Sabbath Rest as Vocation: Aging Toward Death 9780567679208, 9780567679239, 9780567679222

Citation preview

SABBATH REST AS VOCATION: AGING TOWARD DEATH

T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics Series editors Brian Brock Susan F. Parsons

SABBATH REST AS VOCATION: AGING TOWARD DEATH

Autumn Alcott Ridenour

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 in 2018 Paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © Autumn Alcott Ridenour, 2018 Autumn Alcott Ridenour has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image © Vince Cavataio/Getty Images 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. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-7920-8 PB: 978-0-5676-9288-7 ePDF: 978-0-5676-7922-2 eBook: 978-0-5676-7921-5 Series: T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics 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.

In memory of Mary Iretta McGregor (1926–2014) For you, “Sweet”

Excerpts in this Book are Used with Permission from the Following Sources: Autumn Alcott Ridenour, “Union with Christ for the Aging: A Consideration of Aging and Death in the Theology of St. Augustine in Karl Barth,” PhD diss., Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2013. Autumn Alcott Ridenour, “The Coming of Age: Curse or Calling? Toward a Christological Interpretation of Aging as Call in the Theology of Karl Barth and W.H. Vanstone,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 33.2 (2013). Autumn Alcott Ridenour, “The Meaning of Death and the Goal of Medicine: An Augustinian and Barthian Reassessment,” Christian Bioethics 23:1 (Jan 30, 2017)

CONTENTS Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION

viii 1

Chapter 1 SABBATH REST: MOVING TOWARD DEATH

15

Chapter 2 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

59

Chapter 3 CONTEMPLATIVE ACTION

101

Chapter 4 AGING IN THE MIDDLE VOICE

141

Chapter 5 THE VIRTUES OF AGING

181

CONCLUSION: SABBATH REST AS VOCATION

229

Bibliography Index

245 254

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgments involve recognizing those voices, tangible, and at times, spiritual support that serve as the communal backdrop for ideas eventually materializing. Through the help of community—or interdependence—potential becomes actual. This work is a compilation of those ideas born and shaped by communities striving for wisdom and love. My early interest in academic theology began in the pastoral and enriching environment of Union University where David P. Gushee originally encouraged me to pursue my theological interests at a higher level. My queries took me to Yale Divinity School where I had the good fortune of studying with Margaret Farley, Thomas Ogletree, and Gene Outka. Margaret Farley opened doors for me at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics where my formal “aging interest” began in conversation with retired faculty and community members. There I encountered lively and engaging individuals wrestling with questions surrounding the aging experience. Daniel Callahan, Margaret Drickamer, Karen Lebacqz, Sherwin Nuland, Carol Pollard, Robert Rohrbaugh, David H. Smith, and Howard Spiro among others, captivated my moral imagination and served as helpful guides in my nascent research interest on aging. From our conversations, I desired to understand more deeply the meaning of aging and those challenges posed by transhumanism and at times, the medical profession. I entered my PhD program at Boston College where my theological inquiry was further fostered in the Catholic, Jesuit tradition under the guidance of David Hollenbach, James F. Keenan, Stephen J. Pope, and my director, Lisa Sowle Cahill. They each participated in my graduate formation while courses with Paul Kolbet on Augustine and Ronald Thiemann on Karl Barth at Harvard Divinity School helped serve my initial research and development on these figures in their approach to aging and death. The Flatley fellowship, Institute on Aging, and generous support of a sixth-year fellowship at BC granted me extended space and time to engage more deeply the vast thought worlds of Augustine and Barth. During this time, Gerald P. McKenny of the University of Notre Dame served as a generous conversation partner and fourth reader for my dissertation. Traveling to Princeton Theological Seminary’s annual conference on Karl Barth was beneficial as George Hunsinger conversed about an array of questions I posed concerning Barth. While revising the dissertation into a book, Charles T. Mathewes and Jeffrey P. Bishop also dialogued with me regarding ways to develop my work into a more mature contribution. Since I began teaching at Merrimack College, I have received significant institutional support through several faculty development grants that also aided the process of book writing. Given Merrimack’s Catholic, Augustinian identity, our community of faculty and students regularly inspire me to consider the

Acknowledgments

ix

implications of Augustinian pedagogy and reflection on our deepest human questions. I am grateful for my colleagues and the encouraging atmosphere in the Religious and Theological Studies Department that regularly challenges my thinking and sharpens my perspective. Joseph Kelley’s own work on Augustine in addition to Mark Allman, Fr. Ed Enright, Sr. Jeanne Marie Gribaudo, Warren Kay, Ryan McLaughlin, Rebecca Sachs Norris, and Padraic O’Hare each expanded my perspective and helped me transition into academic life at Merrimack while the Augustinian presence on campus under the guidance of Fr. Ray Dlugos reminds me of my purpose in teaching. In addition, the invitation to offer several lectures on aging at the Benedictine University of Mesa, AZ among a large retiree population was beneficial for considering the impact of the ideas pursued in this volume where I appreciated their quick wit and affirming spirit. As Augustine understands, faith and practice is to be pursued among a community of friends. Throughout the germination, writing, and editing of this project, friendships through the faith communities of Trinity Baptist Church of New Haven, CT and First Baptist Church of Sudbury, MA have enriched my life and supported me with love. Kara Welty Miller of Sudbury graciously read multiple drafts of my dissertation and later book, providing a boon during my initial writing season while many of our aging congregants remind me of the challenges and call associated with the aging experience. Finally, my family and those closest to me provided personal and material care through the duration of this project. The Alcott and Ridenour families remain exceptional in their love, tangible support, and prayer. Our siblings, Amy and Rob Burgess, Paige and Jim Smith, and Katie and Mike Wright, remind us of our roots and provided a great deal of laughter along the way. Our grandparents on both sides served as worthy models and helped me appreciate the importance of intergenerational relationships in forming our core identities and the role of interdependent care. The book is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Mary Iretta McGregor with whom I not only share a birthday, but also a particular kinship and likeness. Her desire for faithfulness through life and death continue to inspire me as I regularly remember the great communion of saints gone before us. Our parents, Steve and Paula Alcott and John and Spicy Ridenour, provided support in myriad ways, modeling for us what it means to be gracious “adult” parents who somehow manage to serve multiple generations, both young and old. Becoming a mother to our beloved sons, John Charles and William, throughout the maturation of this work also transformed my perspective on the significance of aging and those intergenerational relationships that form us. Their grandparents (our parents) are truly remarkable in their love, service, and care for our children. Finally, this book would not be possible without Jay Ridenour. Like all potential, ideas and dreams materialize because of the ones who believe in our calling and make possible those pursuits. Words fail to describe the magnitude of his sacrifice and role behind this project and the years leading up to its fruition. Changing and “aging” with him is a joy and delight while his faith and example cause me regularly to evaluate my own goals and purpose in our common movement toward Sabbath rest.

