encounter with evil and suffering/ contrast, and the acknowledgment of limits, finitude, and guilt are centers of meaning around which we construct the meaning of happiness in our lives. The beatitudes indicate the happiness offered by Jesus; they appear as reversals of the meaning of happiness which culture often promotes. It is not that the beatitudes place the joys and successes of ordinary human life outside the goals of the Christian life. The beatitudes indicate that the life of Larkin, “Asceticism,” 66.

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a Christian will also be defined by the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ. The cross and the resurrection are inseparable from the Christian life course. The beatitudes promise “another kind of happiness” which this involves. Elizabeth Johnson moves an understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus from theory to experience: His hopes for success were not fulfilled. In historical terms, his death was a failure, an event of the power of evil overcoming good. Christian faith dares to believe that this evil does not checkmate God’s compassionate and loving power. Rather, God’s victory over this particular initiative of evil in history shows itself in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.17

The reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus is the key to the interpretation of true happiness, and every aspect of human life. Happiness is more than things going well; it can exist also in difficulty. The power of the cross and resurrection of Jesus helps the disciple to face the evils of human life, by transforming those evils into good through love—the mysterious law of the cross.18 Entering into Jesus’s own paschal mystery is the center of Christian asceticism. For every person, making peace with the unalterable fact that frustration, disappointment, pain, misfortune, illness, unfairness, sadness, and death are part of our lives can keep them from a life of bitterness. As long as humans feel that pain is something that need not be accepted, bitterness will mark life. It will express the disappointment that happiness cannot coexist with both the gifts and sorrows of living. A truth of the Christian life is all must take up their cross as well as work to alleviate the cross of others. Without this acceptance of the cross, people simply pass on bitterness to those around them. Mature Christian discipleship involves naming our deaths, claiming our births, mourning our losses, letting go of what has died, and receiving new spirit for the life that is to come. This is the dance of the paschal mystery. These contemporary but enduring issues of human life seem part of Jesus’s own definition of a true righteousness and happiness in the beatitudes.

Elizabeth Johnson, “Christ Died for Us,” in Abounding in Kindness (New York: Orbis Books, 2015), 182. 18 Bernard Lonergan, S.J., De Verbo Incarnato, 524 as quoted in Vernon Gregson, “Theological Method and Theological Collaboration II,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 112. 17

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Part Two: Beatitudes as Doors to a New Asceticism19 Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, tackled the quest we are pursuing. What is true righteousness, better than that portrayed in his day by the scribes and Pharisees? Without throwing out the law which Jesus himself practiced as a faithful Jew, Jesus wanted to illustrate God’s intention behind the law, which was the only way to true human flourishing, or righteous. The search for a new asceticism shares this pursuit. How do we get beyond the limitations of a stagnant moralism to the renewal of our lives, the church, and society? While righteousness in the New Testament refers to God’s salvific activity, as well as an eschatological gift of God (our righteous which can only come from God), it also means the status of someone who stands in the correct and proper relationship with God. What kind of conduct does God require in light of the kingdom of heaven? What kind of conduct is in conformity with God’s will as expressed in the law?20 Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount refers to the conduct that observes the law and the prophets as interpreted by Jesus, the Messiah. The beatitudes link both blessings, which appear to be reversals of how life appears in society, and the conduct, not just business as usual, which elicits these blessings. A new asceticism is not just a new set of external practices; it must give access to the goodness, the blessedness of God behind the law, which external conformity alone does not uncover. This is the music which calls forth the dance of discipleship. The beatitudes offer key notes of what this music consists. They call for a dependence on God, and an awareness of the reversals God does in life; the persecuted, the poor, the downtrodden are lifted up. Those who help to bring about these reversals in concrete ways, who participate in this “praxis of the kingdom,” are righteous and blessed. The conduct of the beatitudes is not for self-improvement or seizing the golden ring of superiority to others, but for receiving the blessing of inheritance of the Kingdom of God, reserved for the poor in spirit, the meek, and the merciful. The pure in heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and bear persecution because of it, will receive this confirmation. The disciples are not to practice their righteousness in order for others to see, as do the hypocrites. Their hearts are divided; while I dedicate this section of the book to Sister Dorothy Stang SNDdeN who was murdered in Anapu, a city in the state of Para, in the Amazon Basin of Brazil, February 12, 2006. She read the beatitudes to her hired killers contracted by large landowners whose abuses she denounced. See: Roseanne Murphy, Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Dorothy Stang (New York: Orbis Books, 2007). 20 Frank J. Matera, New Testament Ethics: The Legacies of Jesus and Paul (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 44–50. 19

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trying to please God they seek human approval. Jesus himself lives the life of the beatitudes, so key is to follow him. The Lord’s Prayer shows his eyes are on the Father, not on the approval of others. In this sense Jesus brings to fulfillment the law and the prophets by explaining with his life and ministry, and ultimately his death and resurrection, God’s original intention and the law’s inner meaning.21 The Gospel of John is even more explicit than the Synoptic writers on this account. Jesus at the Last Supper gives his disciples a new commandment to love. Since love of others is already an element of Jewish Law (Lev. 19:18) and even the pagan systems of Jesus’s times, one can wonder what is new about it. John does not use the same word for love as do the Synoptics and Paul who refer to the Mosaic Law. Jesus gives this commandment of love from above, rather than a precept of the law: “Just as Jesus received a commandment from the Father that guides his salvific work in the world, so the disciples receive a new commandment that will guide their mission in the world during the time of Jesus’ absence.”22 Jesus expresses his love for his disciples in the foot washing and thereby provides an example of the kind of love that his disciples must imitate. The one who gives the commandment is the Son of God and the hour when he gives it is night before his paschal mystery, when the light is about to overcome the darkness of the world. This love is Jesus’s saving death for the disciples, which finds its fullest expression upon the cross. The newness of the love commandment, then, derives from the example of the one who gives it and the times in which it is given. The Christ event changes everything. The context in which the disciples must practice this love is new.23 The Christian living in secular society is called to continue to believe in Jesus, even when the face of transcendence seems absent in our cultural context. Our love for others must be patterned on Jesus’s love for us; hence it is sacrificial. Lastly, we must manifest our love by keeping his word/commandments and discerning what they require in face of the challenges of our own society. In the Christian life, the celebration of the Eucharist calls us to this love in our new context. The life of the beatitudes is not just one way among others for a disciple of Jesus. Following the beatitudes, the disciples are to the earth what salt is to food, and they are to the world what a lamp is to a room (Mt. 5:316). In practice, seeking the kingdom will require that disciples store up treasure for themselves in heaven, rather just on earth (Mt. 6:19-21). This requires not being overly anxious about one’s life (Mt. 6:25-34) but to seek Matera, New Testament Ethics, 45. Ibid., 106. 23 Ibid., 107. 21 22

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the righteousness of the kingdom which will not decay nor be destroyed. Living this way will create an “eye” for discernment, as good and evil are mixed in life. This eye will be the lamp of one’s body (Mt. 6:22-23). It will require one does not serve two masters (Mt. 6:24); it will call for wisdom not to cast one’s pearls before swine (Mt. 7:6) and will demand one perseveres in prayer (Mt. 7:7-11). In the dance of discipleship these are some of the steps of hearing God’s music and seeking the kingdom of heaven. From this broad framework of the meaning of some elements of response to the person of Jesus in discipleship, we will revisit the three experiences which alert the modern person to the call of the transcendent in life, and ask what insights they might offer into the meaning of a new asceticism.

The Asceticism of Gratitude Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven (Mt. 5:3). Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Mt. 5:8) These two beatitudes capture the new vision to see and experience salvation portrayed as life in the gospel. It seems possible that two people could live a similar life course; one would see it through the beatitudes, while the other could be paralyzed with resentment. Resentment is response to life as an unfair playing field. It is a leveling tool used to bring down others who are perceived to have had a better chance at life than ourselves. Instead of gratitude and joy for life, one finds what is lacking. Resentment is triggered by comparing oneself to others, and their real or imagined success. In the search for fullness, the pain of feeling entitled to “more” is shifted to an external scapegoat. Resentment leads to a life of self-imposed victimhood. Instead of taking responsibility for one’s freedom of choice to take up an attitude toward one’s life with its opportunities and limitations, one relinquishes this freedom in order to blame an external force or individual. To be poor in spirit is to experience freedom from entitlement and resentment. Anger, resentment and jealousy toward others does not change the hearts of others, it only damages and imprisons the self. “I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10) is a message of joy and meaning, even when that meaning is in doubt. When people can experience gratitude for life even when everything is not going their way, they enter into the freedom of this beatitude. When happiness depends only on continued pleasure and absence of pain, and every life experience must be seized, never letting something calmly pass by, people are closed to the experience of this gift. Since love requires suffering as well as pleasure, abstaining as well as fulfilling, resentment can block its renewing joy, no one

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or situation is ever enough. Jesus’s call to take up one’s cross is a call to receive the freedom of this beatitude. Rahner puts it this way: The man who does not fear death, or rather, who accepts the abiding fear of death, can enjoy the particular good things of life which come to him because they are a promise of the absolute future. He is able to risk his whole self. He is free to love without sparing himself. He does not need to overtax this life’s happiness and thus spoil it.24

Purity of heart allows the desire for God to take the center of one’s life. The more this occurs, one will find God in all things. In Mt. 6:21, Jesus reminds where your treasure is, there will your heart be. The purity of heart of the beatitude is not self-awarded; it is a relational purity coming from trusting the love of God and receiving it. This grace comes unexpectedly, as the disciples surprised by joy on the road to Emmaus. Purity of heart is also experienced in the process of discovering how to use one’s talents and gifts.25 The parables warned the early Christians what would happen if in waiting for Jesus to come back, they grew lazy, paralyzed with fear, or just distracted and wasted their talents, not producing acts of righteous for the Kingdom of God (Mt. 25:14-30). In secular society, accountability for our gifts before God can seem unnecessary to life goals. Gratitude and recognition of one’s gifts and charisms are a first step in realizing they are meant for others, to build the kingdom. Purity of heart helps one focus on this higher purpose in a society fixed on high incomes and an image of success where upward mobility leaves one less and less accountable to others. The lack of meaning of an unfilled life can be touched by a gift of purity of heart, or the practice of simplicity. If one’s gifts are used for goals not worthy of them, wasted on things not evil but superficial in light of the good they could do, emptiness can result. Here, burying one’s talents is not the proverbial digging of a hole in the backyard, but having one’s gifts highjacked by what appears to be the easiest, most profitable financially, or popular path to take. The result is personal emptiness amid the paradox of public success. A new asceticism has to offer a witness to and a path toward “the road less travelled” in the use of talents to serve the meaning of the gospel in our millennium. Purity of heart and poverty of spirit open one to receive salvation as the gift of freedom, freedom for others and for community. The salvific element Karl Rahner, “Self-Realization and Taking Up One’s Cross,” Theological Investigations IX, trans. Graham Harrison (New York: Crossroad, 1972), 257. 25 See: Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows, 87–113. 24

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of this call of freedom in the gospel is its capacity to give joy and to publicly manifest one’s reliance on God through love of others (1 Jn 3:14). Love of our families and communities, of the ordinary pleasures in life, the change of the seasons, the life passages of family and friends, the beauty of a day at the beach—all can be moments of union with God. The Eucharist itself is a celebration of this intimacy with God, God intimately bound up with our life as it is and our call to life in community (1 Cor. 10:16-17). The beatitudes in this way are not moral projects we set out to accomplish but rather reversals of meaning of what happiness means received through the transformation of discipleship. They appear as confirmations of grace, products of our relationship with God, rather than maps or goals of our moral effort.

The Asceticism of Solidarity Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Mt. 5:4). Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Mt. 5:6). Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Mt. 5:10) The idea that good and evil reside side by side in life is not absent from the New Testament. The parables of the gospels often have this as their theme. They call the Christian to discern the coming of the kingdom in this mixed environment and weigh how to respond. These two beatitudes point to the blessings which will be received by those who engage in this struggle. It is not the case that discerning good and evil in this world, or acting to confront it, comes easily to anyone. Theologian Bernard Lonergan holds that God has good intentions for our world; however, human beings are “originators” of what disrupts. Human sin accounts for the decline in our world. Human inauthenticity, set off by conflicting desires, is often characterized by inattentiveness, obtuseness, unreasonableness, and irresponsibility.26 Redemption is God’s victory over sin and the process which restores the order destroyed by sin and leads to the true progress of the individual and society.27 Redemption, however, is not only the act of Jesus accomplished by his cross and resurrection; it is a process to which we are invited. Key to genuine human progress is attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and Bernard Lonergan, “Healing and Creating in History,” in The Lonergan Reader, eds. Mark D. Morelli and Elizabeth A. Morelli (Murray) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). 27 Bernard Lonergan, “The Human Good as Object: Differentials and Integration,” in Topics in Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education, eds. Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe, Vol. 10 of CWL (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 49–78, esp. 49ff. 26

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responsible cooperation, not only of an individual but in ever-expanding and complementary networks of community. Bias, of individual and groups, is the repression of even the desire to know that problems exist or to seek ways to solve them. Bias can be predispositional and prejudicial and is not always conscious. Lonergan thinks such tendencies can be corrected, which separates him from Marx, Freud, and others who found the pathologies of the modern human condition less penetrable. While Lonergan acknowledged the flight from human solidarity and understanding in society, he rejected that repression, alienation, inhibition, and domination were such total states that they could not be transformed.28 The new asceticism as solidarity calls for efforts to move beyond contemporary pessimism, which easily gives way to relativism and nihilism. Many do not move toward others or identify with their suffering because they lack the faith that it is worth their effort to do so. What is worthwhile is often limited to material success. It is not uncommon today to feel positive about one’s own life, but hopeless about problems of the wider society. Some feel nothing of significance can be done to change our world. The systems and power of the globe are beyond our control. The hope that we can make a difference is dulled by the feeling that there are no alternatives. Our choice seems limited to the search for a niche, a fit, where we can be immune to the problems of the world and work out some private version of peace and happiness. An asceticism of solidarity has as its aim to overcome the estrangement in our society from the moral-spiritual power to do and be what we might be. Powerlessness before anything except the most banal choices stands in paradox to a modern life steeped in options. The “globalization of superficiality” is a term first coined and defined in 2010 by Father Adolfo Nicholas SJ, the worldwide leader of the Jesuits at that time. It describes an era in which depth of thought and the authenticity of human relationships are slowly being short-circuited by a combination of rapid technology growth, excessive worldwide consumerism, and a dizzying pluralism of choices and opportunities. The quickness by which one can access information, give one’s reactions, and share thoughts with people half way around the world can short change the more long-term task of solidarity, standing with people, over time for social change or a life commitment. We can friend and unfriend someone quickly, rather than encounter them in their complexity and context. The challenge of “thinking through” the The Desires of the Human Heart, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist, 1988), 270 and 264.

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plights of others because one has entered their world, weighing approaches to solutions to problems, or engaging in the critical thinking that debunk cultural myths, it bypassed. All is replaced by allowing others to think for us through the latest social media critique. This loss of the ability to engage in reality ourselves and take a stand, actually dehumanizes, and opens space to mindless violence; often against those whose worth, in this detached universe, is reduced to economic profit or social utility. It idolizes the flashy and pleasurable and promotes intellectual laziness by reducing a cause or an individual to a nametag or unpopular political stance.29 Schillebeeckx agrees that people do not have to settle for the evil they find in this world, and charges that they can discover this through contrast experiences. Yet for this to occur, an asceticism of solidarity is necessary, one in which they listen to their hearts, think deeply, engage authentically, and discern truthfully. It is possible to learn not just from positive experiences but through negative ones. Even if they are by accident, to find God in them and create solutions to them is not automatic, it requires discipline. Both theologians affirm before the experience of evil and suffering in the world, salvation is the renewal of humanity and the world, and victory over alienating powers. They affirm that we are baptized into Christ’s death in order “to live in the newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). Before the face of evil and suffering, belief in the paschal mystery is one’s grounding in hope. An asceticism of solidarity is necessary for this to happen because hope is not hope if the goal is evident—asceticism is the openness to receive from God what can only be given by grace. Those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for justice, and those who experience persecution for their efforts state with their lives before evil, “this ought not to be.” Implicit in their “no” to the situation is “yes” to something better. Their hunger is an asceticism of nonfulfillment, yet standing in solidarity with those who also yearn for more. These beatitudes confirm that people who seek to make sense out of the world, even in face of the fact “that things go intolerably wrong” are not just optimists. Rather, the promise of salvation that Jesus “gave himself for our sins that he might rescue us from the present evil age in accord with the will of our god and Father” (Gal. 1:4) grounds their efforts in more than humanitarian impulse. Salvation in Christ speaks therefore both to our experience of personal suffering and evil but also to the intransigence of evil in society, webs of communication, and levels of structural sin. The love which Jesus showed on the cross and the power of his resurrection holds him as victor over hostile powers; however, we encounter them. Even though victory over evil has been already accomplished through Christopher Hale, “The Greatest Battle Facing the Next Pope,” America, March 13, 2013.