INTRODUCTION

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning. — Ecclesiastes 7:8 Gray hair is a crown of glory. — Proverbs 16

Identifying the Challenges to Aging and Death Writing in the 1970s, two influential books diagnosed modern attitudes toward death and aging within Western culture. Ernst Becker’s famous Denial of Death (1973) describes modern society as averse to death, building civilization upon its psychological repression in the hopes of gaining illusive security and control.1 Likewise, feminist author Simone de Beauvoir’s reflection on the aging experience in The Coming of Age (1973) ends with the dismal conclusion that society’s negative image of its elders cause many individuals to fear aging more than death itself given their obsession with productivity as the primary norm for valuing human life.2 Such diagnoses do not sit well with a popular Western culture driven toward success and beauty displayed through the myth of endless possibilities, self-help, and those goals associated with achieving personal happiness typified through contemporary marketing images. Generally, these images do not involve a sense of loss, vulnerability, dependence, or frailty often correlated with the final stages of aging and death in the human life cycle. Underlying such images are three pressure points that seem to challenge the meaning of aging toward death from a contemporary lens. The first set of pressures comes from marketing advertisers. While images of glorified youth embellished through a photoshopped overlay grace the covers of magazines, cosmetics and diets rich in antioxidants appeal to customers for their antiaging formulas in a

1. Ernest Becker, Denial of Death (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973). 2. Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age, translated by Patrick O’Brian (New York: Warner Books, 1973), 801.

2

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Western context.3 At first glance the presence of these pictures may seem rather harmless. However, the implicit message voiced through these images suggests there is something wrong or worth fearing when it comes to aging. Such fears may be further combated through more heightened responses to aging through the debated use of human growth hormone therapy that involves modest immediate enhancements in muscle and bone density4 or cosmetic surgeries such as Botox, face lifts, brow lifts, chin lifts, and eyelid surgery to help mitigate the onset of wrinkles and the visible ravages of time.5 MIT biologist Leonard Guarente recently marketed an antiaging pill as an over-the-counter vitamin through Elysium Health.6 While the spectrum of responses to aging varies between moderate and extreme measures, the underlying desire behind such voices suggests that the visible signs of aging should at best be cloaked and at worst prove repugnant. A second pressure point, known as the transhumanist movement, seeks a more permanent solution in its response to aging and is quite explicit in its negative appraisal of senescence. From the transhumanist perspective, aging is described as a disease to be cured. The human species has a right and obligation to fight the damages of aging and suffering associated with it. Individuals such as Nick Bostrom, Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, and Terry Grossman are currently seeking life extension and age retardation in their attempts to find ways to extend the human life span and reverse the effects of cellular decay.7 These transhumanists seek life extension and age retardation therapy through hope in biotechnological “advance, in which regenerative medicine can ceaselessly repair the accumulated damage in our bodies that is the mark of aging. This repair may take many forms— chromosome replacement, regenerative medicine using cloned stem cells, drugs that mimic the effects of caloric restriction or that lengthen telomeres.”8

3. Sarah-Jane Bedwell, “Your 1-Day Anti-Aging Diet: Eat Your Way to the Fountain of Youth,” Self, August 27, 2015, http://www.self.com/food/recipes/2015/04/your-1-day-antiaging-diet/ 4. Christopher Wanjek, “Anti-Aging May Actually Shorten Life,” Live Science, March 27, 2014, http://www.livescience.com/44436-anti-aging-hormone-may-actually-shortenlife.html; “Human Growth Hormone (HGH): Does it Slow Aging?” http://www.mayoclinic. org/healthy-lifestyle/healthy-aging/in-depth/growth-hormone/art-20045735 5. “Ageless Beauty: Anti-aging Cosmetic Procedures at any Age,” The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, January 22, 2013. 6. David Stipp, “Beyond Resveratrol: The Anti-Aging NAD Fad,” Scientific American (March 11, 2015). 7. Aubrey de Grey with Michael Rae, Ending Aging (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007); Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, Inc., 2004). 8. Gilbert Meilaender, Should We Life Forever? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 22. See also Stephen Hall, Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003).

Introduction

3

While at first glance critics may dismiss the objectives of transhumanism as those pertaining to scientific fiction rather than scientific fact, the group is gaining support in numbers as well as advancing their research in the areas of philosophy, computer science, and nanotechnology in the hopes of integrating such research with medicine. Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom acknowledges that the desire to acquire new capacities may be as ancient as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the search for the illusive fountain of youth.9 However, the seeds of transhumanist philosophy might be grounded in the dawn of the enlightenment and Francis Bacon’s approach to science as one of rationalistic human control along with the influence of Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant.10 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bostrom cites Benjamin Franklin and Marquis de Condorcet as projecting future ways in which humans might enhance the general life span with gains made through science.11 Such gains call for “unlimited progress of the human race” that might eradicate aging or foreshadow hopes in a “cryonics movement” that embalms the human body for awakening at a future time.12 At its root, transhumanism merges the values of scientific discovery, rationalistic human choice, and a progressive view of human development through evolutionary biology. Enhancing the human species with discoveries found through scientific technology is merely one more stage of progress in human history. Transhumanist ideals more formally crystallized in the late twentieth century with the grassroots movements inaugurated by Max Moore and Tom Morrow by founding Extropy Magazine in 1992, defining the central idea of extropy as the “metaphorical opposite of entropy” or degeneration.13 Later, the Extropy Institute developed in 1992 and the World Transhumanist Association followed in 1998 led by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce, the latter arguing for an hedonistic imperative that aims to eliminate suffering through advanced neurotechnology and pharmaceutical drugs.14 While perhaps more humble in his approach given Bostrom’s concern to protect the human species against existential risks associated with new technologies, the presumable salvific hope found in science remains ambitious. The first goal stated by “The Transhumanist Declaration” says, “Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet

9. Nick Bostrom, “A History of Transhumanist Thought,” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 no. 1 (2005): 1. 10. Bostrom, “A History of Transhumanist Thought,” 2–3. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 14. 14. Ibid., 15–16.

4

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Earth.”15 While an array of transhumanist methods might be pursued to enhance the human species ranging from development through artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and “uploading” (or the “transfer of a human mind to a computer”), defeating disease and aging remains a central goal for the various methods of progress pursued.16 One of the leading transhumanists hoping to eradicate aging includes Cambridge University computer scientist and biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey. He says that “two thirds or about 90 percent of all deaths worldwide” are caused by old age or age-related diseases.17 Because of these high statistics, Grey founded the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation to support research for medical therapies that help reverse the aging process. His primary aim is to reprogram cells against senescence that in turn prevents their degeneration and death. By reprogramming individuals at the cellular level, his goal is to reverse the aging process in the biological mechanism as a whole. He self-identifies his focus on “repair” therapy that considers “seven main types of damages, encompassing cell loss, mutations, indigestible molecules, and [stiffening] of elastic tissues.”18 Not only does he argue that science should discover both forms of repair and retardation therapies for aging in the coming decades, but he also considers finding a cure for aging to be a moral mandate. To Grey, aging represents the onset of decline, dependence, disease, and eventual death. Instead, the drive behind transhumanist research reflects an account of “human flourishing” that would drive out the experience of aging if not death itself. The basic question fomenting behind these premises pertains to the aging stage of life and whether aging is solely an experience to lament or one to value. Interestingly, Gerald P. McKenny highlights the ways in which the transhumanist desire to control matter in the hopes of progress is not far removed from the Baconian principle of control often operating behind modern medical practice. He acknowledges that the goals of transhumanists are remarkably similar to modern thinkers such as Bacon and Descartes who sought to improve ordinary life.19 However, “at some indeterminable point the line is crossed that separates

15. Ibid., 26. 16. Ibid., 11. 17. Aubrey de Grey, “SENS Statement of Principle,” in H+Transhumanism and Its Critics, eds. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (Philadelphia: Metanexus Institute, 2011), 67. 18. Aubrey de Grey, “The Urgency Dilemma: Is Life Extension Research a Temptation or a Test?” in On Moral Medicine, 3rd edition, eds. M. Therese Lysaught and Joseph Kotva (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 536. 19. Gerald P. McKenny, “Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology,” in Transhumanism and Transcendence, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 180.

Introduction

5

improvement of this life and an altogether different sort of life.”20 In other words, the line between therapy and enhancement is not altogether clear. Because of this blurred line, exploring some of the foundations behind modern medicine along with its view of death and aging merits consideration as a third pressure point challenging the realities of aging. The Western medical establishment inculcates practices that reflect an ambivalent perspective toward aging and its correlate, death. Perhaps more modest and laudable in their aspirations, the medical community has sought the reduction of age-related suffering in the new model of compressed morbidity that seeks to delay the onset of infirmity until one’s latter years.21 This approach to aging seeks to increase quality of life with a brief period of decline shortly preceding death. In other words, “live long and die fast” so as to avoid prolonged years of suffering, decline, and extended dependence.22 Most of the compressed morbidity strategies include a focus on exercise and activity, entailing muscle resistance, healthy diet, and continued learning to help prevent the onset of dementia.23 While perhaps commendable in its desire to prevent suffering, the negative effects of compressed morbidity may also lead to severe depression with the quick change in physical capacities near the end of life rather than a gradual onset of declining capacities. Rather than experience a gradual change in one’s identity, an individual experiences a more jolting change in physical and cognitive capacities that may prove emotionally daunting. While compressed morbidity seems to be a welcomed improvement to health overall, more concerning issues seemingly face the medical community. As noted in recent statistical data, the number of baby boomers and aging individuals only continues to increase while physicians choosing to specialize in geriatrics continue to decrease.24 A number of reasons are cited for contributing to this phenomenon, though two central components include the increased interest in innovative, curebased technologies on the part of medical students and the reduced pay associated with notoriously low reimbursements provided through Medicare. “Part of the reason aging has such a negative connotation is this sense that you can’t cure older people’s problems,” says Dr. Kenneth Brummel-Smith, a professor of geriatrics at

20. McKenny, “Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology.” 21. James F. Fries, “Physical Activity, the Compression of Morbidity, and the Health of the Elderly,” in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 89 (February 1996): 64–68. 22. Marc Middleton, “Growing Bolder: Jack LaLane, The Father of Compressed Morbidity,” in The Huffington Post, January 25, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ marc-middleton/jack-lalanne-compressed-morbidity_b_813325.html 23. Sherwin Nuland, The Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being (New York: Random House, 2007). 24. Kate Haefner, “As Population Ages, Where Are the Geriatricians?” New York Times, January 25, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/health/where-are-the-geriatricians. html?emc=eta1&_r=0

6

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee, Florida.25 “And yet a good geriatrician can bring someone back to functional status.”26 Brummel-Smith’s observation that geriatrics receives a negative connotation related to the “incurable” status of elders relates to deeper problems several philosophers and ethicists point to as problematic within contemporary medical practice: the underlying desire to eliminate most forms of disease masks an implicit desire to minimize—if not eliminate—death. Bioethicist Daniel Callahan has written on the goals and limits of medicine, the research-technological imperative, care for the aging, and finally, the role of death itself, through an abundance of books, articles, and lectures over the past forty years. While Callahan’s “limits” posture has generated much controversy as well as praise, his insight and at times prophetic voice overlap with perspectives implicit within Christian theology. Callahan argues that while death may pose a general evil experienced at the individual level, mortality as finitude is part of human nature.27 Thus, mortality is not only constitutive of human personhood, but should remain within the purview of the goals of medicine. By reconsidering the role of death and aging in the human life span as ultimately an end to accept rather than an end to resist ad infinitum suggests there are limits to medical research and our illusory hopes found in modern technology. Limits posed to medicine through aging and death cause us to question their meaning in the overall life span and place within human identity. Not unlike Callahan, both the work of Allen Verhey and Jeffrey Bishop question the premises behind many of the goals in contemporary medicine in relation to the question of death. Like McKenny, Verhey argues the goals of medicine changed from “care” to “cure” with the inception of Francis Bacon’s scientific discoveries and subsequent moral aims.28 Verhey believes that much of modern medicine since Bacon has become the race against death rather than the more ancient and medieval conception of “care” for the dying that seemed to accept implicitly the reality or limitation of death. Likewise, Bishop’s recent critique of modern medicine in The Anticipatory Corpse raises important concerns regarding the goals of medicine and its implicit values. Bishop argues the dead body shapes how medicine thinks about the living body, thereby establishing a metaphysics in which the ontology of the body has shifted according to knowledge derived from “dead matter.”29 Displacing

25. Haefner, “As Population Ages, Where Are the Geriatricians?” 26. Ibid. 27. Daniel Callahan, Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987); Daniel Callahan, What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990); and Daniel Callahan, The Troubled Dream of Life (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000). 28. Allen Verhey, Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 327. 29. Jeffrey P. Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and Care for the Dying (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 15–23.

Introduction

7

Aristotelian formal and final causes with material and efficient causes, modern medicine fundamentally changes the purpose of medicine to one in which the efficient cause of utility reigns supreme. Here medicine replaces Aristotelian or Thomistic metaphysics regarding the good life or supernatural end with a robust metaphysics of knowledge, power, and control over the human condition that blurs the line between “nature and artifice” or therapy and enhancement.30 Like Brett McCarty, I hesitate to argue that modern medicine merits “total critique” given the praiseworthy ambitions of many practitioners who daily mitigate suffering in the hopes of contributing to healing care.31 However, Bishop’s “incisive critique” warrants close consideration for discovering ways Baconian control of death and disease affects our non-voiced attitudes toward aging and death in medicine.32 Here again, the purpose and meaning of medicine is confronted with the purpose and meaning of death. Rather than address death’s meaning from a philosophical or theological perspective, critics claim modern medicine often functions under the “denial of death” that leaves the formal and final meaning of aging and mortality to a value-less vacuum. This vacuum becomes filled by technology, never-ending research, and economics that often imprison the patient within its system by overlooking the meaning of death and thus, the meaning of life.33 This metaphysical vacuum masks the question as to the meaning and purpose of aging and death in the human life cycle. Given aging’s connection with cellular decay that leads to death, what exactly does aging metaphysically mean in relation to human flourishing and human life as a whole? Is there any good to be preserved in the aging experience? Much like Bishop, McKenny’s work on bioethics, technology, and the body suggests that medicine turn to deeper philosophical and religious reflections on the meaning of the body.34 Citing Plato’s concern that the “pursuit of health not dominate our moral projects” in the Republic, McKenny acknowledges that understanding the goals of medicine is intimately tied to a conception of the good life.35 Challenging our Western obsession with “bodily perfection” that arises with modern technology, McKenny also points to Baconian “control” as

30. Jeffrey P. Bishop, “The Reckoning of the Corpse” Plenary Lecture presented at the 2013 University of Virginia Graduate Colloquium on Theology, Ethics, and Culture, Charlottesville, VA, April 5, 2013. 31. Brett McCarty, “Diagnosis and Therapy in the Anticipatory Corpse: A Second Opinion” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (2016): 625. 32. McCarty, “Diagnosis and Therapy in the Anticipatory Corpse: A Second Opinion.” 33. Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976); Raymond Downing, Death and Life in America (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2008). 34. Gerald P. McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology, and the Body (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1997), 2. 35. McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition.