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the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and in Christ is our hope before evil and suffering, working toward liberation from evil and suffering, both in our relationships and in the world at large is a lifelong task. To engage in this lifelong struggle requires an asceticism of solidarity. Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection do not make the massive histories of suffering intelligible or meaningful in themselves. But entering into the paschal mysteries can transform human communities with heightened consciousness of the sufferings and needs of humankind. The paralysis that this new asceticism is challenged to address is the belief in the inevitability of evil, and the fear its healing is insurmountable. It counters the mentality that the only “smart” way to live is to find some corner of the world where it cannot touch you, and live removed from any obligations which can impinge on this freedom. This is the life of the vagabond and tourist, not the life of the disciple. An asceticism of solidarity renders meaningless any practice of asceticism apart from the concrete struggles of evil and suffering in our times. As all true asceticism in the past, it witnesses how these wounds can be healed by a living faith, hope, and love attentive to the mystery of God which calls each human being into this same life. An undeveloped area of an asceticism of solidarity in the church is how this practice applies to marriage, the single life, and the vocations of consecrated life and priesthood today. To some degree we have abandoned how asceticism comes out of life’s circumstances and have assumed it is prepackaged and irrelevant to our times. How it relates to life’s circumstances and the calls to solidarity in sickness, unemployment, addiction, and aging needs articulation. How solidarity is required before current challenges: diminishment in the size of religious congregations, fostering internationality, diocesan, and communal identity in face of exposure of sexual abuse, institutional integrity, environmental issues, and challenges of sexual identity need reflection. As we examine these challenges to the modern church and society, a new look at asceticism will emerge.

Asceticism of Authenticity Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth (Mt. 5:5). Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy (Mt. 5:7). Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Mt. 5:11)

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Today ascetical practice focused on human authenticity moves beyond the personal to include the fostering of human community, especially through justice and peace. An asceticism of authenticity has to be interpreted alongside strains of an ethic of authenticity in modern culture. Taylor claims that a new age of authenticity has emerged in modern times. Moving from an earlier focus on a buffered, disciplined self, concerned with instrumental rational control, it has morphed into a very different experience today.30 A new approach to authenticity in first world culture came to birth gradually.

Post–Second World War “Authenticity” In the 1950s’ search for authenticity involved a criticism of the postwar conformist culture which crushed creativity and individuality. Critics charged it was too focused on production and concrete results, and prized the mechanical over the organic. The 1960s brought a further criticism of a “system” which crushed the creativity, imagination, and individuality needed for an “authentic” self. A counterculture was created, not just for the elite, but one which became an available option for many. Authenticity was linked to integral self-expression, sensual release, creations of equal relations between people often separated by role and areas of living. A new equality was sought in work and markers of status. For instance, equal relations were encouraged between people who worked with their hands and intellectuals, students and teachers, as well as areas of life, like work and play etc. People segmented by status, forms of privilege, hierarchy and divisions of society were to be brought together. These goals were considered to be a package leading to an authentic life. People learned the practice of uniting them all was difficult. Even when attempted in communes, or small communities, the realizations of some values was difficult, and ultimately lead to the sacrifice of some of the package for others. During the 1970s and beyond David Brooks writes of a melding between the “bourgeois” and “bohemian” in the upper class of the United States, those who came of age through the 1960s.31 Making their peace with capitalism and productivity, they retained their sense of the importance of personal development and self-expression. They held a positive view of sex and sexuality as a good in itself, without necessarily the free-wheeling approach of the 1960s. Rather, sexual expression was incorporated into a view of Charles Taylor, The Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 476 ff. 31 David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), chapter 3, 5, 6, as cited in Taylor, The Secular Age, 477. 30

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self-improvement which characterized their sense of authenticity. They developed, what he termed, a sense of “higher selfishness”: Self-cultivation is the imperative .  .  . . So this isn’t a crass and vulgar selfishness about narrow self-interest or mindless accumulation. This is a higher selfishness. It’s about making sure you get the most out of yourself, which means putting yourself in a job which is spiritually fulfilling, socially constructive, experientially diverse, emotionally enriching, selfesteem boosting, perpetually challenging, and eternally edifying.32

Social equality as a value was challenged by Reganomics and Thatcherism. Both contested and disassembled the Welfare state, fostered a rising income inequality which placed them in the advantaged position. Community was diminished by a mobile lifestyle, and what Robert Bellah termed as an ideal of autonomy. It promised upward mobility will bring about such an individual autonomy that citizens will be rewarded with having to depend less and less on others or be influenced by their wills.33 Deeper bonds of community and its responsibilities came to be confused with “mutual display”—a horizontal, simultaneous presence of a group of people. For instance being at a rock concert or sports event, or viewing Princess Diana’s funeral can evoke a sense of being touched by a single event, something which moves us and forces our contact with something greater. The fusion is magnified by common moments of togetherness.34 Just walking through a high-end shopping mall or buying a brand of athletic shoes might for the moment be a link to a world of prosperity or heroes of sport or leagues of choice. It raises the question though: Is this self-expression or identification of my individuality “authentic” or just a flight of fantasy in a society where I am a member of a “lonely crowd”?

Bowling Alone Attachment to middle organizations, such as churches and labor unions, as communal connectors to God and the political arena are not viewed as necessary in this view of authenticity. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone describes the loss of social capital in American society. Social capital is the Brooks, Bobos in Paradise, 134 as quoted in Taylor, The Secular Age, 477. Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 143. 34 See how this phenomenon can also occur in a “flash mob,” facilitated by technology not necessarily by bonds of community or any commitment to further action. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows, 187–91. 32 33

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effecting function of social groups that provide the connections through which we develop identity, share understanding and norms, values of trust and reciprocity, and participate in social networks to accomplish goals.35 A change in how people engage socially is evidenced even in sports. In the 1990s, the number of bowlers increased but those who belong to a team or league decreased. People have dropped out of the traditional movements and organizations that used to link them to notions of citizenship—as the girl and boy scouts—as well as the intermediate groups that served to make politics personal to them. Religious affiliation linked people socially and communally for instance to groups like the Knights of Columbus, civic service to Veterans groups, the Lions club, or the Elks. Class consciousness identified people with labor unions and ultimately linked them to politics. The result of these new patterns of life is voter involvement has decreased not only in the United States but also in parts of Europe, along with the rise of alienation and lack of trust in the government as a whole. Even though there has been a decline in social capital in the last decades, there are exceptions, according to Putnam. An increase in volunteerism among youth, grassroots activity among evangelical conservatives, growth in telecommunications, and an increase in self-help groups is also evident. Yet these do not offset the overall trend that social capital has eroded steadily and sometimes dramatically over the past two generations.36 People have joined other mass movements and advocacy groups but today they tend to be single issue focused such as Right-to-Life, NRA, lobbies for environment, gender rights, and the needs of the retired. Groups which approach the intersectionality of issues which community requires are lacking; hence policies which cross age groups, relationships between work and family, health care, education, and the elderly are not integrally addressed. Even churches which traditionally are set to engage at this level can unofficially reduce their direction to a single issue focus, which can distance people from the real-life concerns which enter into their deliberation on a concrete level. Taylor notes, “How complex and nuanced is the thinking of people who can be lined up on one side of the others by some simplifying question, like ‘are you pro-life or pro-choice.’”37 Handles such as conservative or liberal, socialist or nationalist, right or left, can hide the nuances and compromises that can lead to effective social change. The loss of community in these forms, as well as their importance in popular imagination, affects a sense of identity, of what it means to be Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). Ibid., 287. 37 Taylor, A Secular Age, 479. 35 36

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authentic. For young people today identification with a certain style, an emoji, a star, a sport, or brand of clothing can have a bigger place in their sense of self than belonging to large-scale agencies such as nations, churches, political parties, or advocacy groups. The effort to foster community in many forms is an important part of an asceticism of authenticity. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. (Mt. 5:7)

Modern society lives in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, people face a strict moralism where markers of political correctness can indicate public reprisal of offending behavior which is punitive and total. On the other hand, people feel no call for mercy, for they are reluctant to make judgments on another’s behavior. The modern order of mutual benefit places a high value on the virtue of tolerance, mutual respect, and noninterference with another’s freedom; however it does not offer much help at resolving conflicts when a more inclusive good, often called forth by community, or the common good, is at stake. These are substantive areas where a need for judgment is at stake. Rather than calling forth commonly enforced virtues of character which can be resources for moving beyond single issues focus, impasse is created through a soft relativism. The belief “we should not criticize other people’s values” can lead to a facade of political correctness and inaction which hides an erosion of mutual respect when real needs are concerned. People drop out of politics, turn off the evening news, when situations of public order call for more than “everyone has a right to live their own lives.” David Hollenbach argues that the impasse between groups who simply seek to tolerate one another seldom generates positive action to address the institutional causes of problems like urban poverty.38 When there are conflicts between groups, how are various alienations and human goods evaluated hierarchically and prioritized? In civic affairs, without collaboration with large associations who are capable of promoting legislation and government action for significant public investments in areas, such as health care, nutrition, education, and housing, any action by small groups often proves to be ineffective for social change.39 Taylor argues that concerns today around the “privacy” of the individual can erode even legal traditions in the American ideal which always considered the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness within a framework of character and values which were assumed in citizenship.40 David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 178, see also: chapter two. 39 Ibid., 207. 40 Taylor, A Secular Age, 484–5. 38

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Moralism, whether religious, political, or social, and focus on process alone can create a nova effect, the explosion of believing and unbelieving options that arise out of the search for meaning in secular society. These models of authenticity stand side by side in daily experience. What is rewarded and challenged is often resolved only by who is doing it, not the content or value of what they are doing. The call for mercy recognizes the fragility of human nature yet the validity of strong evaluations of value. It is in this climate that an asceticism of authenticity takes shape, carries meaning, and makes a contribution to today’s world. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Many assume the word “meek” means lack of courage, surely not a candidate for the world described earlier, nor a guide for a new sense of asceticism. But the biblical understanding of meekness is power under control. Moses is described as “the meekest man” on earth (Num. 12:3).41 He was one of the pious who lived a humble and God-fearing life. This term occurs frequently in the Psalms and should not be confused with weakness. Moses’s awareness of his own limitations is indicated in Exod. 3:11.42 The meaning of being devout or meek is linked to awareness of limits in the biblical tradition and is a marker of authenticity. Moses was one to whom God spoke not in visions and dreams, but face to face. God’s directness and immediacy to Moses was the source of his power. While not all people operate by the standards of a buffered identity and an ethic of mutual benefit, acknowledgment of limits, finitude, and guilt seems distant from a modern sense of authenticity. Every effort to be open to this beatitude is done in spite of the cross current of expressive individualism, focus on sensual release, rejection of authority, a sense of entitlement which avoids any semblance of regulation and the restraint. The meek are open to greater equality between people, in face of its erosion by a vision of autonomy which hides in tribalism and racism. Yet, an encounter with personal limits is inevitable over the life course of both believers and unbelievers.43 Meekness is shown in power under control. The beatitudes confirm that true authenticity does not reside in the Ubermensch of power-over and domination, or in entitlement. It resides in the truth of one’s relationship with God.

Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Roland Edmund Murphy (eds.), Jerome Biblical Commentary, Vol. I (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), Numbers, 5:27, 90. 42 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Exod. 3:11. 43 Taylor, A Secular Age, 8. 41

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Rahner and Meekness Being modern is not the whole situation of the humanity of men and women today, according to Rahner, and this has bearing on what an asceticism of authenticity means. There is a narrowing, a disappearance of the meaning of human life when its reality is constructed as it is through and through in a technological and scientific way. Even though opportunities in modern life for many offer more in total human realization—more creative, artistic outlets, more political power and influence, wider horizons, more scope for research than previous times—the meaning of human life cannot be eclipsed or equated with this state of affairs: “The courage necessary to put up with this pluralism and to accept it quite naturally, the courage not to think (in the words of an old mystic) that one can attain everything ‘in one go’—this belongs to the basic conditions of an authentic and healthy human existence.”44 The modern self is never the whole in itself, but the modernity of men and women always exists by reason of the total human fulfillment of life. To try to “have it all” is inhuman and shortsighted—and paradoxically harms the possibility of being an authentic person of today. For Rahner, the possibility of authentic depends on a wider horizon of fulfillment. To face up to the ultimate mysteries of existence which are called finiteness, dread, the beatitude of beauty, death, and other mysteries and powers in a full human existence are essential for a full humanity. The practice of religion today therefore requires that we seek all that is modern, yet within the framework of its ultimate horizon—an authentic relationship with God. For Rahner, God as the absolute, all-supporting, and all-saving mystery is not just one area of human existence rather its deepest unity. This authentic relationship draws its life from the totality of what it means to be human in modern times, and is the core of its ultimate integration and unity. Being modern does not require that one rejects religion; it requires that one ask oneself if being a manager of this world alone is enough. Is thisworldly “one goal” in life enough for fulfillment? Rahner asks if the real question of life is whether “one who no longer wants to do more than one thing and yet seeks this one thing within the context of what is available . . . what can be done and planned in this world . . . instead of looking for it in the unspeakable mystery of God, the silent and unmanageable, who disposes over us” can find fulfillment.45 Is this expecting too much from what life can offer on its own? Karl Rahner, “The Man of Today and Religion,” Theological Investigations VI, trans., Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 3–20 at 4. 45 Ibid., 5. 44

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Meekness is part of an asceticism of authenticity as it fosters self-knowledge in light of the love of God. Finitude in self, others, and life can be accepted. Limits can be noticed, accepted, forgiven, owned, and embraced as well as grown from and changed. There is never an imagined perfection without a context of being saved and being loved. Purely natural ethics does not encompass the Christian ethic of the beatitudes. While authenticity requires a certain search for harmony and integration in one’s own human nature, a channeling of desires to values, a disciplining of excesses and a constant conversion of attitudes, motives, and behaviors, the asceticism of authenticity is located in the mystery of love of God. Once you recognize in Christ what is real, your questions change. It is no longer a question about self and one’s perfection but rather what do I have to do to be congruent with what I see? At other times, the answer to the question requires the renunciation not just of what prevents wholehearted love of God but also of what has a value and good in itself. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Mt. 5:11)

Participating in the mission of Jesus, following Jesus even in his cross, requires often the renunciation of what is legitimately desired and deserved. One’s rights to a good name, the respect of others, the support and affirmation of one’s efforts, the gratitude for one’s service, mutual cooperation with good works, acknowledgment of the truth of your motives, respect of your race, class and gender, even one’s life have to be set aside. In a world where “this is all there is” these goods might be sacrificed in circumstances where they have to put at risk for the accomplishment of other goods.46 But ultimately, when positive human values are sacrificed, the only possible reason for this renunciation is the choice of a particular expression of love—such love that reaches out in hope. The early Christians were encouraged to “give reason for their hope” (1 Pet. 3:15). Yet the transcendence which grounds this hope does not always become visible in acts of sacrifice we put in this world. Acts which bring communication, healing, reconciliation, and liberation carry a certain justification and intelligibility in themselves. But they do not necessarily

Karl Rahner, “Reflections on the Theology of Renunciation,” in Theological Investigations III, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 47–57.

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communicate a higher order or any meaning and goal transcending what we are able to do humanly.47 Renunciation is the believing gesture of that love which reaches out beyond the world and its goods, even those of a personal nature. The ultimate renunciation comes in death, which in the Christian life is in Christ’s death which opened itself in love and faith and obedience to a higher will. The Christian does the same in trust, handing over his or her life in surrender to the love of God which has been the horizon of all the renunciation of one’s life course. The Christian does this, however, not alone but in communion with the church, the visible sign of the eschatological presence of God’s salvation in the world. Renunciation is an expression of the transcendence of love which constitutes her inner life.48 The church is called to express the divine love which transcends this world, which gives meaning to all love: a love which heals the world and brings it to fulfillment. This love is the witness to the full authenticity of life which comes ultimately in union with God.