8

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

responsible. Here “expanding the realm of human choice” and the “imperative to eliminate human suffering” leaves the medical profession susceptible to endless options, manipulations, and potential vulnerabilities resulting in unintended negative consequences.36 In his critique, McKenny suggests medicine return to communal descriptions of the good life with implications for the value of the body as well as mortality, here sounding much like the final line of Bishop’s Anticipatory Corpse asking whether only theology might save medicine. This book is an attempt to respond to McKenny’s and Bishop’s challenge that practices within medicine be set in a communal context of meaning in regards to the good life. Conceptualizing a teleological end holds integral implications for the good life, whether natural or supernatural, which includes meaning for the aging body as well as the significance of death itself. Thus, turning to theology and resources within the Christian tradition may offer some help in addressing the meaning of aging that continues to challenge the human condition in a modern context. In effect, the questions surrounding the goals of medicine and care for the aging provoke further insight from philosophical and religious resources, probing inquiry into the heart of Christian theology’s subtle interpretations surrounding the meaning of death and aging.37

Addressing the Problem: The Argument Perhaps contrary to cursory understandings of aging in the Christian tradition as solely something to lament, Christian theology has resources for a distinct voice on the issue of aging that embraces rather than fears human finitude while simultaneously recognizing the tragic loss involved in death. Building from the theology of classic theologian St. Augustine in congruence with modern theologian Karl Barth, I aim to construct a theology of aging and death based on the ongoing wisdom the tradition continues to expound with significance for the realm of virtue and medical ethics. In this book, I draw upon Augustine and Barth for a variety of reasons. First, both authors briefly describe aging in short sections while many sources in theology are bereft of addressing the topic. Second, both authors address death in much

36. Ibid. 37. In this way I hope to respond to the charge posed by Lisa Sowle Cahill in Theological Bioethics: Participation, Justice, and Change (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), challenging theological bioethics not cave to public pressures by emptying theological language of its theological content when addressing bioethics and the broader concerns of healthcare. Instead, the aim of my work is to openly acknowledge the rich texture of theological reflection and theological commitments underwriting our approaches to medical, bioethical, and cultural issues of concern.

Introduction

9

larger sections and describe the aging experience as foreshadowing the reality of death. Third, their overarching theological approach to issues surrounding time and eternity are intimately linked to their understanding of aging and mortality. Fourth, drawing from both a classical and modern thinker is helpful given their varying historical contexts provide distinctive nuance to their positions. At the same time, fascinating parallels may be discovered, particularly concerning Christology and the possibilities for interpreting both authors through a lens of participation or union with Christ as integral to their theologies. Thus, building from both their explicit and implicit work on aging and death, I identify the core meaning of aging as one of sign and preparation for Sabbath rest that recognizes the good found in creaturely limits that also aims at transcendence. Here the heart of moral agency might be found in contemplation and action. Through union with Christ, individuals participate in Christ’s body as the divine-human union of wisdom and knowledge, contemplation and action within historical time. Participation in Christ teaches a new way to be human that involves both giving and receiving through the value of active and passive agency. By participating in Christ, individuals are empowered to embody virtues—both for aging persons and their surrounding communities—that reflect both reception and action. Recognizing the role of participation is important for constructing a Christologically driven virtue theory that may be considered latent in Augustine and Barth. While there is much overlap between Augustine and Thomas Aquinas given Aquinas’s synthesis of Augustine and Aristotle for virtue, subtle similarities and distinctions are highlighted throughout the work. A distinctive approach is derived by placing Augustine in conversation with Barth, a modern Protestant author who explicitly departs from virtue for its supposed “hubristic” quality that depends on self-reliance when ascertaining the good life. While Barth most likely misunderstands much of Aquinas’s reliance on supernatural grace, by emphasizing Barth’s focus on Christology and participation as necessary for fulfilling one’s “vocation” before God, I highlight the crucial role of grace, prayer, and reception for enacting virtue. Here I intend to show the subtle parallels between both Augustine and Barth for a constructive virtue theory that pertains to moral agents, particularly those agents who are aging near death. Regarding the latter concern, I hope to unveil how aging is a particular phase in the human life cycle that illuminates our deeper understanding of finitude and mortality. Embodying this particular phase of life, the aged might personify what it means to be wise in their heightened sense of finitude and often-keener sense of significance behind a meaningful life. Those virtues cultivated by the aging hold important implications for decisions near death in medical ethics as well as the general goals of medicine. In terms of why address aging toward death—and not merely one of these issues on their own accord—pertains to the integral relationship between the two phases in their relation to time and growing dependence, particularly in the latter stages of aging where entropy or decay become more profound. By using the term “aging,” I refer to biological diminishment in the form of senescence in which

10

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

cellular degeneration ultimately ends in death unless an individual dies of other causes before degeneration comes to its end. Aging is the unique phase of life beyond maturity or the height of reproductive possibilities in which biological organisms, particularly humans, begin to experience the onset of decay. Aging is more acutely transparent in women with the onset of menopause while perhaps more latent in men due to ongoing reproductive capacities through later decades of the human life span. Given the medical description of aging as the phase beyond reproductive capacities, one could begin depicting the aging phase of life for women at 45+. However, given twentieth-century public health and medical advancements that extend greater proportions of the North American population into 65+ years, I here focus my account of aging on those decades superseding sixty-five years of age and particularly those stages involving greater decline often associated with 80+. With the rise of greater portions of aging individuals resulting from modern healthcare, contemporary aging often represents two stages entailing the “young old” (65+) and the “old old” (80+) with the latter category reflecting more debilitating capabilities toward death. While this book includes the “young old” in its purview, much of its attention is directed to the “old old” who experience greater decline. Given the specificity of these concerns, the scope of this project spans across multiple disciplines in its application to virtue ethics as well as medical ethics for the aging and their surrounding communities. In terms of setting the book in context, this work amplifies Gilbert Meilaender’s volume Should We Live Forever? that addresses aging in relation to the transhumanist challenge and the significance of accepting life’s ultimate limit. Meilaender acknowledges the primary reason we exist within an evolutionary biological framework is to pass on our genes through reproduction before naturally dying.38 While evolutionary biology recognizes the natural component of finitude, it does little to answer the questions regarding human purpose or the existential ambiguities associated with the pain and tragedy of death as loss. Here I hope to contribute from a religious perspective a deeper understanding of human purpose in aging and death. Both Augustine’s and Barth’s positions reflecting the tragedy of death and the good found in finitude might share similar conclusions with the consequences associated with evolutionary biology in accepting death and aging as part of our human limit. At the same time, their theology accounts for why the existential difficulties might remain in facing death as loss or tragedy even in old age. Both authors maintain death as part of the “curse” present in the human condition associated with original sin. Yet, acknowledging the tragedy of death helps recognize the value of the soul-body relation. In affirming this original relation as good, Augustine in particular legitimizes human emotions and the role of grief in its implications for medical ethics, challenging our approach to death as merely “natural.” Instead, recognizing the reality of pain that accompanies the fractured soul and body in

38. Meilaender, Should We Live Forever? 4–9.

Introduction

11

death, individuals acknowledge the significance of lament associated with this loss and the importance of Christ’s compassionate incarnation, death, and hope offered through resurrected bodies. Likewise, Allen Verhey’s recent volume The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus looks to the medieval Ars moriendi or “Art of Dying” along with the way of Jesus accounted for in the New Testament as the appropriate response to contemporary forms of medicalized death.39 While there is some overlap of my work with themes present in the work of Meilaender and Verhey, this volume distinctively develops a systematic approach to the meaning of aging and death in the human life cycle represented in the theologies of Augustine and Barth. While Meilaender’s small book asks the question “Should we die?” Verhey’s work ask the question “How should we die?” Here, I hope to consider the question “Why do we die?” Contemplating what death and aging mean in relation to the human experience, Christology, and the transformative power for virtuous living through participation, serves as the foundation for this volume that aims at relevance for the realm of theology, virtue, and medical ethics. Furthermore, I have not found exact works detailing either Augustine’s view of death and aging (other than timor mortis) or Barth’s view of death and aging, thus suggesting this project may also contribute to the broader scope of both Augustinian and Barthian studies.40 Finally, the import and centrality of Christology and its implications for Christian discipleship in this world are only beginning to be seen in the broader scholarly movements of historical and systematic theology and thus, ethics and moral theology along with them.41

Argument Structure: Looking Ahead My book will be divided into five chapters and a conclusion. The prelude to this book consists in the present introduction, which poses the framework for asking the questions why we might age and why we might die. By framing the question

39. Allen Verhey, The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011); see also Christopher Vogt, Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well (New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2004). 40. For articles on Augustine’s view of death as timor mortis, see John C. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine De Bono Mortis,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R.A. Markus, eds. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 232–49; Carole Straw, “Timor Mortis,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 838–42. 41. Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

12

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

in terms of the meaning of aging and death imbedded within popular culture, transhumanist philosophy, and medical ethics, I hope to offer some theologically informed insight into the significance of this stage both within human identity and its implications for the Christian community as well as medical ethics.

Chapter 1 considers the context of Augustine’s views on death and aging as a result of humanity’s fall and sin’s consequential curse. While a cursory reading might conclude his position to be negative and of little value, contextualizing his perspective in relation to his philosophical and theological interlocutors unveils the ways Augustine’s views hold import for the reality of grief. By recognizing aging and death as loss, Augustine affirms the good in the soul-body relation and the significance of resurrected bodies. His position legitimizes grief that accompanies loss by offering an ethics of compassion and lament with implications for medical ethics. In addition, Augustine’s positive view of aging and death includes those limitations posed by time and space that forge not only human identity, but also make clear our dependence on God. Finally, I constructively locate a passage from On Genesis that suggests aging and death serve as a sign and preparation for eternal Sabbath rest, which is a privileged position given the centrality of “rest” for Augustine’s overarching theology. II. Chapter 2 considers Barth’s analysis of death and aging as both negative and positive, evil and good, through a dialectical lens that parallels many of Augustine’s claims with a modern approach. While death is a sign of judgment, finitude constitutes human identity as good within a natural boundary. Barth describes death as part of the “shadow” side of creation that reminds creatures of their frailty, dependence, and vulnerability before God and one another. His ethics mirrors his anthropology, recognizing the dialectical tension that simultaneously aims to protect life while accepting limits in medicine. Barth ends his volume on an ethics of creation by describing the three stages of life: youth, middle age, and old age that compose our vocation. Each stage includes a call before God that legitimizes agency for the old as well as interdependent relationships between the three generations. III. Chapter 3 explores the Christology of Augustine as it relates to the aging experience. Turning to a constructive interpretation of De Trinitate informed by Lewis Ayres and Rowan Williams, Christ’s divine and human natures bring together wisdom and knowledge that might inform the final ends or purposes to be associated with a meaningful life for the goals of medicine. Likewise, aging individuals grow in wisdom and knowledge through contemplation and action in union with Christ. Not only does union with Christ become the foundation for moral agency, but Christ also achieves the benefits for aging persons through his incarnation and atoning work. Christ experiences psychological anguish and forsakenness before God as the totus Christus in solidarity with the human experience of loss and change, affirming that aging individuals do not suffer alone. Aging individuals I.

Introduction

13

also receive the benefits of Christ’s person and work that reverses the consequences of aging and death with resurrection hope and transformative meaning for this worldly experience. IV. Mirroring Augustine’s Christological approach, I propose that “participation in Christ” serves as the key to understanding Barth’s Church Dogmatics with significant implications for the aging experience. God’s movement to humanity and our movement to God are embodied in the hypostatic union. Analogous to the middle voice in ancient Greek grammar, here we see the Son’s active and passive agency in the Divine Godhead as well as Christ’s person in time. In congruence with the theology of W. H. Vanstone, Jesus’s passive agency that receives the activity of this world legitimizes dignity and worth for those aging stages of life involving decline and dependence. Like Augustine, aging and Sabbath rest correlate as a season of active contemplation with value for the community as a whole. Aging individuals are agents who are active and passive, giving and receiving, through a mixture of contemplation (prayer) and activity in union with Christ. Here the primary value for aging and dying individuals near the end of life might be relational interdependence as opposed to modern medicine’s propensity for unlimited autonomy. V. Chapter 5 synthesizes the Christologies and theologies of participation found in Augustine and Barth. Their theologies form a foundation for a theology of moral virtue for aging persons and their surrounding communities. By emphasizing union with Christ in Augustine’s virtue theory and union with Christ in Barth’s morality of “vocation,” I argue moral agents are contemplative-acting persons intended for participation in God displayed through Sabbath rest as vocation. By receiving and giving in relationship with God and others, aging individuals and their communities embody virtues that reciprocally benefit one another. Virtues for the aging include humility, gratitude, generosity, wisdom, prudence, fortitude, and hope. Virtues for those communities surrounding aging individuals entail respect, justice, friendship, mercy, and love. The virtues embody significance for communal relations as well as medical ethics. In the end, my conclusion returns to many of the initial transhumanist and medical challenges posed to aging and death from a robust, constructive theological perspective established throughout the volume. Turning to Augustine and Barth in their complex theologies unearths the centrality of aging for understanding ourselves as simultaneously limited, time-bound creatures made for transcendence and union with God analogous to Sabbath rest. Such limits and possibilities posed in the Christian community transform the experience of aging and death as one of interdependence, giving, receiving, and vocation before God and one another.