The New Asceticism The perimeters of a new asceticism are far from clear, yet the biblical horizons outlined by the beatitudes offer signs in the Christian life which give direction. The call for a new asceticism speaks to the need to renew the church. It speaks to the inadequacy of the secular response to modern life in its rejection or dismissal of religion. Modern living, despite its bravado, is fragile; its meaning and significance can appear flat, and over time the promise of the ordinary can seem empty. A new asceticism is not only important to Christian discipleship in a secular age but needed in society. While modern life exhibits an eclipse of transcendence, the alternative is not simply a return to the past. Taylor remarks, “There is not only the traditional faith, and the modern anthropocentric shift to an immanent order: the felt dissatisfaction at this immanent order motivates not only new forms of religion, but also different readings of immanence.”49 Those who search for transcendence within an immanent frame also contribute to this quest. The one thing needful shared by believers and unbelievers alike is respect for human rights.50 To carry out the modern vision of universal benevolence some will turn to “Nature” not just as natural reality but as a deep sense Ibid., 53–4. Ibid., 55. 49 Taylor, A Secular Age, 310. 50 Hans Joas, The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013). 47 48

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within. This “deep ecology” is a bridge to the survival of the earth.51 Others will foster attention to the ordinary, love of family, caring for elders, protecting children as markers of the deeper significance in human life, and its core alienations. The search for beauty, the aesthetic, recovering a greater unity between reason and feeling might be the avenue for others. Some will witness to courage in living, giving support to face the absurdity of life, and to recognize its tragedy and suffering without gloss. These alternatives to religion, Taylor’s “nova,” can also be doors to a new asceticism for believers. For modern Christians they can point to the wholeness of life, which reflects the deepest mystery of the meaning of Jesus’s cross and resurrection, even if they fall short of a full articulation of its significance. The “good will” of those open to transcendence through these expressions has its own place in God’s eyes. The inseparability of the concrete and the heavenly has been in the score of the “music makers” of the church since the beginning. The challenge of our secular age as believers is how to be both conscious disciples who dance to silent music as well as citizens and neighbors who join hands with others as we press forward in renewal and reform.

Pope Francis, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2015).

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Being Music Makers Church and Community in a New Era

If we take seriously the impact of secular society on the modern person and at the same time acknowledge the essential reality of the church, what can we say of the church and directions for its future? Today, many claim no need of the church. Others interpret its future within the same “nova effect” of rhetoric which impacts their spiritual understandings.1 On the one hand, people think of the future only in terms of institutional reform, on the other, they predict its practical elimination from daily life. A general cultural tendency to exile, not just the church but the supernatural altogether from intellectual and cultural life automatically colors these discussions. An attitude of “historical immanentism” is adopted to avoid any contamination, hypocrisy, magical thinking, or unworthy behavior associated with church. In others words, life is better without religion and the church. In various forms people have imagined the end of history as a type of reconciliation; which in it and in the means to achieve it, all will arise simply from within the human spirit, with no connection to anything supernatural.2 The demands of the gospel no longer need a deity; rather a new order can be created which is coherent and uncompromising through human effort alone. It makes sense that in such a cultural imagination, the church is simply an artifact from the past, a teacher of polite society, a social agency at best, and an unnecessary stop on the road to human fulfillment.

“Nova effect” in Taylor’s writing is the explosion of different options for belief and meaning in a secular age, produced by “cross pressures” of our times, especially of living only in an immanent frame. At times, even intra church conversations about its future have the characteristics of the immanent frame of this nova effect. We imagine the church of the future in a world where this world is all there is, as a better functioning institution alone. We see the future of the church as one with the improvements which serve our needs, or sense of relevance, not primarily asking, what is its mission? Or, what might church reform ask of us? 2 Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967). 1

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Some today are open to transcendence, but not to religion or the church. Not everyone is content with the eclipse of transcendence in modern culture; there is a generalized sense that something may have been lost.3 People run up against a fragility of meaning when they try to attribute significance to their lives. They miss “the one thing meaningful,” some higher goal which transcends the smaller goals of living. The significance of times of passage, weddings, funerals, births, once marked by an association with a higher order of things, is missed. Taylor uses the term “fullness” for this “something more” for which people search. In his words, “Some people feel a terrible flatness in the everyday, and this experience has been identified particularly with commercial, industrial, or consumer society. They feel emptiness of the repeated, accelerating cycle of desire and fulfillment, in consumer culture; the cardboard quality of bright supermarkets, or neat row housing in a clean suburb.”4 The cure for some is to “believe again,” perhaps for different reasons than in their past. However, moderns also try to find this fullness within immanence. Taylor charges this quest generates the nova effect, looking for love, meaning, and significance: a quasi-transcendence within the immanent order.5 People do not articulate a position on these matters. It is more a “take” on life: “The immanent frame itself (is) not usually, or even mainly a set of beliefs which we entertain about our predicament, however it may have started out; rather (the immanent frame) is the sensed context in which we develop our beliefs.”6 A “take” is not a thought out position, it is a presumed context, a social imaginary, a background which becomes part of our understanding of being in this world, to which we cannot imagine an alternative. Taylor recognizes a variety of styles of being in an immanent context. The word “take” delineates one which is unconscious, and has a type of contestability to it. We can stand in it yet feel the tug and cross pressures of the alternative. A “take” is contrasted with a “spin,” which is an overconfident picture within which cannot imagine life being otherwise.7 The reaction to another point of view is dismissal, because an alternative cannot be imagined. Standing in a “take”—a more open space—a person can actually feel the force of an opposing position. For Taylor, a total secularist stance that rejects any sense of transcendence is a spin because it does not recognize any alternatives; it is not alert to the Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007), 307. 4 Ibid., 309. 5 Ibid., 310. 6 Ibid., 549. 7 Ibid. 3

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cross pressures that inhabitants of secular society actually experience. It does not recognize the pressure of modern life which exists in all situations where many “takes” on the meaning of life operate simultaneously. People are torn. They want to respect as much as they can the “scientific” shape of the immanent order. They fear the “fanaticism” often associated with religion. At the same time moderns still want to believe there is something more than the merely immanent.8 Even people who claim “God is dead,” who believe in the deliverance of science and it impact on the shape of contemporary moral experience, offer to others, not a proof of God’s nonexistence but a “take,” a construal, a making of a world.9 People “convert” to this “take” by acceptance of a new authority, not the assumption of a type of intellectual independence. This “take” suggests that acceptance of the death of God is a position for a true adult, not a child. Who does not want to be perceived as a grown up? In addition, this “take” also implies a person cannot be into contemporary humanist concerns without being rid of old beliefs: “You can’t be fully with the modern age and still believe in God.”10 Anyone who wants to be “with it” and share humanist concerns with friends is pressured to abandon faith and accept a “closed” position toward transcendence. This presents false dichotomy: not Christianity versus humanism, rather Christian humanism versus exclusive humanism.11 As we consider the church, one which we desire, “one we would not want to erase,” we need to consider the varied postures toward religion and the church held both by those outside it and within. However, it is not just one’s posture toward transcendence which affects approach to the church, but other factors in secular society

Issues with Community People reject the church because they no longer see themselves as part of a “we.” A new self-understanding of life gives an unprecedented primacy to the individual. Even society itself is seen as a collection of individuals.12 This is the result of turn from the triple embedding of premodern societies, the world of enchantment. A premodern society imaged humans embedded in Ibid., 548. Ibid., 565. 10 Ibid., 572. 11 A commentary by James Smith states: “And exclusive humanism has a hard time accounting for the demands of universal justice and benevolence relying only on immanent sources (the problem of the good)” Ibid., 572. See: How Not to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 101, note 13. 12 Taylor, A Secular Age, 146. 8 9

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society, society in the cosmos, and a cosmos which incorporates the divine.13 Disenchantment from this state is the shift where the realm of significance becomes enclosed with the material universe and the natural world. This dis-embedded, buffered, individualist self is the modern social imaginary— the way we imagine the world, even before we really think about it. It is not only difficult to think otherwise but can appear as the only possible way to think.14 Divested of transcendence, it is this world which takes on a meaning and significance with a sense, this is all there is. An impasse in the modern imagination occurs through an eclipse of four perspectives which could provide an alternative. What exists in “eclipse” actually challenges the “closed” world perspective facing modern believers and unbelievers. Since an eclipse hides what is still there but cannot be seen, these four perspectives could point to areas where the church needs to express its mission. We will examine these four areas, identified by Taylor, to suggest more precisely how they impact the church as a “music maker” in our times.

Eclipse of a Higher Good There is an eclipse of a sense of “higher purpose” or a good that transcends human flourishing: what Ignatius of Loyola would call the first principle and foundation of the meaning of human life.15 Christians hold that God wills human flourishing, but the prayer “thy will be done” does not equal “let humans flourish,” it means something more. This call to the “more” creates a healthy tension in the Christian life. There is a good “beyond” human flourishing which may present itself concretely in life, which ultimately defines a higher flourishing than can be supported by a vision of life as “all there is.” We have seen that Taylor finds this deeper grounding of modern values and ideals lacking; hence moderns live with goals without foundations. Karl Rahner sees the church essentially as a sign and instrument of this higher calling, a light which deepens a sense of human flourishing. The church is both a sacrament of God’s presence in society and the means to Ibid., 152. Ibid., 156. 15 Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save their souls. The other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings to help them in pursuit of the end for which they are created. From this it follows that we ought to use these things to the extent that they help us toward our end, and free ourselves from them to the extent that they hinder us from it. See The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola: A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganes, S.J. (Chicago, IL: Loyola Press, 1992). 13 14

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attain salvation. The church proclaims the Word, confesses the faith, worships and practices the Christian life. In his words: The church is not simply an institution which follows divine instruction to seek the salvation of the individual man or woman. It is more than a useful society with divine help and a significant opinion about God and salvation. Above and beyond all else the church is the concrete embodiment of God’s salvation, the presence of God (not God actually present, which would be heresy and yet remains the permanent temptation of the church).16

God gives Godself to men and women through the church; the church carries this out by representing God as God, and God as God giving God’s self to human beings. This self-giving takes place in time: through faith and hope. It occurred definitively in Jesus Christ who irrevocably established its acceptance. The church seeks to give it an enduring, historical, empirical social presence and manifestation. For Rahner, “This is the Church—the enduring expression of Christ accepted as God’s definitive gift and promise of God’s self to humankind.”17 The authentic activity of the church is first and foremost to help human beings be open to God as God really is, in God’s self and for us. For God as God to be present in the church, God as the living God requires the destruction of every claim to be absolute other than God. “The church, therefore, precisely by what it is, is an institution in conflict with anything purely institutional which claims to take the place of God.”18 The sole purpose of the church is to give honor to God and save human beings by helping them over and over to relinquish what is not God in their lives. This is to be done, not only in words but in deeds, in sacrifice, in love, and in the fostering of community. This orientation of the human person to God and the ongoing transformation it effects is a mystery even to us. To do so, the church cannot mistake the business of religion for God (a constant temptation to the church), and must trust that this grace is always promised to the church. This is a grace discovered over and over in the church as it engages in its own reform and self-criticism. God as the infinite horizon of all human criticism gives God’s self to the church in the grace to be self-critical. The church too must practice faith, hope, and love. It adores in faith when it transcends the conditions of Karl Rahner, “The Church: The Basis of Pastoral Action,” in Karl Rahner: Theologian of the Graced Search for Meaning, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 258. 17 Ibid., 259. 18 Ibid. 16

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its own existence. It adores in hope when it moves into an unknown future, finding God there. It adores in love when it trusts and accepts God’s radical incomprehensibility as the gift of God’s love, because only in this way is the inexpressible present. In this sense the church contributes to societal dialogue about values and goals to be pursued, seeking to witness faithfully to God’s identity, by promoting what best protects human dignity in a concrete situation. When we position this primary identity of the church in modern society, its distinctive identity is contested. Just as the individual Christian, the church faces a cacophony of voices both within and without which obscure its primary mission to witness to God as God to humankind, and about what this looks like in the concrete. The church shares with its members the same historical roots of this conflict. The modern age transformed the notion of God’s providence to primarily the human need to order this world for mutual benefit, mainly economic benefit. God’s plan became so mixed with these plans, that the telos of God’s providential concern got circumscribed within immanence. The church can get caught into the same expectations as human beings in their reduced role in “God’s plan”—a participation in a society of mutual benefit. The transcendent dimension of faith becomes less central; the church simply lives a life of its members, one marked by plentitude, but not by transcendence.19 The church is called to be faithful to its mission within this context, and assist those seeking a sense of transcendence amid these cross pressures of societal life.

The Eclipse of Grace An “eclipse of grace” is a second area of change in a world of exclusive humanism. God’s providence, and the transcendence it denotes, is highjacked into a simple “economic” ordering of creation to our mutual benefit. Taylor states, “The order God designed was there for reason to see. By reason and discipline, humans could rise to the challenge and realize it.”20 The Christian tradition claims faith and reason are needed in order for people to assume their responsibility to order the world. But they also hold that sin affects the capacity of reason to penetrate the order of creation, and affirms that good will is also required for the rational discipline to be “fair-minded” or “objective.” The later requires God’s grace, because our fallen condition nudges us to approach reality with bias rather than with openness. Exclusive Taylor, A Secular Age, 222. Ibid.

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humanism holds that human beings are capable through their own powers to do this.

Lonergan on Bias Bernard Lonergan speaks to how bias serves as an obstacle to personal and social progress, as well as identifies the role of grace in the energies to overcome it. Progress happens through intellectual development; here Lonergan shares with modernity its focus on the power of reason of modernity. As the human intellect moves from what it knows partially, to greater knowledge and more informed action, progress occurs. However, he acknowledges a negative movement to progress is introduced through sin: human beings are “originators” of what disrupts God’s intentions for the universe. Sin accounts for decline. In the face of the reality of sin, redemption, God’s victory over sin is the process which restores the order destroyed by sin. Human beings refuse self-transcendence and adopt reconstructed “reasons” or ideology which upholds their refusals. The repression of the desire to know, to raise relevant questions, to try to understand something as completely as possible is the foundation of bias.21 Lonergan specifies how an “eclipse of grace” functions in modern life and society through bias; and the impasse it presents for the possibilities of civility, grounding a sense of public truth, and the broader ordering of society. The term “conversion” or major alteration in viewpoint of attitude is a movement from an established horizon to a new horizon of knowing, valuing, and acting which involves intellectual, moral, affective, and religious conversions. According to Lonergan, our deepest conversion happens at the level of why we do what we do. Openness to grace and transcendence is what allows conversion to happen on all levels. Here Lonergan joins theologian Paul Tillich in bringing out the significance of Tillich’s “ultimate concern” for accomplishing the goals of modern living. It is the returning good for evil, the Law of the Cross, grounded in and modeled on the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ which is a marker of the action of grace as people take on social responsibility. The sacred in history is witnessed by the transformation of evil into good, through absorbing evil through love and transforming human relations through non-retaliation Bernard Lonergan, “The Human Good as Object: Differentials and Integration,” in Topics in Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education, eds. Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe, Vol. 10 of CWL (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 49–78. For a further description of bias as it impacts the project of creating a better world see: Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), 72–8.

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and forgiveness.22 The revelation of the Incarnate Word sets the standard for the genuine religious word everywhere.23 In this sense, authentic human existence does not follow simply from a progressive realization of human potential. It also involves a death, death to the results of bias and the hold they obtain over one. What empowers that acceptance of death is the gift of love, a gift ultimately grounded in the Spirit of God. Redemption occurs wherever women and men live lives of self-sacrificing love, and religions are redemptive to the extent that they promote such love.24 In the Christian life the awareness there is something more than human flourishing does not detract from investment in human affairs; rather it animates it with a hope which comes from the gospel. The church in its social teaching as well as those who carry it into society—associations, movements, prophetic stances, work toward legislative change, and the like—address those things which can easily be accepted as “business as usual” in global society. The church joins with others of good will who ground why humankind cannot settle for a moral minimum in dealing with poverty, trafficking, environmental destruction, war, health care, education, and so on. The church joins with all world religions in drawing attention to the ultimate concern behind these issues, respect for the human dignity, and the integrity of creation.

The Church and the Eclipse of Grace Taylor argues the church did not respond well to the anthropocentric turn. Transcendence was diminished by the Christian church itself as it tried to shrink religion so it would fit a modernizing society. The apologetics of the era reduced God to simply a creator and religion to morality.25 It retreated to the order of mutual benefit instead of elaborating Christian faith to speak to these new questions. Particularities of specifically Christian belief were diminished to try to secure a more generic deity which suited the mentality of the times.26 This resulted in a quandary: how Christian belief could be expressed and passed on in a society where its “separation” from societal processes was not so distinct. See Robert M. Doran, “The Nonviolent Cross: Lonergan and Girard on Redemption,” Theological Studies, Vol. 71 (2010), 46–61. 23 Robert M. Doran, “Actual Grace and the Elevation of the Secular,” Australian ejournal of Theology, vol. 22, no. 3 (December, 2015), 166. 24 Bernard J. Lonergan, S.J., Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 55. 25 Taylor, A Secular Age, 225. 26 See commentary: James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 51. 22

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Karl Rahner recognized that membership in the church of the future had to be deeper than a conventional religion of the masses. It could no longer be based simply on culture and custom. It is no longer possible to be just a Christian in name, one who lives only formally in the church but actually lives as one where there is no distinctive element of discipleship. The church of the future must grow in its reality quite differently than from the past, from below, from groups of those who have come to believe as a result of their own free personal decision.27 This does not call for an individualized Christianity or an invisible church, rather a new kind of church. This would require a renewed posture to how the authority of the church was viewed within and without the church.