Chapter 1 SABBATH REST: MOVING TOWARD DEATH

Introduction Death and aging is an experience that every organic creature faces, human and nonhuman. The created world points to the rhythms of life’s beginning and end through the seasons, days, months, and years. Time envelops and constitutes all aspects of human living, offering a boundary to the life of every being—a boundary most poignantly illuminated through aging that moves toward death. The experience of aging toward death is one that is accepted and resisted, feared and anticipated. More often, the role of death plagues human persons as a mysterious looming end, from which there is no escape. This mystery is one that enthralled the ancient world as death’s reality proved pervasive, a topic indirectly addressed through discussions on the meaning of life, mortality, and immortality of the soul. St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, addressed the mystery of death and old age by weighing in with a position that was not only relatively unique among his interlocutors, but also codified within Christian theology and much of Western culture for centuries to follow. Most of Augustine’s scholarship on aging was tied to his understanding of death as the final stage of life. When writing on the subject, he primarily addressed timor mortis or “fear of death” as his focus. However, the subtleties of his view on both the subject of aging and death might be parsed out in response to his many interlocutors and concern with the way Christians approach fearing death in the ancient world. Unlike the Stoics and Christians influenced by them (including his beloved mentor, Ambrose), Augustine argues that death and aging are unnatural, a result of sin and the cataclysmic fall. However, his position is not solely negative in that his theological framework also affirms those limitations posed by time and space that not only forge human identity, but also make clear our dependence on God. In order to understand Augustine’s contribution to the meaning of death and aging, one must enter deeply into his thought world. For Augustine, death and accompanied old age are not merely occasions to pose simple answers, but are profound human experiences that both offend and illuminate what it means to be creatures made in the image of God. Discerning what death and aging mean in human reality entails delving into those common themes composing Augustine’s more sophisticated theological works, including creation and evil as it relates to his

16

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

anthropology, his famous order of love, and finally, what I argue is the privileged meaning of aging in Augustine’s theology, that of sign and preparation for Sabbath rest. Even with Augustine’s more realist approach to aging and death on the whole, he balances his negative perspective with the legitimacy of grief as contributing to an ethics of compassion alongside the good that points to Sabbath rest. But before exploring the heart of his position on aging and death, I first consider the historical development of his thought as seen through the progression of these concepts within his own work and in relation to the competing perspectives of his day. Historical Considerations: Evolution of a Position Most scholarship on the limits of aging for Augustine is addressed through his discussion of death. Serge Lancel highlights the movement of Augustine’s position on death throughout a variety of texts. Many of Augustine’s theological positions, including that of death, take on form and substance in response to his varying interlocutors with whom he debated. The subject of death is no exception. According to Lancel, at the time of the Cassiciacum dialogues, Augustine “was still halted at the Aristotelian definition of the human being, which he had ‘from Cicero,’” that is, “‘Man is a mortal rational animal.’ He had yet to extract the origin of the mortalitas in a Christian perspective” (italics mine).1 While some of his early works reflect ambiguity in the use of the term “mortal,” such as in Marriage and Virginity where he explicitly references Adam and Eve as mortal in paradise,2 in later works, however, he seems to abandon the use of this specific term altogether. The maturation of these later works in which he posits a more succinct position, however, did not occur overnight. Lancel quotes Augustine saying, “Death does not come from God.” Reflecting upon death as a consequence of sin in De vera religione, he hesitates in De libero arbitrio on the status of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.3 Before the eve of his becoming bishop, however, Lancel says that Augustine redefined “nature” as “unnature.”4 What is “natural” for humans post fall is a result of Adam’s sinful will (as seen in Contra Adimantum, XXI).5 Augustine concludes that human “nature” is analogous to Adam’s post-exilic corrupt nature. Augustine argues with clarity about the extent of its being “unnatural,” here termed “natural.” Lancel says, “Augustine’s texts could not be more clear: physical death—the first death—a punishment of sin for Adam, has become nature for his descendants; the penalty had been transmitted by being changed into a biological fact, ‘mortality’ had entered the genetic heritage of humankind, just like the other

1. Serge Lancel, St. Augustine (London: SCM Press, 1999), 440. 2. St. Augustine, “The Good of Marriage,” in Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects, ed. Roy Deferrari (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc, 1955), 11. 3. Lancel, St. Augustine, 440. 4. Ibid., 440. 5. Ibid., 455.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

17

unfortunate elements of the human condition.”6 The development of Augustine’s more consistent position on the status of mortality as “natural” or “naturally corrupted” would remain throughout his mature works, most clearly seen in the City of God alongside his commentaries on Genesis. Contextual Considerations: Competing Interlocutors To best understand Augustine’s position on death as unnatural, one must consider the competing interlocutors with whom he argued, including the Manicheans, the Platonists, the Stoics, the Christian Stoics (Ambrose), and the Pelagians. First, Augustine opposes Manichean dualisms that juxtapose the material realm as evil and the spiritual realm as good. Instead, Augustine claims all reality is created good, material and spiritual. Created reality includes the human body for Augustine, a somewhat original idea to early Christianity given the competing philosophical positions of its time. Unlike the Manicheans who viewed death as good because it enabled the immaterial soul to be dislodged from the body, Augustine claims death is bad in that it severs the soul from the body. He uses this same argument in his refutation of Platonist theories that emphasized the immaterial, immortal soul’s escape to eternity apart from the body. According to John C. Cavadini, “a common strategy in consolation literature was to deny that death was an evil for us, and the Platonic tradition from Plato’s Phaedo to Plotinus’s Enneads, argued especially that death, as the liberation of the soul from the body, was not only not evil, but a positive good.”7 Many Christians were highly influenced by the reigning philosophy of the day, including Augustine’s own beloved mentor Ambrose. In De Bono Mortis (translated “Death as a Good”) Ambrose claims that death is the natural end to the human life span, drawing largely from the Platonic tradition alongside Christian thinkers such as Origen, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nazianzus.8 Here death functions as a “non-penal remedy, a positive dispensation of God’s providence or grace that became ‘natural.’”9 Ambrose claims that life is good insofar as it strives after eternity, emphasizing the temptations and travails of temporal life in the body. The implication is that life here is not valuable compared to eternal life.10 Souls are brought down by allurements in this life, encouraging individuals to be “good soldiers” in Jesus Christ that aim toward heaven.11

6. Ibid., 441. 7. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 233. 8. Ibid., 233. 9. Ibid., 249. 10. Ambrose, “Death as a Good,” in Seven Exegetical Works, The Fathers of the Church Series, translated by Michael P. McHugh (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1972). 11. Ambrose, “Death as a Good,” 75.