The Authenticity of Authority Attitude toward authority is impacted by an “eclipse of grace.” In the past, destructive uses of church authority could be “spiritualized” by identification of questionable behavior by those in authority with the graced identity of church authority. Separation of the church’s moral authority from its roots in biblical foundations contributed to the confusion. Christian teaching recognizes that sacred authority rests on the divinity of Christ and the role of the Holy Spirit within the church. Yet this aspect of Christology, identification of Jesus as God, is not relevant to the question of whether God is Designer of the Universe, which the church turned to in order to meet modernizing trends in society. An order of design, reduced in public imagination to the order of mutual benefit, lacked a ground of authority. Talk of Jesus only as a great prophet or Teacher became interchangeable with Jesus simply as a moral example in a civilized polite society. Questions arose, why one would worship this Jesus? Beyond the cultivation of reason and consistency, or as a characteristic of polite society, participation in a worshipping community quickly appeared irrelevant. Along with the need to worship, reliance on the church for guidance, especially about matters of modern living seemed unnecessary and unwise. As some of the positions of the institutional conscience of the church conflicted with popular sentiment, an impasse grew between church and society.28 Both the church and its moral authority became part of a scaled-down religion which could be rejected without consequence and not really missed. Karl Rahner, “The Shape of the Church to Come,” in Karl Rahner, Theologian of the Graced Search for Meaning, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 269. 28 See Jose Casanova, “The Contemporary Disjunction between Social and Church Morality,” in Church and Peoples: Disjunctions in a Secular Age (Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012), 127–35. 27

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Rahner speaks to a renewed posture of authority of the church in secular society. The authority of the church does not reside simply in its institutional presence as an entity among others in the world. The basis of membership and the authority of office rest in being genuinely human and Spirit-filled Christians, ones whom the Spirit has freed for unselfish service in the exercise of their social function in the church. The act of assuming an office in the future church has to be more than a career choice. It cannot come from the free decision on the part of individuals, their own initiative alone, in order to be authentic. It will also not command immediate respect, borrowing from its institutional face without personal integrity. This type of “mystique of office” is over. Rahner comments, “Nor will it be effective in virtue of powers over society belonging to office in advance of this obedience of faith, as it is today but to a constantly diminishing extent.”29 Authority in the church is not self-appointed because the church cannot be a society at all without office and a way to proceed to order it. The special rite of the sacrament of Holy Orders is conferred by the church and through it the officeholders are assured by God of the help of that Spirit who is with the church. Other forms of authority in the church are designated through canonical processes. However, the mere conferral of office alone will not dismiss all doubts regarding the officer holder, as the church experiences today in the sexual abuse scandal. Office in the church rests on the mission from Christ and not merely on the appointment by individuals, as a manager in society. Official authority will be really effective in future in virtue of the obedience of faith which believers give to Jesus Christ and his message, and the authenticity of how they live their vocation. Rahner sees the exchange between members and those who hold office as an act of faith: “The church is a declericalized church in which the believers gladly concede to the officeholders in free obedience the special functions in a society—and thus also in the church—which cannot be exercised by all at the same time.”30 Effective authority will always have to appeal to the free act of faith of each individual and must be authorized in the lights of this act in order to be effective at all. This authority will reside in the recognition of the genuine humanity of the office holder and the Spirit-filled nature of his or her Christian life. The church will confirm this in its recognition of ones whom the Spirit has freed for unselfish service in the exercise of their social function in the church.31

Ibid., 270. Ibid. 31 This does not suggest that the efficacy of the sacraments rests on the integrity of the minister, as the historical ex opera operato controversy clarified. Rather it refers to the pastoral problem of the credibility of the church in secular society. 29 30

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As the charisms of laity and women are integrated into service and decision-making aspects of the church, the debate on “what kind of authority” they will have continues and takes direction from Rahner’s remarks. The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity focuses their role in the church on their charisms: From the reception of these charisms of gifts, including those which are less dramatic, there arise for each believers the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of mankind and the up-building of the Church. In doing so believers need to enjoy the freedom of the Holy Spirit who breathes where he wills. (AA3)

A declericalized church does not mean a church without clergy, rather without those who act only as managers within society. Also the growing church of the laity and women will not mean simply lay people and women who take over the clerical style that is seen as an obstacle to the mission of the church.32 Lifestyles which are not simple, ceremonies which separate officeholders from the mass of the people and other Christians, unrelated to the exercise of office, and lack of transparency of decision making, impede the mission of the church. Inability to withdraw decisions because of fear of loss of prestige, decision-making processes which include only people with long histories as church functionaries, excluding those who could bring fresh perspectives, have to be changed. New behaviors to replace them might comprise of new asceticism of ministry in the church for all involved.33 The eclipse of grace which exists in secular society will only be met by church leadership and membership in the church which acts otherwise. This will bring reform to the church in its reliance on the grace of God to grow appropriately in one’s calling and responsibilities.

The Church and the Maximal Demand Recognition that “all is not well with the world” can spur efforts to change it. Yet, how do we define our highest spiritual or moral aspirations while “Clericalism leads to a homogenization of the laity; treating it as an ‘emissary’ limits the various initiatives and efforts and, I dare to say, the boldness necessary to be able to bring the Good News of the Gospel to all areas of social and above all political activity. Clericalism, far from inspiring various contributions and proposals, gradually extinguishes the prophetic flame of which the entire Church is called to bear witness in the heart of her peoples.” Pope Francis, Address to Participants in the Pontifical Commission for Latin America Plenary Assembly, April 26, 2016. 33 Rahner, “The Shape of the Church to Come,” 270–1. 32

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showing a path to the transformation involved which does not crush or mutilate what is essential to our humanity?34 The modern person today faces the “dilemma” of maximal demand, how to meet moral obligations which seem beyond those held in previous generations. While there are many prisms on the significance of the sacraments in the church, their role in helping us find God’s presence in faith and hope, in the flow of our life journey, is key in facing a climate of maximal demand in society today.35 What happens when human efforts fail, or even their success uncovers a further challenge which seems insurmountable? What about the suffering of the world which appears to have no redeeming value? Where do we go with the dead ends that war, famine, epidemics, and hunger leave us as we admit their existence and impact on our world? When do we turn affairs over to God, as we maintain at the same time our best efforts? An “eclipse of grace” is society suggests there is nowhere to turn, openness to sacramental life says otherwise. The sacramental life of the church can help the modern person deal with a sense of maximal demand. The church primarily is a sacrament of God’s presence in the world and the gift of God to every human person. This presence is historically and conceptually established in the church as a sacrament of truth and love. Rahner claims the church is to mirror the inner life of the Trinity as the foundation of its pastoral life. The first movement, or procession in the Trinity, is that of the Father toward the Son, as God’s Word, God’s truth. The second movement is the Father reveals himself and gives himself to be possessed as a love which communicates itself in the Spirit: “The church first receives God’s love and then gives it to human beings in sacrament, prayer, and life.”36 Through the sacraments, the gift of God’s love is mediated to the individual. God’s love acts to liberate human beings’ freedom to love, as they confess divine love in the actual sacramental experience: “The accomplishment of that presence also involves active love for God and our neighbors by all Christians in whose life God’s love becomes present (and convincing) in the world.”37 The church itself is a sacrament of God’s love distinguished from God’s presence in final fulfillment of our lives and the world itself. The church is the primal sacrament, because if it were not, there would be no seven sacraments, which are partial realizations of the church itself. The church is the sign of the grace of justification for all men and women. It is a sign that God gives Godself to not simply to the church and to those in the church, but to the world and to all human beings. In this sense, the church Taylor, A Secular Age, 639–40. Ibid., 266. 36 Rahner, “The Church: Basis of Pastoral Action,” 262. 37 Ibid., 263. 34 35

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does not simply administer the sacraments; it lives in them, finding its own fulfillment in giving the life of Christ to others. The church is the efficacious manifest sign of the presence of God, its real symbol, containing what is signifies, by grasping the sign human being experience what it signifies. A challenge to the church is to dialogue also with those in secular culture who do not share the view that “grace is eclipsed” but live in that grace without the consciousness confirmed by the sacramental life within the church. The Second Vatican Council in section 22 of Gaudium et Spes speaks to the revelatory function of the Word.38 “It is Christ, the last Adam, who fully discloses humankind to itself and unfolds its noble calling by revealing the mystery of the Father and the Father’s love.” The revelatory mission of Christ is redemptive. The incarnation of the Son of God united himself in some sense with every human being (GS 22). Not only Christians received the first fruits of the Spirit (Rom. 8:23) which enables them to fulfill the law of love. Rather Gaudium et Spes specifies, The applies not only to Christians but to all people of good will in whose hearts grace is secretly at work. Since Christ died for everyone, and since the ultimate calling of each of us comes from God and is therefore a universal one, we are obliged to hold that the Holy Spirit offers everyone the possibility of sharing in this paschal mystery in a manner known to God. (GS 22)

Its sacramental life is a prism of this mission to its members and to the world.

The Eclipse of Mystery The third shift which makes exclusive humanism plausible to the modern person is the “eclipse of mystery.” Secular society holds that what matters most is with the immanent realm; therefore, we can figure it out. The eclipse of a higher good and of grace leads to the eclipse of mystery. If God’s purposes for us encompass only our own good, and this can be read from the design of our nature, then no further mystery exists. If evil, our estrangement from God and inability to return to God, unaided is set aside, all the motivation we need can come within. Either self-interest well understood, or feelings of benevolence will carry us forward. There is no mystery in the human heart.39 The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). 39 Taylor, A Secular Age, 223. 38

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Moving away from a cosmic worldview of “higher levels” and orders of creation makes it possible now to see everything. The universe appears “as a system before our gaze, whereby we can grasp the whole in a kind of tableau.”40 We entered into the age of what Heidegger called “the Age of the World-picture.” Since we can see everything, we think there is an answer to everything, including the problem of evil. Before the time of a “buffered self,” one could appeal to God as helper and savior to deal with suffering. One could grapple, like Job, before its mystery, sparing with God; now, that is no longer possible. Humans can even put God on trial through theodicy, and ask how can there be a just God in the face of evil? God remains Creator, but God’s providence never comes down to the particulars of a particular life journey. God motivates, but to carry out a plan we can be read without God. Taylor remarks, “With growing confidence, reflected in the new harmonious, economic-centered order, neither grace nor God’s power in us seem all that indispensable.”41 This view is not just human arrogance. Human ingenuity and creativity have made the world a better place and have solved human dilemmas, once thought impassable. Taylor wonders if humans have drawn the wrong conclusions from these successes, and ignored their failures. The strength once gathered from moments of contemplation of the Goodness of God might be still needed. Moderns ask, why cannot this be gathered just from contemplation of nature itself, without reference to its Creator? The eclipse of mystery is the belief that our highest spiritual and moral aspiration can arise without God. We can do without God in acknowledging them and pursuing them.

Eclipse of Our Final Destiny The fourth shift easily flows from the third. Since we can do without God in our pursuit even of the good, the idea that God plans a transformation of human beings, which takes them beyond the limitation which inheres in their present situation, seems unrealistic. The possibility of human flourishing for Christians includes the possibility of union with God in this life and the next. Taylor remarks, “The call to love God and to love Creatures in the fulsome way that God does, is matched by the promise of a change which will make these heights attainable for us.”42

Ibid., 232. Ibid., 234. 42 Ibid., 224. 40 41

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This eschatological perspective affects how we see not only human destiny but also the church. A belief lingers in modern culture that we will live with God in the next life. Yet it is insulated from any transformation in the Christian life in this world. Christian belief holds that the supernatural permeates the natural order and draws what is human on to its fulfillment, both in each life and in society at large.43 This eschatological perspective also affects our understanding of the church. To regard the church as closed, only as an institution in an immanent frame, limits its identity, to simply a closed system. It is viewed as functional or dysfunctional as any other institution in society. Its liabilities and potentials have the same issues as all bureaucracies.44 While the “thisworldly” limitations of the church are real and need to be addressed, without its supernatural identity, the church is viewed on the scale of any other institution. People simply “cancel their subscription” if dissatisfied. An eschatological perspective establishes that the dominion of God continually through the Spirit enlivens the church with gifts. The charismatic element in the church is that point in the church at which God as Lord of the church presides over the church as an open system.45 The “definitive state” or identity of the church is only defined in terms of a point outside the system, and is not exhausted by any element within the system itself, even elements of its essential constitution. All the elements which either condition or constitute the life of the church is all her dimensions, revelation, the history of the world, the history of ideas, science, political influences that are brought to bear, have a mutual interplay and modify one another. In all this interaction the future is created, a future which is unknown, and both the charismatic and institutional elements in the church are key in this process.46 The church in this sense shares openness with all concrete forms in human history. The openness toward the future is not just something to be tolerated, but is essential for the church as a people on a pilgrimage. The church in this sense is she who is endowed with that radical promise and hope which cannot be defined in “this-worldly” terms. Living by this promise, the church wills the absolute future in God which is mediated through the willing acceptance This is the thought of Henri de Lubac. See: Stephen J. Duffy, The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 300. 44 See Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church, 70–2. 45 Karl Rahner, “Observations on the Factor of the Charismatic in the Church,” Theological Investigations, XII (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 88. 46 Institutional elements of the church are (1) doctrines (2) forms of public worship (3) structures of government, (4) laws and customs. See: Avery Dulles, S.J., A Church to Believe In: Discipleship and Dynamics of Freedom (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 22. 43

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of the openness to an unknown future within the present world. This is not just a task for those with official ministries in the church; it is a call to all the faithful. With the help of the Holy Spirit, it is the task of the whole people of God, particularly its pastors and theologians, to listen to and distinguish the many voices of our times and to interpret them in the light of the divine Word, in order that the revealed truth may be more deeply penetrated, better understood, and more suitably presented. (GS 44)

So Where Do We Go From Here? It is obvious from what has been said earlier that the church has a role as a “music maker” in modern society. We have said that the church has both an historical and supernatural identity. At one time in history, what was sacred and what was secular was clearly demarcated. But that is not true in the same way today. How then do we recognize the interface of the sacred and the secular today? Lonergan argues that a marker of a truly religious word in society is the Law of the Cross. The solution to the problem of evil is to render good for evil done: “This dimension is progressively revealed by God, through the Israelite and Christian scriptures, as what really is holy and so sacred in human history.”47 The Law of the Cross does not mean the only truly religious/sacred acts are those which comprise conflict and suffering. Rather it implies that the conversions and transformations of the Christian life and of its communities do not come automatically from within. The solution to the problem of evil, which affects believers and unbelievers alike, cannot be a theory or an idea, but must release an emotional energy that moves people at the level of deeds.48 God’s truth must change human lives, motivating men and women to a self-sacrificing love and opening them to transforming change.49 The story of Jesus’s passion unveils a law which also governs the life of a Christian disciple. The Law of the Cross shows itself as a process in Jesus’s life as his suffering and death as a result of sin; his acceptance of that suffering and death out of obedience and love; thus

Doran, “Actual Grace and the Elevation of the Secular,” 171. Bernard Lonergan, Insight (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 721. 49 Jean Higgins, “Redemption,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 201–21. 47 48

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transforming the evils into something morally good; and God’s raising him from the dead. This pattern of salvation is not one which glorifies suffering, rather one which respects true freedom. All human beings are called in freedom to turn themselves toward God; God does not passively convert them. The paschal mystery does not make the massive histories of suffering intelligible or meaningful in themselves. Rather the paschal mysteries transform us, in the processes of community, within and outside the church, intensifying the tensions of community, heightening our awareness of the sufferings and needs of humankind.50 For Lonergan, the “cost” of real human flourishing requires more than those drawn from inner resources. It is not a foregone conclusion that just because a person wants to respond to a need, that they will—that they have an idea to bring change to a situation, that they will act on their inspiration, that if they judge something to be valuable and true, that they will act on that judgment. The move from a less adequate perspective to a more adequate one, from an erroneous perspective to a correct one happens over time. Religiously, for Lonergan, following Jesus in his paschal mystery happens through the process of conversion which leads to human and spiritual integration. The process of conversion involves reliance on grace and engagement in the personal growth which characterize true human flourishing. These differences, while seemingly indistinguishable externally in day-to-day life, make conversion distinct from the noble becoming of exclusive humanism.51

Spiritual but Not Religious Many today say, “I am spiritual, but not religious.” A person may identify as a seeker, someone open to what is offered in the religious, spiritual, or life-orienting realm by the church, but not convinced of the need to actually belong to the institution. Seekers self-define in contrast to a dweller, someone who belongs to the church and is satisfied. However, both seekers and dwellers have their “lighter” forms. Affiliated seeking can seem to some as too much effort, or as a license to tinker, in other words, avoid commitment. Dwelling

Matthew L. Lamb, “The Social and Political Dimensions of Lonergan’s Theology,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 255–84. 51 For a more detailed delineation of intellectual, moral, affective, and religious conversion this ongoing process of integration entails see: Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church, 155–62. 50

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can cover up a going through the motions, avoiding a deeper religious involvement.52 Yet seekers and dwellers have a journey only they can make. Karl Rahner has some powerful insights into experiencing the Spirit of God which speaks to seeker and dweller alike and is a leveler to the question, how to identify the Spirit both within and outside the church. Ultimately the Spirit is tied to the deep mystery of life itself. He identifies the depth of the true spiritual in ways which challenge the popular imagination of what “the spiritual” consists. ●●

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Here is a person who is really good to someone from whom there is no sign of appreciation or gratitude and has no personal feeling that he has been “selfless.” Here is someone who can manage to forgive, although she gains no reward for it and the silent pardon is taken for granted by the other party. Here is someone who obeys, not because he must, but merely because of that mysterious, silent, impalpable reality that we call God and his will. Here is a person who renounces something without thanks, recognition, or even any feeling of inward satisfaction. Here is someone who sees that her clearest ideas and most intellectual operations of her thought are disintegrating, what is known is only the pain of not being able to cope with life as it comes upon her, and not being able to draw from her own experience to face life.

The meaning of spiritual therefore is mixed into life experiences, ones “beyond our lights and shadows.” They are not always experiences of struggle; they also can be positive ones of surprise and wonder. They can be the new world of falling in love, the delight in the birth of a child, the sense of accomplishment of a graduation or a project well done, or the success of a transformative endeavor. They can be the grandeur of a celebration: a national funeral of a life well lived; a “high” liturgy where the tradition of faith seems firm; or a marker of passage in the family as we observe a coming of age, a wedding, or another commitment. These moments can flood the ordinary: coming home after work to the smells of supper, a boat ride on a lake, or a walk in the park—moments when the mystery of life seeps out of the daily and becomes a pointer to a transcendental experience of the Spirit which is always present silently and apparently facelessly. These must be dug Charles Taylor, “The Church Speaks-To Whom?” In Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, eds. Charles Taylor, Jose Casanova, and George F. McLean (Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012), 17–24.

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out of the ordinary experiences of life, not turned away from, and held in our consciousness to be acknowledged. They must be allowed to disturb our daily routines and scientific certainties, and hopefully experienced as confirmations in prayer and responded to with gratitude. However, often another presence of the Spirit is experienced in the negative, when this sun of certainty passes; and the clouds of its absence become the climate of life. These are moments when if there were not a God, or sense of transcendence, there would be no ground or meaning. Rahner delineates experiences which allegorically can also be called the “silent music” of God’s presence, which happen both in the positive and negative. ●●

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When over and above all individual hopes, there is one entire hope that gently embraces all ups and downs in silent promise. When responsibility is undertaken and sustained, even though no evidence of success of advantage can be produced. When the sum total of all life’s accounts, which we cannot work out ourselves, is seen as good by an incomprehensible “other,” although this cannot be proved. When fragmentary experience of love, beauty, and joy is felt and accepted as promise of love, beauty, and joy purely and simply, and not regarded with deep cynicism and skepticism as facile consolation in face of ultimate bleakness. When the bitter, disappointing, and fleeting monotony of ordinary life is borne with serene resignation up to its accepted end out of a strength whose ultimate source cannot be grasped and so cannot be brought under our control. When we get away from ourselves unconditionally and experience this capitulation as the true victory. When we practice our death in the course of ordinary life and then attempt to live in the way that we wish to approach death, calmly and with resignation.

These experiences hold the presence of God with his liberating grace.53 Since the Holy Spirit offers to everyone the possibility of sharing in Christ’s paschal mystery, in a manner known to God (GS 22), both seekers and dwellers share a common challenge—how not to reduce the practice of religion or flight from it to a posture which removes the surrender of living the paschal

This section is a selection of passages from: Karl Rahner, “Experience of the Holy Spirit,” in Theological Investigations, XVIII (New York: Crossroads, 1983), 200–3.

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mystery from its definition. This surrender is also given in love of neighbor in all its dimensions in a global society: a sharing in the charity of God.

Qualitative Change and the Dialectic of Community The boldness in these movements is a qualitative change. This transformation—a shift from one horizon of life to another—is a change in why we do things. The healing which can occur through Alcoholics Anonymous, becoming “clean” from a drug addiction, the intervention and curtailment of violent behavior which is ruining a marriage and family; a “hater” of another race, gender, nationality, or class is moved to another way of being—these all represent a use of freedom and intellect where “a leap,” analogous to the leap of faith, is taken.54 While all these changes are never total, this transformation is a shift in horizon. A qualitative change, or leap, can occur, not just in the life of an individual but in a community or nation, through a “social grace” where given patterns of thinking and behavior which condition even our assessment of our human condition can be changed.55 Healing and creating in history are part of the dynamic of God’s presence to us which happens both on the personal and on the social level.56 Lonergan calls this the dialectic of community.57 This process includes, but involves more than the search for fullness from within of exclusive humanism. In Lonergan’s words, For human development is of two different kinds. There is development from below upwards, from experience to understanding, from growing understanding to balanced judgment, from balanced judgment to fruitful courses of action, and from fruitful courses of action to new situations that call for further understanding, profounder judgment, richer courses of action. But there also is development from above downward. There is the transformation of falling in love: the domestic love of the family, the For a more theoretical explanation of what we are referring to experientially see: Doran, “Actual Grace and the Elevation of the Secular,” 179. Not all in AA would identify the higher power with God, as would Christians or members of other world religions. Some might say this is just a break—through of one’s unconscious to consciousness. 55 Acknowledgment of transcendence is not for Taylor just a conversation between belief and unbelief. There are three groups: (1) secular humanists, (2) neo-Nietzschean antihumanists, and (3) those who acknowledge some good beyond life. A Secular Age, 636. While the debate between groups one and three is the nature of the “beyond” to which humanity is called, the anti-humanists hold violence is “too deeply anchored to be rooted out” (672). 56 See: Robert Doran, “Social Grace,” in Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (Fall, 2011): 131–42. 57 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 53. 54

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human love of one’s tribe, one’s country, mankind, the divine love that orientates man in his cosmos and expresses itself in worship.58

Taylor also holds that being guided by God gives a ground, a moral source for meeting problems such as the explosion of violence in our society. There can be some kind of transformation of the drives which destroy community and life: such as a powerful sex drive or aggression, which fuel modes of life which in themselves can appear numinous, and are further glamorized today. This is the fallen human condition in modern form. Both Lonergan and Taylor differ with those who find violence in modern life its answer, as in the will to power (Nietzsche) or accept it with a resigned pessimism (Freud). A transformation of these drives, not just their repression, can occur so that their energy can be devoted to good not destruction. Eros can fuel agape; aggression can become the energy to combat evil. God leads us in the slow education to harness these energies. However, it also requires a “leap,” a transformation. In Taylor’s words, “There can and must also be leaps. Otherwise no significant forward steps will be made in the response to God. Someone has to break altogether with some historic forms. Abraham is our paradigm for this.”59 It may seem that the leap is just from below, Abraham is a hero, an overcomer. However, Taylor asserts that with Abraham came a revelation and with revelation comes a gift of power. A further revelation came with Christ, who transformed the relation of violence and holiness, and brought a new gift of power.60

Giving Reason for Our Hope The church at large, both seekers and dwellers, are challenged by exclusive humanism to give a reason for their hope. How do we encounter this “leap” today so that the church as “music maker” stirs the energies and enlivens the hope called forth by the truth that the paschal mystery of Christ continues to redeem the world? The church without attention to its charismatic element, open to a new future, is just one institution among others who can easily identify with the order of mutual benefit as its mission. Its “good works” can substitute for the “true work” to which God calls it. The church also is not a uniform presence in the world. Behind seekers and dwellers, at least in first Bernard Lonergan, “Healing and Creating in History,” in The Lonergan Reader, eds. Mark D. Morelli and Elizabeth A. Morelli (Murray) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 106. 59 Taylor, A Secular Age, 669. 60 See for instance: Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 161–9. 58

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world countries, there are elements in the church of various postures and preferences, spiritual styles and differing ecclesial paths to the future. What we say of seekers and dwellers, we also can say of sectors in the church which represent them, both the good they bring to the conversation of the future of the church and the limits of their perspectives. Seekers can so deinstitutionalize spirituality that it simply becomes “what speaks to me” and loses the edge and discipline which a community of faith can provide for their growth. There is a loss of the witness they can provide with others in community. Dwellers can be religious “buffered selves,” insulted in their interior minds, no longer vulnerable to the transcendent, but caught in their routines and righteousness of belonging. The Christian life can become so identified with “normal reality,” self-reliant work, and family values that compassion is lost toward those who fall outside this Christian framework. Many are seen simply as deviants. The ambivalences of life, as explained by Rahner, are avoided and the fragility of finitude, which religion does not erase, is never faced. Pope Francis’s call for Mercy as a signature of the church is a summons to bridge this gap. Taylor suggests we all need humility before the challenges of the modern age. The winner will no longer be who has the best arguments between exclusive humanism and faith. The goal is not a matter of crushing human flourishing as an ideal, or diminishing the hope of a better world through collaborative efforts, through the assertion that only heaven is worth our effort. For the church, the incarnation of Jesus Christ makes “leaving the world” an abandonment of mission rather than an act of fidelity. What confound us are the dilemmas we face as we move forward as a global community.61 Benedict XVI reminded the church of its mission to contribute to the shared visions needed for this future. Both visions and institutional expressions are need today to build a new civilization, for which we have few precedents (CV 24, 25, 26). The encounter between faith and humanism requires a dialogue which will transform both. The future evoked by this exchange will be colored by who can respond most profoundly and convincingly to what are ultimately commonly felt dilemmas.

Taylor, A Secular Age, 675.

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The markers of encounter with the transcendent have shifted in secular culture. People search anew for the signs of contact with the transcendent today. Inside and outside the church substitutes for transcendence trapped only within an immanent frame, leave many searching for “the real presence of God” through the Holy Spirit. Where do we look for direction in belief and practice? What scaffoldings, structures for building the new, are needed for this to happen? What avenues are faithful to the tradition of Christian faith, yet lead beyond the horizons which have contained it?1

The Situation of Religion The change in the situation of religion is beyond the tension between belief and unbelief, or the decline and marginalization of religion as the secularization theory holds. The scientific, social, technological structures in which we live, the “immanent frame,” constitute a mental setting of a “this worldly” order which can be understood in its own terms apart from anything transcendent or supernatural.2 This order leaves open the question whether ultimate meaning, spiritual transformation, or just making sense need a vision of transcendence. All do not agree on the answer. Some “spin” the question with openness to transcendence; others are closed to it, a third does not raise the question. A significant number live with the cross pressures created by a world of immanence, while at the same time sensing the “absence” in their lives this creates. A vague or unarticulated sense of transcendence is expressed through involvement in existing religions, practice in a limited manner, or maintenance of an “unaffiliated” stance in occasional spiritual customs. Orthodox religion responds from one side of this debate and hardline John E. Thiel, Senses of the Tradition: Continuity and Development in the Catholic Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 187–211. 2 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007), 594–5. 1

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materialistic atheism on the other as bookends to all positions in between. Most define themselves in relation to one or the other pole with various positions of closeness or distance from each.3 The affirmation of the goodness of life in the immanent frame raises the question whether anything more than a “well lived” life is needed for happiness. Religion can seem like extra baggage on the journey. People charge religion sets impossible goals for humans—asceticism, mortification, and renunciation of ordinary human ends. They frame the invitation to “transcend humanity” as a mutilation. Religion can lead people to despise and neglect ordinary human fulfillment and happiness, which are within their reach, they allege. Others claim religion cannot face the facts about nature and human life; its imperfection, the human drive to aggression, the terrible in life that cannot be wished away. Religion presents itself like a Hallmark card, all sweetness and roses, family, home, community-all of which is a denial of the tragic in the human life and the violence even religion itself has welded on humankind. Religion is questioned for being an agent of impossible demands and mutilations of human life, as well as thought to be childishly utopian.4 The questioning of religion also stems from experience of new resources within the human, in nature, in the economy and political life that appear within reach of the human community. This experience gives rise to an age of authenticity and the social imaginary of expressive individualism. Such individualism embraces the view that each one of us has his or her own way of realizing our humanity; and that it is important to find and live out one’s own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from the outside.5 Expressive individualism had its beginnings in the Romantic period, but was extended in the postwar era. Expanded into a moral/spiritual and instrumental understanding of human living, it shifts understandings of human life, agency, and the moral good. Fed by postwar affluence, more consumer options, and a softening of necessity experienced in the war and prewar period, people did not follow the same requirements of family bonding, close knit communities, and mutual help which were once commonly embraced. The traditional ethic of community service and selfdiscipline was offset, not by perennial selfishness or hedonism, but by a Pope Francis speaks to the fragile nature of religious identities both inside and outside the church and brings them into a unity, taking what may seem to be a negative in our religious situation and opening a door to the positive. Grant Gallicho, “Pope Francis on Religious Liberty and Polyhedrons,” Commonweal, September 26, 2015. 4 Taylor, A Secular Age, 623–4. 5 Ibid., 486. 3

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change in an understanding of the good. The central value in this imaginary is choice, as a supreme value, irrespective of what it is—a choice between or in what domain. This notion of choice does not address the sacrificed alternatives in a dilemma or the real moral weight of any situation. The counterpart of a world of choice is tolerance—let each one do their own thing and let us be respectful of the values of each person.6 People still believe in an ethic which promotes human dignity and universal benevolence. However, neither goal appears to need aid from a transcendent source—both are in reach of an ethic of authenticity. Detached from the specifics of Christian doctrine and linked to a more generic deistic god, this new moral order is independent of any claims about God. The modern ideal of the “good life” comes down to ordering society for mutual benefit, which is mainly economic. This is not a total break from religion; the modern moral order can be linked to God’s providential design, which gives it an authority. Yet it is not an authority which can be overturned by any spiritual tradition. Rather the modern moral order is tied to a civil religion rooted in a natural religion which transcends interreligious strife as well as definition. The delinking of providence from any spiritual tradition or interpretive framework allows the marginalization of what is ultimate and transcendent and renders it both irrelevant and “authoritative” at the same time. What emerges is a mode of self-sufficient sociality that becomes an end in itself.7 Humans now can make this world meaningful. We have shrunk the goal but also shifted the source of our moral/spiritual resources to the immanent frame. It is possible to experience moral fullness, to identify the locus of our highest moral capacity and inspiration, without reference to God and focused solely on our intrahuman powers.8 Religion did not fare well in this shift in mentality. Most problematic is religion does not concur with a key interpretative framework of modern life, a theory of progress. This explanation for the future of society claims that the modern economy, propelled by human greed, holds the secret of progress. The desires of one generation become the necessities of the next. Religion also threatens the order of mutual benefit through promotion of self-restraint; it holds as well, the conviction that material desires can be satiated, they are not limitless. Religion calls for the possibility of directing sensual pleasure and the erotic impulse to other human goals of relationship and family. This challenges a rather unqualified trust in natural instinct. Religion holds it has Ibid., 478. Ibid., 237–9. 8 Ibid., 244–5. 6 7

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the authority to challenge these ideas in society and to promote an idea of prosperity which involves a broader sense of relationships than the economy. Economically, its interference in the project of mutual benefit is thought to be an infringement on the rights of the business community.9 Much of the sensibility against religion in society is not well thought out; rather it arises from “unthought,” according to Taylor. This is a pre-theoretical perspective which carries a certain sensibility and orientation regarding religion, as a temper or outlook. When people claim they have no religious affiliation or belief, it is likely not a decision which has been carefully weighed; rather it is an expression of a vague outlook or temper. Some outlooks on religion, however, do have content. Religion should decline because (1) science shows it to be false; (2) it is irrelevant because we can address human ills now through science, medicine, and technology; (3) moderns need freedom and do not want authority interfering with individual autonomy.10 However, closer examination of some accounts of unbelief can suggest that the religion a person has left behind through the assumption of these “floating ideas” often has been an immature, Sunday-school faith which is easily dropped. Religion which is magical, superficial, illusionary, or based just on external practices to begin with is a religion without the roots needed in a secular society. It is detached from addressing the level of the human person, the true freedom of Spirit, the obedience of faith which Rahner affirms is a mark of the Christian in the future. The question, do we need religion, involves the question, what kind of religion? If the kind of religion needed is one which addresses the real malaise of our times, then understanding the questions raised in the secular age is important for the future of the church. For instance, Hans Joas claims there are human experiences which are bridges to the divine, which in themselves convey a world beyond the self, a world not entirely under human control. These experiences in human life of self-transcendence call for an interpretive framework for their meaning. Experiences of falling in love, feeling obligation before another’s need, vulnerability and dependence, anxiety and the awareness of one’s own finitude augment our sense of moral sensibility. Through them we become aware of another and are deeply moved by someone or something outside ourselves. A sense of the shattering of the On the belief that human material desires are satiable in the Catholic tradition see: Mary L. Hirschfield, “From a Theological Frame to a Secular Frame: How Historical Context Shapes Our Understanding of Catholic Social Thought,” in The True Wealth of Nations, ed. Daniel Finn (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2010). For a discussion of how these factors contribute to a sense of cross pressure as attacks on orthodox religion, see: Taylor, A Secular Age, 305. 10 Ibid., 428–9. 9

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self can occur when either a situation or being affected by group experiences of enthusiasm or conscience move us beyond ourselves. We find ourselves in a new place because of the experience, and are offered a new horizon.11 Religion should be able to offer some response to these “riddles of existence.” The church is always challenged “to give reason for its hope,” not just in words, but in deeds. It can be argued that a felt need for religion can arise out of the very cross pressures of secular society and the malaise of immanence. This book has suggested that the religious answer to this need is not simply the resuscitation of a religious style of the past. Rather the secular world will call forth a new expression of Christianity, and Christianity can offer to the secular world an expression of the redeeming love of Jesus Christ it is missioned to make present. While all the aspects of this “dance” cannot be delineated, let us suggest a few initial steps.