18

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Rather than emphasize death as grievous, Ambrose says “the fear of death” or timor mortis is grievous.12 Only the foolish fear death as a terror. Ambrose’s position accords with not only the Platonists, but also the Stoics who emphasized enduring death with caution, an emotion controlled by reason rather than an emotion overwhelmed with grief. It is important to note that Augustine separates his position from Ambrose without ever directly naming Ambrose in these arguments.13 Cavadini even says, “It is likely that Augustine’s defense of the evil of death, while a break with Ambrose in one respect, was also an attempt to honor those antiManichaean commitments, Ambrose’s most fundamental legacy to Augustine.”14 Thus, Augustine not only deftly separates his view from the Manicheans, the Platonists, the Stoics, and the Christian Stoics (including Ambrose), but also the Pelagians as well. In the Retractationes, Augustine refutes the Pelagians for claiming that the sins of others do not harm or affect the individual.15 Instead, Augustine claims the sin of the first parents, Adam and Eve, affects the entire species or the nature of all. Defending a consistent view of human nature as fallen and in need of grace, Augustine argues for a concept of original sin against the Pelagians.16 By seeking to defend the innocence of infants and their freedom from sin, Augustine believed that the Pelagians naturalized death and justified its terror and reign. For Augustine, the original sin of Adam and Eve with its consequential effects on human nature includes physical death, a tragic reality touching every person within the human family.17

The Content of Augustine’s Position: Death and Aging as Unnatural Curse St. Augustine was deeply interested in questions pertaining to human origins, the problem of evil, and the remedy for our experience of human suffering. Augustine was so enmeshed in these issues that he spent most of his life work expounding these topics at length, not only in response to his adversaries such as the Manichaean and Pelagian positions on the nature of evil and human freedom, but also as part of what seems to be his own profound search for true rest. Given these interests, it is not surprising that Augustine spent much of his time analyzing and interpreting Gen. 1–3 in five of his major life works: On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, City of God, and Confessions.18

12. Ibid., 93. 13. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 240. 14. Ibid., 247. 15. St. Augustine, “The Retractationes” in The Fathers of the Church, trans. Sister Mary Inez Bogan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968), 44. 16. St. Augustine in Answer to the Pelagians, III: Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian, I/25, translated by Roland J. Teske, SJ (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 696. 17. Augustine in Answer to the Pelagians, III. 18. Roland J. Teske, “Genesis Accounts of Creation,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 379–81.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

19

Turning to these works, we see Augustine’s more mature position on death and aging. Two important themes that repeatedly compose the heart of Augustine’s work also relate to his views on death and aging. First, Augustine describes the origins and intentions of creation as it relates to human nature as one destined for change through time. Second, Augustine depicts the problem of evil as the tragic turning away from God related to the fall and sin’s consequence that results in aging and death. Thus, to understand Augustine’s position that death and aging serve as a consequential curse for sin and evil, one must first understand the nature of human creatures as one involving dependence and change in its original goodness.

Created Existence as Good in Participation, Dependence, and Change For Augustine, understanding the nature of human beings in their creaturely status is intimately tied to understanding the nature of God as Creator. The two components are intricately tied to one another. It is not surprising that Gen. 1–3 would stand as a central pericope for informing most of his theological work. Nearly every famous topic associated with Augustine, including free will, the problem of evil, the role of providence, the search for rest, self-consciousness, the nature of time and eternity, and even his view on Christology and redemption, is intimately informed by these passages. His attempt to interpret the creation narrative in five of his major works and a sixth letter underlies the significance of its central value within his theology. Thus, in describing the nature of aging and death in relation to his interpretation of Genesis involves a host of considerations within his basic cosmology, including organic growth as aging from possibility to actualization, the role of time and change, participation as multiplicity dependent on simplicity, and finally, the status of “conditional mortality” as our original nature preceding the fall. Organic Growth as Aging: Possibility Moving Toward Actualization Evolving and departing from those positions associated with both the Manicheans and Neoplatonists involve a close consideration of the creation narrative through both accounts in Gen. 1–2. While Augustine did not function with the premises of modern scholarship that suggested two authorships (the Priestly and Yahwist sources), he interpreted both passages through allegorical and literal lenses.19

19. While the Yahwist (J) and Priestly (P) sources surfaced as a result of higher German criticism in the nineteenth century, Augustine functioned from the basic assumptions of his day, including the belief that Moses was the original author of the Torah. Michael Fiedrowicz, “General Introduction,” in Augustine, On Genesis, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002).

20

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Augustine believes both interpretations convey meaning in regards to the origins of the created world and human creatures within that world.20 Two fundamental contributions of Augustine in relation to the origins of creation include (1) creation ex nihilo or the premise that God created from nothing and (2) that God instilled a perfect order and harmony to the created universe.21 The former contribution was essential to differentiating his position from his prior Manichean and Neoplatonist positions that emphasized creation from preexisting matter. The presence of preexisting matter in the world before creation lends itself to the possibility of evil in the universe outside the scope of God’s good creation as seen in the case of the Manichean position. The Manicheans suggest such preexisting matter functioned as part of the cosmic dualism between good and evil, spirit and matter. Both Manicheans and Platonists conclude that the soul was trapped in the body awaiting death as a kind of freedom as opposed to a kind of tyranny later developed by Augustine. For Augustine, on the other hand, God creates both matter and form. His allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 suggests he creates matter with the creation of heaven and earth (Genesis 1) as distinct from the “heaven of heavens” where the immortal angels worship God in spirit throughout eternity.22 Thus, the creation of heaven and earth was the beginning of the material universe. Moreover, God shapes or creates form from matter, thereby differentiating various species and individuals as seen throughout the remaining Genesis 1 narrative. From God’s ongoing creative activity, God differentiates day and night (time), land and sea (elements), fish, birds of the air, and living creatures (animals), and, finally, male and female (humanity) as the culmination of creation. Such differentiation forges identity for each species and for each individual. Augustine maintains that God simultaneously created all things at once—or as “possibility” (from Sirach 18:1) as well as in historical time.23 The linear evolution of the creation story illuminates the overarching orderliness and harmony of the cosmos.24 Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams says,

20. Fiedrowicz says that it is important to note how both the allegorical and literal interpretation conveyed meaning. Augustine offered an allegorical/figurative interpretation of Genesis 1 and an historical/literal interpretation of Genesis 2. Also, while Augustine believed in “a real garden, trees, and rivers,” he also took on the theological questions that most interested him in relation to the overall text in ibid., 160–61. 21. Rowan Williams, “‘Good for Nothing?’ Augustine on Creation,” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 9–11; St. Augustine, On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees in On Genesis, 42; and St. Augustine, Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 267. 22. Augustine, On Genesis, 42–43. 23. Teske, “Genesis Accounts of Creation,” 381. 24. Williams, “Good for Nothing?” 9–11.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

21

The point could be better put by saying that God wills that there be reality quite other than God, and that this entails the positing of a reality that can change: if so, it entails also the dialectic of the possible and the actual, it entails a world of purposive fluidity, things becoming themselves, organizing themselves more successfully or economically over time. Possibilities are continually being realized, but realized in orderly and intelligible fashion. . . . [Thus] Creation is the constant process of realizing potential goods; and that is why the difference between God and creation cannot be elided.25

Here Williams argues against challenges that suggest either process theology or the immanence of God at the expense of divine transcendence.26 The world is a series of processes that find their origin and completion in God. Life itself is “possibility” moving toward actualization, our end goal. In other words, growth or “aging” is written into the very framework of the universe. Such processes sound much like modern evolutionary biology with the exception that these processes contain a teleological goal in mind. Williams claims that a divine origin as other is essential for understanding the created order as a coherent system, which is originated, completed, and fulfilled by the very same Creator. The world is a series of potentiality moving toward actualization, but this potentiality only makes sense in relation to something that is utterly complete in perfection. Williams continues, There is nothing that is potentially good for God. If there were, God’s selfrealization would be imperfect; and since the processes of self-realization are bound up with interaction, an agent bringing some other (passive) entity to its fuller life by supplying what it lacks in itself, this would entail treating God as part of a system, in which independent factors could provide for God what the divine being required and did not possess.27