Aspirations Which Both Religion and Humanism Must Answer Religion is not a subculture but an integral part of every culture. Religion in this sense must bring to common questions, its own contribution. It is not the case that religion and humanism must argue the case, and whoever comes up with the best answer wins. Rather exclusive humanism and Christian humanism both are fragile before the questions of modernity. Neither has a single expression; both contain plural responses within their respective traditions. The cross pressures of these responses form the context in which both must offer a response. Taylor argues that three open questions of modernity challenge both religion and humanism for an answer. First, how do we separate ourselves from evil and chaos and anchor ourselves in the good?12 Second, how can we establish a sense of meaning which links ordinary life and higher time? Third, what contacts with fullness are required for us to move beyond the inertia of the commonplace to engage in the transformations needed to meet the challenges of our times and environment? Before we engage these questions, let us ask what a collective response might look like in our cross-pressured society. Can religion impact culture as John Paul II so deeply urged (RM 52)? Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion?, trans. Alex Skinner (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 7–11. 12 Taylor, A Secular Age, 680–5. 11

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Church and Culture In the past, cultural theorists imagined a culture, such as a church practice, as static, a coherent order in a given culture. Cultures formed a distinctive unit of life and could be identified with a characteristic set of norms, values, beliefs, concepts, dispositions, or preoccupations of a particular people.13 The elements of a culture were seen as interrelated, providing a form of meaning and order. One could get a “snapshot” of a particular context of living, and feel confident of understanding an organization in the wider culture. Kathryn Tanner in Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology suggests this older cultural theory is no longer adequate to understand church and culture. In her words: It seems less and less plausible to presume that cultures are selfcontained and clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes of beliefs and values simply transmitted to every member of their respective groups as principles of social order.14

Instead of a social consensus in which every member of the group more or less shared, the recognition of pluralism, and cross pressures, is more realistic. Even if members of a group declare the same beliefs and values, it is unlikely they will all mean the same thing by them.15 Even though there is a certain measure of consensus-building which is characteristic of a group, the extent of this consensus is limited. A better description is there is a sharing of “common stakes.” All parties agree on the importance of the pursuit of a value, even if they do not share a common understanding of what they mean in all cases. As a church, there has to be a coherent system of beliefs and thought which are foundational for the Christian life to give direction to how a community adopts, founds, validates, and communicates a moral way of life.16 This coherence occurs in the midst of variations especially in relationship to culture. The importance of the coherence is not only in shared teaching but also in the quality of community life within the church. The coherence is a practical harmony, not just a formal one. The teaching office of the church has a unique responsibility in this coherence, but this responsibility also Judith A. Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2010), 84–8. 14 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 38. 15 Ibid., 46. 16 Brian Johnstone, “Moral Methodology,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, Judith Dwyer (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2004), 50. 13

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requires all members to discern how to apply the norms of the church in practical contexts. According to Tanner, norms are cultural forms. In her words, “Cultural forms have the force of social directives only by the way of human agents struggling over their meaning and social import.”17 In other words, church life in society, as a culture, is brought into the present only by the active efforts of people interpreting it and using it. Tanner explains that this new approach calls for interactive process and negotiation, indeterminacy, fragmentation, conflict, and influences beyond one’s normal boundaries are part of real-life experience, and part of any vision of religious culture in society. This means, in terms of our discussions, that the concerns of exclusive humanism cannot be surgically removed from the body of realities which comprise the future of the church. Rather the mission of the church requires its interface with secularity to discern where love and truth are represented in concrete yet secular form that meet the good of humankind. At a conference held in Rome in 2015 titled Renewing the Church in a Secular Age, Charles Taylor commented on challenges in the contemporary Catholic Church in the present age of authenticity.18 The “bundling” of different dimensions of belonging in a more traditional understanding of church culture has been undone. At the same time, there has been an unbundling of another sort. Formerly, the different facets of religious life, liturgy, rites of passage, special devotions, charitable organizations, etc. were gathered together in the life of a church (locally, within the life of a parish); but this unity too has been “unbundled” and people carry out these activities with different organization and milieu. These “unbundlings” have been supported in the late twentieth century by the spread of an ethic of authenticity. Today we no longer live in a civilization where all aspects of life reflect Christian faith. Christians react differently to these changes. Some welcome the freedom and openness, and feel free to follow one’s spiritual path, as seekers, alongside others who have taken up different positions. Others mourn the passing of an integrated Christian society. The great challenge for the church is to unite believers of both orientations within the church’s sacramental union.

Four Disjunctions between Church and Secular Culture A few years earlier, in 2012, Taylor pointed to four disjunctions between the church and secular culture, which further delineate the relationship Tanner, Theories of Culture, 50. Renewing the Church in a Secular Age: Holistic Dialogue and Kenotic Vision. Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, Roma, March 4–5, 2015. Proceedings: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture.

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between church and secularity, both within the church itself and between the church and secular culture. These disjunctions reflect not necessarily failures of the church rather future work which must be done in order to reconstitute Catholic life in secular contexts. The first is between seeker and dwellers, which often can be reduced to culture wars within the church. The second regards the model of authority that some in the magisterium hold as legitimate power as in the secular world, and authority conferred by an authenticity that is acknowledged by the community. Third is a disjunction between ethical and moral practice understood as human, fallible, and rooted in a particular historical context, and a natural law morality built on abstract, unchanging, and universal essences. Fourth disjuncture regards pluralism in spirituality, especially those open to enrichment by experiences and spirituality of religious cultures and civilizations outside Western Christianity, and nonreligious traditions.19 The continued effort of the church to move from a Western church to a global one and to engage in interreligious dialogue is recognition of these later issues. Underlying the need to work at this disjuncture is the assumption of the need of a public church to function healthfully in the modern world. The revitalization of the churches and their adoption of public roles are held in question by theories of secularization and cyclical theories of religious revival. Religions are assumed to be mainly marginal and irrelevant in the modern world. On the contrary, religion is to be privatized, and moved to the periphery of everyday life—there for those who want it, but out of the mainstream for the rest. Jose Casanova, however, argues for a “deprivatization” of religion in the modern world—a rejection of this marginal status. He finds evidence for this today as social movements arise from a religious foundation which challenge the legitimacy and autonomy of the secular—the state and market economy. Today religious institutions do not restrict themselves to the care of souls; rather they challenge that global institutions have normative expectations, and bring out the interconnections between private and public morality. Casanova defines “deprivatization” as the interrelated process of relating the private religious and moral spheres to their political import and bringing a normative perspective to the once exempt public economic and political spheres. Religions are public entities and they are not going away. However, they likely will play new roles in the public spheres of modern societies.20 George F. McLean, “Introduction Disjunctions in the 21st Century,” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, ed. Charles Taylor, Jose Casanova, and George F. McLean (Washington: The Council for Research and Values and Philosophy, 2012), 1–14. 20 Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 3–10. 19

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Just as modern societies are impacted by global relationships, so will believers be marked by their interconnections. Their identity will not be formed as isolated people of faith with only “spiritual” and intangible connections to others. Globalization, as the dual sense of the emergence of global humankind and the emergence of a global system of societies, relativizes the personal identity of the self in reference to humankind as a whole in the modern world. Membership in any national society will be qualified by reference to global humanity. National societies will be required to see themselves also part of a world system of societies. In the midst of all these relationships, perhaps the greatest challenge to religion will be the sacredness of all peoples before all that challenges the dignity of the person and the integrity of earth. The greatest challenge of the church will be to counter a “culture of indifference” which is international in scope, and fed by the market economy. Casanova argues that the interventions of public religion have already shaped the modern world, and continue to do so. However, he argues that this is more than a traditional return to the sacred viewed either as anti-modern or postmodern. Rather, he sees it as radical monotheism as in the thinking of H. Richard Niebuhr, a supreme trust and loyalty in a transcendent center of value and power that is neither a conscious or unconscious extension of personal or group ego nor a finite cause or institution.21 It is a function of the church in action, in its true eschatological identity, as more than a facilitator of an ethic of mutual benefit.

Toward a New Future How might we imagine the church of the future? Tanner suggests that unlike the days of ghetto Catholicism in North America, Christian communities do not function as complete cultures. Rather they share an overlapping of tradition and horizons with the culture surrounding them. What is Christian or Catholic is often difficult to isolate. While some claim that the Christian does the same things as his or her neighbor, just with different motivation, this solution is too simple.22 Christianity means more than living with a different set of motivations. A believer forms an unusual type of voluntary association within a wider society, not a separate society. This association or community shapes members for altered social relations beyond the interactions within the church itself. Ibid., 226–34. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 122.

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We recognize today that much of the Christian life is geared toward shaping the practices of those outside the church, to penetrate fields where social decisions are made, to “bring forth charity for the life of the world.” While the total activity of the life of the church is essential to its practice, the social dimension of Catholicity is located primarily outside the boundaries of the church.23 This sets the stage for a new realization that the secular society is not an enemy of the flourishing of the faith community, rather an inseparable part. The church, however, has to shift in its attitude toward the aspirations of the modern person and addresses the deep concerns which arise in the cross pressures of modern life. In the past, the church has assessed secularization as simply a process of subtraction—modernity’s progressive abandonment of religious factors. Some in the church have assumed that if modernity and religion have been bounded in a zero sum tension, what is needed is simply to restore what has been subtracted. However, Taylor has shown it is not this simple. The process of secularization is integral to the major search for human fulfillment, of which the church has to take a part. The church has to do more than defend itself by restoring what has been subtracted. It has to reject the conclusion that the subtractions are the fault of the “other” for not listening to the church. Rather the church must “hear” the legitimate modern aspirations of both its members and those in the wider society. To respond to the disjunctions within and without requires a capacity and self-understanding which cannot be built entirely in the church or in secular terms; rather the truly challenging task is to relate the two in ways that are mutually complementary and enriching. Tanner suggests that a faithful response in a modern cultural situation will require both of the church and its members fluid boundaries. Cultural identity is more a hybrid where cultural ideals are lived out in relationships of resistance, appropriation, subversion, and compromise.24 In a different era, Augustine also wrestled with the problem of the link between the sacred and the secular.

The Sacred and the Secular St. Augustine, at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, addressed the question how the sacred and the secular intertwine through his depiction of the two kingdoms. The cosmos itself was divided into two realities, the city of Ibid., 106. Ibid., 58.

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God and the city of the earth. The saeculum is the realm in which the carriers of the two cities are intertwined.25 The earthly city has two dimensions, and is not limited only to sinful humanity. On the one hand, it is the world which is profane, and rejects God. It is the realm of the impious and the reprobate. On the other hand, the earthly city is simply the material world. It is the actual space of life, the empirical city where good and bad mix. The earthly city and its institutions have a moral dimension; they can be better or worse in their service of human life. The care of the saeculum or the realm in which the two cities intertwine, thus has importance for both the believer and the nonbeliever. It is the real world in which all have to live. Augustine’s vision of the two cities both validates the institutions and activities of the earthly city and relativizes their importance. The institutions of the earthly city are validated as remaining intact until the end of the world (Romans 13). They are not morally neutral. However, societies, institutions, and practices are incapable of salvation or damnation. This is the realm of the heavenly city.26 Human intentionality marks all morality. Impersonal institutions have no eschatological destiny, no intentions which can be directed to ultimate ends. However, shared meanings and consensus on a value system remain essential features of a society and form part of what the heavenly city recognizes—sanctions and fosters for its own ultimate purpose, the true worship of the one God.27 The only true res publica based on the only true justice is the heavenly city. The values to which human groups are committed in this way are relativized by this ultimate reality, but not invalidated. Practices, customs, institutions form a complex which shapes and conditions human action and behavior even though they do not determine it.28 They have bearing on human welfare and ultimately on the options available to them to work out their salvation. To this degree, they reflect a consensus which promotes response to salvation, or negates it. In Augustine’s synthesis, it is impossible to relate every aspect of the world directly to the sacred, even though he holds all creation is good. He states, “In truth, these two Cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effect their separation.”29 The saeculum, or the secular, the shared space in which Christian and pagan both have a stake, retains its

Robert A. Markus, Christianity and the Secular (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 48. 26 Ibid., 47. 27 Ibid., 62. 28 Ibid., 44. 29 Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library: Random House, 1950), Book I, 35. 25

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own autonomy and validity in this ambiguity. It is not a third city between the earthly and the heavenly, but rather their mixed, intertwined state in real life. This middle ground between the sacred and the profane can neither be included in the sacred, by Christians or pagans, nor repudiated as profane and demonic. Political institutions, social practices, and customs can be directed to the enjoyment of eternal peace by members of the heavenly city or wrongly directed to lesser goods, the earthly city. Between the two exists a sliding scale of better or worse. Augustine claims if you want to discover the character of any people, you have only to observe what they love.30 Political institutions, social practices, and customs, even of non-Christian origin, can foster proper loves. In this they have value.31 The prologue of John’s gospel announces how Christ is in the world: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (1:6). The church is called to point to that light and the Word of truth and love it represents, especially to identify light in issues of injustice, poverty, and oppression. To contribute to attempts to formulate social, economic, and cultural meanings that addressed these profound human issues, it needs both to recognize light when it comes from sources not its own, and to contribute from its own resources to the solutions of these common human problems. Today, modern Catholic social teaching attempts to specify this light, the “proper loves” or conditions which Augustine recognized in sacred/secular mix of the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. John Paul II recognizes it is not just human effort but the Spirit of God active secular society which moves humanity toward these loves. He attests that the Spirit is already present in “society and history, peoples, cultures and religion” (RM 28). The Spirit does exist outside the ecclesial realm, yet its presence requires discernment rather than definition. Criterion of this discernment is offered by several modern popes. Solidarity, based on the common origin of peoples and their destiny under God the Creator, is affirmed by Benedict XVI. Solidarity reflects the activity of the Spirit as unifier: in the principle of social organization that enables unequals to become equals. It can prompt a movement beyond the “rules” of an ethic mutual benefit limited to market factors alone (CV38). John Paul II defines solidarity as, “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all” (SRS 38). Here the secular ideal of universal benevolence is mixed within every change in horizon which overcomes a climate of indifference and impasse in our social structures and relationships. The Spirit exists in the very freedom of Ibid., XIX, 14. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 38.

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choice and democratic processes which modern society has made possible. A standard for evaluating and choosing between social systems, institutional reforms, or legal reforms is how they enhance human dignity. This is the humanistic criterion, which directs the choice of a “true love,” amid the complexity of secular society. In the words of John Paul II, the humanistic criterion is the measure in which each system is really capable of reducing, restraining and eliminating as far as possible the various forms of exploitation of man and of ensuring for him, through work, not only the just distribution of the indispensable material goods, but also a participation, in keeping with his dignity, in the whole process of production and in the social life that grows up around that process.32

There is a certain tentative, light touch needed as both church and secular society move forward to face the cross pressures of modern times. On the church’s part, its uniqueness will be expressed not only in the content of its message but in the style of its practice. This “dance” will require efforts to mediate faith and contemporary science, respecting the commitments of both arenas, each contributing the needed movements that only they can bring.

Scaffoldings of the Future: Three Spiritual Hungers Scaffolding is a structure of poles and planks, often erected when a building is under restoration. It is meant to be temporary, a bridge to something more substantial, yet it is necessary for the project. Without scaffolding there is no beginning the project, removing what is no longer helpful, nor preparing a framework for the new. The term “scaffolding” therefore serves as a lens for these exploratory comments which conclude this reflection. It is impossible in this time of transition to predict the future. Those who feel they can should be feared. However, it seems fair to suggest some directions which may lead to insights into the journey ahead. Discernment is the process of sorting through options and choices, to test where the Spirit maybe leading the Christian community. A final contribution of this book is to offer a reflection on the manner in which Christian discipleship might impact what Taylor offers as “enduring questions” facing secular society. What resources John Paul II, “Address to the United Nations on the Declaration of Human Rights,” AAS 1156, para. 17.

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does the church have to respond to these “riddles of existence” in the secular age? How might response to these questions challenge the church to greater authenticity and effectiveness in carrying out its mission? Taylor names three spiritual hungers of secular modernity shared by exclusive humanism and Christian discipleship. They are (1) a desire to separate ourselves from evil and chaos and to anchor in the good, (2) a need to link ordinary life and higher time in a search for meaning, (3) a drive to establish points of contact with fullness which make sense in secular times. There are many response to these questions, some open to transcendence, some closed to it, others open, but working mainly only with an immanent frame. People inside the church likely feel the cross pressures produced by varied responses and frame their own sense of belonging in the church with these sensibilities, some thought out and others “unthought.” Yet Catholic identity in this process is not without content. Catholic identity in this sense is a hybrid of modern sensibility plus an interpretative framework and committed practice which arises from the content of membership. In this light, church membership does offer to the “dance” of secular life substance in dealing with these questions. Richard McBrien identifies that Catholic life has its own identifiable characteristics: mediation, sacramentality, and communion. These characteristics are a unique resource in the mix with more broadly held values of human dignity and responsible relationships that identify and impact discipleship and church witness in secular society today.33 We assume that the church also can only be church located in a particular time in history. Issues of our secular times therefore impact how the church expresses itself and functions. Marks of Catholic identity mix with other values of a socially oriented life or institution or movement in society in the expression of its mission. The distinctiveness of the church’s spiritual mission is often expressed in the countercultural nature of its ministerial style. Jonathan Boswell names the expression of the values of solidarity, power-sharing, diversity, and justice for the poor as integral to the church’s presence and credibility in society today.34 This is not an exhaustive list of possibilities. However, if we juxtapose the above spiritual hungers in modern life with the dimensions of church life which give it identity, we will uncover See Judith Merkle, From the Heart of the Church: The Catholic Social Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 41–59, 241–65. We are only commenting on how some aspects of church identity are in dialogue with these modern questions, not accounting for all areas of the distinctiveness of the church. 34 Jonathan Boswell, “Solidarity, Justice and Power Sharing: Patterns and Policies,” in Catholic Social Thought: Twilight or Renaissance? ed. J. S. Boswell, F. P. McHugh, and J. Verstraeten (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2000), 95. 33

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other potential for response. While we do not intend to account for an entire ecclesiology of the church, hopefully these insights will point to areas of scaffolding which foster “dancing to silent music” in secular society today.

A Desire for the Good and Communion The modern hunger for meaning involves the concrete need to give an answer to evil and suffering. The traditional reply is to the question of theodicy, how can a good God allow evil and suffering in the world? However, for unbelievers, theodicy is not the challenge. The question is how to live with suffering and evil.35 Both Christians and secular humanists struggle not with a theoretical response but a practical one. On the one hand, one can take a defensive move, and simply refuse to listen to the Evening news. People can distance themselves from suffering, not let it get to them. One can practice compassion but be careful not to get overwhelmed by it. Some exclude people and causes they will not address, or simply draw a line as to how far they will go with understanding and empathy. On the positive side, people can try to do what is reasonable and possible by engaging in concrete efforts to improve the situation. There can be satisfaction in the experience of being able to order the world to a certain extent. A certain efficacy in charity can ground and justify walking away the next time or screening out the unworthy recipient. However, there are more sinister responses. People can embrace some theory or movement of bettering the situation. They invest in this all-powerful solution. What is out of reach of this program or movement or ideology is set aside, or even sacrificed. They legitimate violence in service to this high cause. Groups can be formed in opposition to “evil” in which hostility to other actually functions as an element of their identity. The fingerprint of such identity is its non-dialogical tone.36 All evil is projected onto others. In this “distancing” from evil, people are closed to the recognition that some degree of the evil of the world is also their own fault. Seeing self in the face of evil and suffering as one of the “excellent” ones is a further departure, even from the moral order of mutual benefit and benevolence of exclusive humanism. Equality and benevolence become an inconvenient leveler, catering to comfort and security, where the real challenge is to be excellent, to rise above, and to be a cut above the misery which engulfs the world. It is believed only a special few can really do this, so they must go ahead. A type of exceptionalism arises. A lifestyle enclave, Taylor, A Secular Age, 680–5. Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society, 147–67.

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rather than a community, forms as a way to separate from suffering and to create a good “life” to embrace. However, an enclave of this nature is based on leisure and consumption, and includes only others who share this lifestyle: “The different, those with other lifestyles, are not necessarily despised. They may be willingly tolerated. But they are irrelevant or even invisible in terms of one’s own lifestyle enclave.”37 All such attempts by both believers and unbelievers to face suffering and evil are inadequate. The human dilemma is how to separate practices of response to evil and the doing of good from strategies of exclusion. The dimension of church life which responds to this dilemma is its identity as communion. Taylor relates the human struggle with suffering and evil with an eclipse of the agency of God, as one who intervenes in history. The god of exclusive humanism governs the cosmos and is the architect of an impersonal order of the world. The dismissal of God’s agency is a rejection of the orthodox Christian concept of communion. Communion sums up the whole meaning of the Christian life, as love, which defines both the nature of God and our relation to him.38 Salvation is only effected by, our being in communion with God through the community of humans, the ground of the experience of communion in the church. Communion marks the identity of Catholic life. The grace received in the Eucharist is given also as a task to accomplish in our lives. We pray to become what we have celebrated and received. We acknowledge in the Eucharist the creation of a new “we” created in baptism and expressed in the Eucharist: “We pray to you.” Yet, this “we” is not the self-selected “us” of the lifestyle enclave of modern society.39 Rather it is the “we” of identity given to us by Christ, and reciprocally of the fragile unity capable of being achieved in our pluralistic and global society amid all which threatens communion in our world. In the Eucharist we celebrate that Christ is being raised and continues to raise a body of humanity of which the church is a primary locus only because he is first raised by God.40 We celebrate that the church then is the servant of humanity to achieve this unity in all the myriad ways its members seek to confront evil and bring about good. We do this with Christ our savior, not just as a moral example, but as a gratuitous gift. In this sense, the Mass is not just useful or Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 70. 38 Taylor, A Secular Age, 279. 39 A lifestyle enclave is focused on private life in which we share only a segment of life, usually leisure and consumption. By contrast, “A community tends to be an inclusive whole, celebrating the interdependence of public and private life and the different callings of all.” Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 72. 40 Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 135–45. 37

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real to the extent it mobilizes energies in order to transform the world. Rather its primary significance is the communication of the gratuitous gift of God. We are called by it to an ethical action through a spiritual offering of both our successes and our failures to accomplish the task it gives us to accomplish.

Ordinary Life and Higher Time: Sacramentality The changed sense of time from premodern to modern times creates a second hunger. In premodern understanding, ordinary or mundane time is transcended by “higher” time—an accounting of time that is not merely linear or chronological. Secular time, in an immanent frame, has changed this: “We have constructed an environment in which we live a uniform, univocal secular time, which we try to measure and control in order to get things done.”41 We try through routines and narrative to distinguish one time from another: public commemorations, annual events, long weekends, travel, and hobbies. However, these substitutes are fragile before the rituals and narratives of premodern “higher” times. A sense of meaninglessness can overcome modern life. Fear of boredom can drive many activities, like belonging to several bridge clubs at once. It can leave people with a desire to gather these scattered moments of meaning onto some kind of whole.42 This sense of the meaning of time is most acute when facing death, one’s own or that of a loved one. A closed world offers little meaning for the passing of time, beyond the hope one will be remembered in the future. The “longing” for a sense of eternity arises spontaneously at moments of family death or similar experiences. Taylor comments that this “doesn’t show that the faith perspective is correct. It just shows that the yearning for eternity is not the trivial and childish thing it is painted as.”43 The general search for meaning, which in an immanent frame can be reduced to the markers of a life course, gives rise to this question: Is this all there is? The sacramental order of the church attempts to bridge the gap between God, ourselves, and the world. The sacramental order is a symbolic order; it requires the subjection of one partner to the other. The symbol can provide an order in which I find my meaning by finding my place within it, a meaning bigger than myself.44 Christians interpret life in relationship to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through the sacraments, the church testifies to this reality. The church considers the sacramental gestures and words Taylor, The Secular Age, 59. Ibid., 720. 43 Ibid. 44 Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society, 90. 41 42

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it expresses are Christ’s gestures and His words. In the fullest sense of the world, the church itself is “sacrament.”45 Christian faith is not only one of personal immediacy with God; it functions through the signs and symbols of the church. This is what sacramentality confirms. The sacraments are not magical, moral rewards or a way to control God, or the otherness of God which ultimately gives meaning to life.46 John Paul II cautions against both an overvaluation of the sacraments as the sole maker of a “practicing Christian” and an overvaluation of ethics—political or emotional or charismatic—as our “wedding garment” of salvation. The love and mercy of God, shown forth in the Eucharist, offers what is more powerful than evil and death, God’s own love. This sacramental celebration conveys an on-going meaning that qualifies all meanings we attempt to put on life. Even our notion of what justice is has to receive a new content, through being exposed to the only creative power of love which is more powerful than sin, God’s love (DM 14). This is the ongoing process of Christian existence, of which the sacraments are one part. The sacraments are not automatic experiences of God. The spiritual senses required to encounter God in the sacraments involve not just thinking spiritual thoughts but making room for God, giving God freedom of action—surrender. Love of neighbor is the practice which impacts our awareness of sacramental presence, and the meaning it conveys for our lives.47 The effort of creative action in charity and the collaboration necessary for the common good gives meaning. In both love of neighbor and worship men and women move to second place, and God stands before them in first place. The sacraments speak of the eschatological in-between-time. It is the time of an “already”—God is present in life with the gift of salvific love—and a not yet; all human meaning we place in this world is not complete. They are witnesses of a God who is never finished with coming: a God who submits to be present through the passage of concrete signs and symbols of which the sacraments are a trace.48

Points of Contact with Fullness—Mediation A third spiritual hunger of secular times is the need to articulate fullness. There is a search to connect the experiences of being drawn to fullness, and Chauvet, The Sacraments, 167. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan, S.J. and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 173–7. 47 See: Mark McInroy, Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 48 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 555. 45 46

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to the unity of the experience to which it points. The modern experience of expansion or “conversion” often remains in the immanent frame. While people experience movement and growth emotionally, intellectually, and in other areas, they explain these changes without a sense of transcendence. They simply “break beyond systems which their opponents see as totalities in a new sense; they are systems of immanent order which can be explained and accounted for in their own terms.”49 There is no need to go beyond the natural to understand the world and these experiences. In this way, moderns distinguish the natural from the supernatural. There is a lack of language to explain any paradigm change beyond the natural. In the image of religious experience offered earlier, these changes are comparable to being in a room where you hear music but do not know its source. On the one hand, to identify the source as transcendent bucks the system of generally accepted language. On the other, to do so could discredit one’s modernity, suggesting a regression to a premodern understanding of life or simply a childish outlook. Despite these cross pressures, people still feel the draw of the transcendent in their lives. For active believers, such an experience may confirm their belief. If they have discarded a previous religious background, they may seek to believe again, to sort through their exposure to perhaps several belief systems acquired from the cultural flow, and to dig deeper for the possibility of a transcendent partner. There is another analogy for this experience in playing tennis. One can hit the ball against the wall, and practice retrieval. Or, one can discover there is someone on the other side hitting the ball back to you—now you have an encounter. A third option is to immerse oneself in the affairs of the ordinary, and not attend to the significance of the experience at all—dismissal. It appears this third spiritual hunger belongs to believers and unbelievers alike, even among people who believe there are a wide range of stances. Pope Francis notes this reality and offers an image of the church today as a polyhedron, one that must embrace great diversity of stages and moments of belief and unbelief. A polyhedron is not a sphere, rather a solid having many sides. A polyhedron lacks the harmony of the sphere but retains the unity of a solid. It offers variable distances from its center, and not a single way of being related to it. While the identity of the church always will require some defined boundaries established by its internal law, Pope Francis points to the importance of recognition of the great variety of response involved today. Those without a religious background but open to the transcendent can have experiences of conversion, a turning to the reality of the transcendent, finding God in a new way. Others, in the absence of such an experience, may Taylor, A Secular Age, 732.

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still be drawn; they “may take on a new view about religion from others: saints, prophets, charismatic leaders, who have radiated some sense of more direct contact.”50 They can sense that others have been closer or more familiar with what they seek. A shared religious language can evoke the confidence necessary to take a new step in articulating fullness. These stirrings require an interpretation which the immanent stance cannot deliver completely. Whether “conversion” arises in the experience of a believer or one who never believed, the common denominator is it involves a heart-transforming, life-changing nature. One is dancing, even if they do not know why. There is a transformation of the frame in which people thought or lived before: “They bring into view something beyond that frame, which at the same time changes the meaning of all the elements of the frame. Things make sense in a new way.”51 When Taylor looks to the future, he foresees two directions secular conversion experience may happen. In the first case, there will be a shift in societies where the general atmosphere leans toward an immanent frame for explaining life’s purpose. Even though many people have trouble understanding how a sane person could believe in God, the dominant secularization narrative, which blames our religious past for many of the woes of our world, will become less plausible over time.52 They will notice that other societies are not following suit, and will also experience internal pressures of the adequacy of this explanation. At the same time, the atmosphere of immanence, and sense that this is all there is, will intensify a sense of living in a “wasteland” for subsequent generations.53 Many young people will begin to explore beyond the limitations of the immanent frame. The emptiness of the present, coupled with the persistent pressure of a sense of transcendence that cannot be explained away will continue to generate “third ways” of various sorts. The paucity of the “closed take” will begin to be felt by some.54 A “spiritual” but not religious path might be a stage in this quest, but ultimately will not contain it. Here the role of the church comes to light in a new way. The purpose of the church is to witness to “the point not visible”— the point “not visible to the naked eye, but believed in,” in the words of Flannery O’Connor.55 The point “not visible” is the point outside the selfcontained system of everyday explanation, the one in relation to which all Ibid., 729. Ibid., 731. 52 Ibid., 770. 53 Ibid. 54 James K. A. Smith, How Not to Be Secular (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014), 139. 55 Taylor, A Secular Age, 732. 50 51

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our ordinary meanings change—the fulcrum of the paradigm shift. This is also the object of the artist—to make what is invisible, visible—to lead us to mystery. The church and its membership as “music makers” can be a response to this third spiritual hunger.

Church as Mediation The principle of mediation is a distinguishing characteristic of the church and one at the core of its identity. Mediation means what is most spiritual always takes place in what is most corporeal. Chauvet claims that one becomes Christian only by entering an institution. Faith is lived in a tradition, a history of relationships, in an institution in a religious form. As institutional, it is doctrinal, moral, ritual, and so on. Faith is not only a personal reality which I construct. Rather faith and the experiences which give rise to it require an interpretation.56 The modes of Christian behavior which appear the most “personal” such as meditative prayer, or the most “authentic” such as concern for others, are always the expression of an apprenticeship interiorized for a long time and of habits inculcated by institutional and highly ritualized processes.57 People understand themselves as Christians, speak of themselves as Christians, and lead Christian lives only because of the church, and through the mediation of the body, within the body of a society or particular context of life. The church too exists in a posture of mediation. The fundamental dependence of the church on its Lord is expressed in the Eucharist.58 How the church fosters religious identity is key to its effectiveness as a mediator before these hungers of secular society. Taylor comments that a characteristic of secular society is there is no necessary embedding of our link to the sacred in any particular broader framework, whether the “church” or the state. A further challenge is personal identity itself is free—floating. Rather than identity flowing from the experience of common action with others, it arises simply from a simultaneous mutual presence of mutual display: “It matters to each one of us as we act that the others are there, as witness of what we are doing, and thus as co-determiners of the meaning of our action.”59 Mutual display is not the same as belonging and the role it plays in identity. Modern consumer society is inseparable from the construction of spaces of display: the giant malls of today are meta-topical spaces which link

Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 46, 53. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 25. 58 Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society, 88–90. 59 Taylor, A Secular Age, at 481. See also 481–7. 56 57

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us through commodities to an imagined higher existence elsewhere. I wear Nike shows, and through that display I am a person who just does it! It can be argued that youth today, and others, attach to consumer identity, movie stars, the right music, a huge role in their sense of self, which displaces in many cases the importance of belonging to large-scale collective agency, like nations and churches, political parties or agencies of advocacy. These collectives or communities are different than occasions of mutual display. They have had the capacity to uphold commonly enforced virtues of character and limits on the pursuit of individual happiness. Values of hard work and productivity, family values, and civic capacities have traditionally given a framework to the pursuit of the individual good. Mutual display often only carries the bonds of the tourist or vagabond. What does this mean for the church? Obviously, in all its forms, the Christian church has traditionally been an advocate of mechanisms of belonging and identity beyond the superficiality of “mutual display.” It can offer, as an alternative to mutual display, “itineraries” of Christian lives of fullness and attention to the sanctity of conscience. Both have the potential to ground people in moral sources which can support a life beyond the goals of a “closed system” and an order of mutual benefit. International capitalism produces “a culture of indifference” which proves problematic for the identity of seekers, dwellers, and exclusive humanists if it is not counterbalanced by a practice which challenges it.60 The church therefore must offer clarity regarding the meaning of life. Taylor argues that “the unity of the church as stretching into eternity across all ages of time” offers “paradigm itineraries” gathered from its living tradition, which “cannot be identified with those of any one age.”61 He gives as an example, Therese of Lisieux, who also lived in a modern world, in which negation of God is a real option, adopted by millions. An important element in her spirituality was a sense of longing. The longing informed her consciousness of the suffering of Christ and the rejection of his love by people. Her experience of this lack of faith, as void, did not lead her to close herself off from it; her aim is rather to live in it, wanting still to believe, and to be with God. Her choice to believe, in this “night” of faith; her desire led her to union with God and its joy.62 In this sense, we would say, she “danced as if no one was looking.” Vincent Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (New York: Continuum, 2004). 61 Ibid., 766. 62 See: Taylor, A Secular Age, 850, note 64. Here, Taylor reflects on the work: Fernand Ouellette, Je serai l’Amour (Montreal, 1996) and Michel de Certeau, La Fable Mystique (Paris: Gallimard, 1982). Han Joas, Faith as an Option, trans. Alex Skinner (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014) offers possible futures for Christianity in Europe, 126–43. 60

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Attention to the importance of the human conscience in one’s relationship with God is also necessary for the church to be an effective mediator before the hungers of secular society.63 The actual credibility of the church is linked to recognition of the freedom of conscience in a secular age. There is a tension for the church between its witness to moral truth and its respect for personal conscience. Before the crisis of its moral authority was eroded by the sexual abuse scandal, it cannot just withdraw. Yet its moral authority cannot be reduced to its efforts to codifying the essence of things, and deduce typographies of unchanging modes of human action without attending to the dynamism of human self-development and the challenges of pastoral practice. It cannot ignore the real struggles toward human fulfillment experienced by members of the church and others of good will in secular society. To simply characterize the views that dominate public life in general as misguided, without recognizing they often represent conflicting truth claims (AL 38), will not fulfill the church’s role to assist the formation of conscience. A capacity to respect the conscience of others is also necessary for the collaboration required for its mission.64 While concern over a subjectivism not guided by a more objective morality is real (LS 217), there also needs to be a concern for the uniqueness of the person in age of authenticity for the church to be heard. Evolving experience in the human community can challenge other sources of moral knowledge, and the church has a key role in deciphering the modern, psychoanalytic, and political categories which lurk under the veneer of both secular and ecclesiastical debates.65 In today’s society open questions which engulf secular society will remain open, regardless of official pronouncements and sanctions. The church will be an effective mediator before the hungers of secular society as it fosters the capacity of judgment which rings true to the human capacity to recognize the truth of things, be drawn to the good and identify the Spirit alive in the world.

Pope Francis echoes the teaching of Vatican II when he describes conscience as “the interior place for listening to the truth, to goodness, for listening to God, it is the inner place of my relationship to God, the One who speaks to my heart and helps me to discern, to understand the way I must take and, once the decision is made, to go forward, to stay faithful.” “Conscience Means Listening to God,” Angelus Address, St. Peter’s Square, June 30, 2013. 64 See the essays in Conscience and Catholic Health Care: From Clinical Contexts to Government Mandates, eds. David E. DeCosse and Thomas A. Nairn, O.F.M. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2017). 65 Sara Coakley, The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 140. 63

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The Dance of Fullness Throughout his work Charles Taylor refers to the search for “fullness” that all people share. All people have some sense of it, recognize it, and seek to attain it, although in different ways. Both those who practice religion and those who find modes of fullness in exclusive humanism respond to a transcendent reality. However, those who live only in an immanent frame misrecognize it.66 Because of this, they shut out crucial features of it. The structural characteristic of what this book calls “the dance to silent music” is not an illusion, but it corresponds to reality. It is a process of ongoing religious conversion, a sense of self-transcendence, the experience of breaking out of a narrower frame into a broader field—making sense of things in a different way, and the experience of self-expansion in love, and ultimately of a union with God which we do not create. Religious experience in a secular age involves the sense that grace is everywhere, yet also is somewhere. It is as though a room were filled with music though one can have no sure knowledge of its source. There is in the world, as it were a charged field of love and meaning, here and there it reaches a notable intensity; but it is ever unobtrusive, hidden, inviting each of us to join. And join we must if we are to perceive it, for our perceiving is through our own loving.67

The church is to witness to the “music” of God’s presence everywhere, and the tune of love, forgiveness and invitation to “more” that it plays. The universal presence of divine healing and grace embraces the secular world. Even when unacknowledged, it exists “far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1:22). As we search to build up, the body of Christ, the “fullness of the one who fills all things in every way” (Eph. 1:23), we hold onto the words of St. Irenaeus, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” The dance between the secular and the religious is to open the horizons and hopes of all peoples and to promote the wholeness of each person’s journey to be fully alive. May those who join this dance strive for the fullness that the secular age can create and which the Heart of love, who brings us to the dance, can only make worthwhile. Taylor, A Secular Age, 768. Bernard J. Lonergan, S.J., Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 290, with reference to Oliver Rabut, L’experience religieuse fondamentale (Tournai: Castermann, 1968), 168.

66 67

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Index Abadi, Mark  138 agape  56, 86 Anselm of Canterbury  108ff. Aquinas, Thomas  103, 109, 134, 154 Arendt, Hannah  55 Armstrong, Karen  7 Arrupe, Pedro  150 asceticism  137–8, 150, 156–7 Christian  126–33, 140–1 cultural rejection  146 modern  139–41, 151–3, 155ff. wellness  128–9 atonement  108–11, 137 Augustine of Hippo  8, 73, 103, 119, 141, 207–10 von Balthasar, Hans Urs  74, 75, 112 Bauman, Zygmunt  60–1, 72 beautitudes authenticity  166ff. gratitude  161–3 paschal mystery  157–8, 166 solidarity  163–6 Bellah, Robert  64, 66, 115, 168, 213 Berger, Peter  89ff. bias  182–3 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich  141, 148 Boswell, Jonathan  211 Brooks, David  167–8 Brown, Peter  130 Brown, Raymond  171 Browning, Don S.  149 Calvin, John  109 Carmody, Denise Lardner  69 Carroll, Anthony  30, 32 Carter, Stephen  30, 44 Casanova, Jose  62, 63, 65, 67, 71, 90, 184, 185, 205, 206

Catechism of the Catholic Church  83 charisma  65–6 Chauvet, Louise-Marie  213, 215, 218 church  88–9, 94–7, 176–8, 180–1, 191–2, 211 deprivatization  205 disjunctions  204–6 future  206–7, 210–20 hope  196–7 modern conflicts  178–82, 188–91 polyhedron  216 Realsymbol  124 seekers and dwellers  192–3 unbundling  204 civil religion  43 Coakley, Sara  137, 139, 140, 149, 150, 220 communion  213 Cone, James  98 Confoy, MaryAnne  145 Conn, Walter  118 Connor, James  103 conscience  220 conversion  153–5, 182–3, 192, 216–17 cross-pressure  79, 202, 203 Crysdale, Cynthia S. W.  102, 111, 126 culture  203–4 Daley, Brian  128 dance  25–7, 75–6, 159, 161, 202, 210, 217, 221 Dawkins, Richard  127 deCerteau, Michel  217 DeCosse, David E.  220 deism  41–3, 142

234

Index

deLubac, Henri  176, 190 discernment  210 discipleship  14–23 docetism  107 Dolan, Brian  103 Doran, Robert M.  183, 191, 195 dualism  105–8, 126 Duffy, Stephen  112, 113, 190 Dulles, Avery  112, 190 Durkheim, Emile  64–6 Edwards, David L.  145 Eliade, Mircea  7 enchanted world  39–40 disenchanted world  39–40, 179 religion  78 Eucharist  213–14, 218 Evdokimov, Paul  152 exclusive humanism  33, 177–78, 204 expressivism  45–8

Gallicho, Grant  199 Garrilyuk, Paul  108 Girard, Rene  196 gnosticism  106 God  7–8 gospel pf prosperity  141–4 Gregory, Brad  142–3 Hale, Christopher  165 Haught, John F.  114 Hayes, Diana  23 heroism of unbelief  50 Higgins, Jean  92, 191 Himmelfarb, Gertrude  138 Hirschfield, Mary L.  201 Hollenbach, David  170 Hopkins, Gerard Manley  102 human fulfillment  56 immanent frame  38, 177–8, 188, 214 Irenaeus  9

Fagerberg, David W.  130, 134, 141 faith commitment  72–3 contingency  70–3, 75–7, 90, 97–8 creative imagination  58–9, 73 criticisms  71–2, 98 human  57 religious  57–9, 61, 73–5, 87–8, 92, 112–13, 116 Farley, Margaret  128, 151, 152 Fields, Stephen  103 Fiorenza, Francis Schussler  109 France, Louise  140 Pope Francis  76, 106, 175, 186, 199, 216, 220 freedom  122ff., 128, 133–7 Freiberger, Oliver  127 Fromm, Erich  119 fullness  104, 177, 215–16, 221

James, William  65, 69, 87 Jansenism  144–5 Jesus Christ  107, 114, 188, 194–5 RealSymbol of God  121–5 resurrection  121 satisfaction theory  109–10, 126 Joas, Hans  23, 64, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 77, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 95, 96, 113, 136, 174, 202, 217, 219 Pope John Paul II  44, 83, 95, 210 Johnson, Elizabeth  158 Johnston, William  28, 129 Johnstone, Brian  203 joy  114–15

Galilea, Segundo  24–5 Gallagher, Michale Paul  69, 73, 74

Lamb, Matthew  192 Larkin, Ernest E.  133, 153, 157

Kasper, Walter  145 Kierkegaard  58–9 Kinnard, Isabelle  130 Kirvan, John  57

Index Lasch, Christopher  52, 115, 138 law of the cross  92–4, 158, 182, 191–2 Lehmann, Karl  119 life-style enclave  213 Lonergan, Bernard  73, 119, 154, 158, 163–7, 182–3, 195, 196, 221 Luther, Martin  109 McInroy, Mark  215 McLean, George, F.  205 Markus, Robert A.  208, 209 Marmion, Declan  13, 88 Matera, Frank J.  159, 160 Mechthild of Magdeburg  25 mediation  52–3 Merkle, Judith  15, 39, 64, 66, 93, 95, 98, 103, 113, 132, 136, 156, 162, 168, 182, 190, 192, 211, 212, 214, 218 metaphysical naturalism  102 Metz, Johann Baptist  98, 110, 149 Middle Ages  62–3 Miller, Vincent  97, 219 modernism  52–3 modernity  54ff., 69–71, 85ff. moralism  145, 170–1 moral order chain of being  37–8 Christian  58–9, 69, 72–3, 76–7, 82–6, 90, 92, 94–5 contingency  71–3, 76–7, 82–90, 97–8 modern  42–6, 55 new ethic  147–9, 199–200 Murphy, Roseanne SNDdeN  159 music  23–5 mutual display  168, 218–19 mysticism  12–14, 57, 74ff., 96, 123 Nairn, Thomas A.  220 nature and grace  103–4 Neiman, Susan  82, 116

235

Newman, Martha G.  132 Niebuhr, Reinhold  119–20 nova effect  104–5, 176 nominalism  40 O’Connor, Flannery  217 pelagianism  122 Pennington, Basil M.  131 perichoresis  134 Perkins, Pheme  16, 17, 19, 106, 107 Perry, John  82 Peterson, Brandon R.  122, 123, 124, 125, 137 polite society  43 postmodern  53, 61 post-romantic  50–2 progress  48, 200 Putman, Robert  169 radical Enlightenment  44–6 radical monotheism  206 Rahner, Karl  12, 13, 14, 80, 94, 95, 96, 105, 119, 122, 124, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 155, 162, 172, 173, 174, 180, 181, 184, 186, 187, 190, 194 reason bias  182–3 disengaged  32–40, 45, 71, 91, 97 instrumental  38, 41, 52, 55, 71 theism  45, 90–1 religion  80–1 choice  86 future  78–9, 89–91, 217–18 humanism  202–4 interpretation  87–8 language  91ff. re-enchantment  79–81, 101 renewal  81–6, 90–1, 174 therapeutic  98 renunciation  174

236

Index

revelation  114 Rohr, Richard  104, 135 romanticism  46–50 Rousseau  50 Ryan, Robin  106, 107, 111, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121 sacramentality  62, 187–8, 214–15 salvation  101–2, 107, 111, 113, 116 human experience  112–21 evil and suffering  116–18 finitude  118–21 gratitude  112–15 justification  120 sanctification  120 Schillebeeckx, Edward  21, 111, 113, 116, 117, 120, 125, 165 scientism  50 secularity  29–30, 34–5, 83 secularization theory  31–3, 61–2 differentiation  63–4, 84 Durkheim  64–6 Weber  64–6 Segundo, Juan Luis  69, 72, 88, 154 self buffered  39, 91, 138, 142, 188–9 false and true  127 modern  35–7, 84–6, 128, 144, 178 porous  37–9 religious identity  74–5, 95–6, 143 ancient  127ff. authenticity  167–74 silence  27–30 sin  93–4 Smith, James K. A.  31, 34, 42, 43, 178, 183, 217 social capital  169 Soelle, Dorothee  13 solidarity  209–10 spirituality desire  127ff., 137, 153, 182–3 hungers  210–20

images pilgrimage  11, 59–61, 68 tourist  60–1 vagabond  60–1 itineraries  219 religion  57, 66–7, 79–80 sexuality  150–1 spiritual/not religious  192–5 spiritual paths Anthony of Egypt  129 Benedict of Nursia  130, 155 Bernard of Clairvaux  131 Bonaventure  10 Claire  131 Francis de Sales  11 Francis of Assisi  131 Ignatius of Loyola  10, 103, 125, 179 John Bunyan  11 John of the Cross  10, 29, 132 reformation  11 Teresa of Avila  10, 132 Teresa of Lisieux  219 Stang, Dorothy SNDdeN  159 Steck, Christopher  74, 75, 154 Sudbrack, Josef  15 Tanner, Kathryn  68, 110 197, 203, 204, 206, 207 Taylor, Charles  2, 21, 22, 29, 31–54, 58, 59, 69, 79, 84, 97, 101, 103, 104, 105, 122, 128, 138, 139, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 167, 169, 170, 171, 174, 177, 178, 183, 187, 188, 189, 193, 196, 199, 200, 201, 202, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221 Thiel, John E.  198 Thompson, William M. (ed.)  144 transcendence  102–5, 111, 113, 116, 119, 198 transcendent data  69

Index Ulanow, Ann and Barry  75 Underhill, Evelyn  57 unthought  201 Van Kaam, Adrian  23 Walker, Alice  24 Weaver, J. Denny  110

Weber, Max  63, 64–5, 132 White, Julianne  1 William of Occam  40 Yeats, W. E.  1 Zamagni, Stefano  63

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