Here Williams highlights the Divine otherness for Augustine that constitutes the identity and difference necessary for distinguishing the relation between Creator and created. Williams further affirms such creation reflects God’s gratuitous act of love.28 In creating, God establishes an order that reflects a created whole dependent and completed by God in its origins, sustenance, and final goal. In other words, relational dependence on the Creator is part of humanity’s constitution. Growth or possibility is inevitable, though such growth is contingent upon the Creator

25. Ibid., 17–19. 26. Williams responds to the challenge of divine “oppressive hierarchical dualism” by claiming the trouble erupts when hierarchical dualisms are posed between two created entities within the system as opposed to divine/human distinctions in ibid., 19. 27. Ibid., 19. 28. Ibid., 19–20.

22

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

who is complete in perfection. Growth and aging will depend upon this origin for sustenance and fulfillment. Likewise, Augustine’s ordered cosmology offers differentiation to both species and individuals by forging unique identities. For Augustine, inequalities make possible our existence.29 Unlike the theology of Origen, Augustine believed that inferior goods could still be good.30 Without differentiation, there could be no identity or distinction between one entity and another. Leaving the mother’s womb and entering into life is necessary for an individual’s first breath that is symbolized through the naming of a new and differentiated creature. Much like leaving the mother’s womb—or even the progression that begins with embryonic life ending in a fully realized birth—God creates a world of possibility to be actualized, defined by continual interaction and change. Life is a process—a series of actualizing possibility, growth, and aging. Here we see aging or growth as part of created human nature before the fall. This view of possibility corresponds with Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 that claims the seed of every organism existed at the beginning of creation, though its development could have occurred well beyond the temporal span of seven days.31 Moreover, Williams says, “Changes in form mean measurable changes, the only sort of change we can talk about (which is why, incidentally, Aquinas could say that the act of creation was not itself a change or process).”32 Williams here introduces the concept of “measurable change” which is identical with the concept of time, to which I now turn. The Role of Time and Change A second and important component accompanying form and matter in its possibility and actualization includes time. One can read

29. Ibid. 30. Ibid.; St. Augustine, City of God, translated by Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1984), 455. 31. Various authors cite Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 for the compatibility of the creation narrative with evolution. While evolutionary biology might disagree with Augustine’s monogonism and the notion of original sin, his allegorical interpretation of creation as process that configures an ongoing cosmology of potency and change is congruent with evolutionary biology. Not only does his account of creation as a system of potency and change cohere with natural growth in life, but so too does this cosmology account for the ways in which persons develop, change, and even decay in the form of entropy as seen in the aging stage of life toward death. See Peter van Inwagen, “Genesis and Evolution” in Reasoned Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 98–100 and Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006). Finally, Michael Fiedrowicz claims that Augustine did not find contradiction but compatibility between faith and science. Apparently, even Galileo cited “key passages” from Augustine when questioned by the church in 1516. Michael Fiedrowicz, “Introduction,” in Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 156. 32. Williams, “Good for Nothing?” 18.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

23

days, seasons, and years into the creation narrative given the passage of day and night. Augustine speaks at length about the importance of maintaining the simultaneous origin of creation with the origin of time.33 Rowan Williams says, Creation is thus not the imposition of form on shapelessness. It is, rather, the setting in being of a living system destined to grow toward beauty and order, even if this beauty and order is not at any given moment fully apparent. Thus, for Augustine, the temporal character of the created world is axiomatic: it is a world in motion, a set of processes in which potential is realized.34

Our world is one set in motion most clearly seen through process and development. Augustine himself describes time as dependent upon change. If there is no change, then there is no time.35 Time, by definition, is the measurement of our continual change. Williams says, Confessions 12.11 notes that forma is in fact the condition for change itself and is bound up with the idea of creation as necessarily temporal process: without form we could have no way of identifying or discussing change; we could not imagine pure fluidity and indeterminacy, but can only think of how one definite thing is transformed into another. And if we could not so identify change, if we could not talk about processes, patterns of variable and successive movement, we could have no language to speak of the passage of time.36 (emphasis in original)

Without form, time could not be apprehended since time measures the movement of existing objects (formed matter). Likewise, form grows in meaning through development over time. In other words, the process of aging is hard wired into our species as part of human identity. Otherwise, we would be “pure fluidity and indeterminacy.” Here Augustine describes the interdependency of time and change in our experience of reality. Time measures development and change. To age is to change. By definition, aging is intimately tied to growth over the succession of time. Such growth can be physical or external as well as psychological or spiritual. The succession of such aging is demarcated by the experience of past, present, and future. In the Confessions, Augustine describes the nature of time in more detail as the measure of subsequent movements of past, present, and future. Time is described as an elusive experience in which the present may be never fully apprehended

33. Augustine, Confessions, 221–35; Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 174–75; and Augustine, City of God, 435. 34. Williams, “Creation,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 252. 35. Augustine, City of God, 435. 36. Williams, “Creation,” 253.

24

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

or grasped as it constantly slips into the past. Since measuring future, past, and present proves impossible, instead, Augustine says we measure from the beginning to the end of an object’s movement. In doing so, Augustine refines the definition of time as the measurement of “duration” or the measurement of “periods of time.”37 Given his cosmology, Augustine implies that creation was intended to change. Aging is the experience of an object’s change over time. Aging is an arc that begins at birth and ends at death. Aging begins with our very first breath and closes with our final pulse. Aging and death are experiences that look at an object’s movement from the vantage point of the end, which sheds light on the whole identity, beginning to end. This is certainly the case for what John Quinn describes as “physical time” or the measurement of outward objects.38 However, he also categorizes “psychological time” as the locus of memory in which humans transcend time, moving back to the past through reflection and projecting forward into the future apart from the present. Quinn says, “Time is the measurable aspect of movement according to before and after; it is rooted in mutability; it is concreated; since no time interval exists all at once, time in its totality is known only in the mind.”39 Thus, memory is the one capacity that enables human beings to conceive of time as a whole since physical time only exists as succession. As individuals physically age, the experience is one of continual development that cannot be captured in a single instance. Instead, the aging experience generally involves inward reflection from the vantage point of the end. The mind or memory aims to capture time in its various intervals.40 Here, both psychological and physical components of time can be set against the antithesis of eternity. Throughout his various works, Augustine’s description of time is depicted in relation to its counterpart, eternity. Maintaining the distinction not only between Creator and created, but also time and eternity is crucial to Augustine’s theology. Quinn says, “Whereas time is successive, and therefore not a present whole but comprised of past and future segments, eternity is always unchangeable, an indivisible whole that is only present, without past and future.”41 Eternal reality, unlike temporal reality, is unchangeable, complete, and the fullness of rest as opposed to time-bound creatures that are transitory by definition. To collapse the two categories of time and eternity is to misunderstand the nature of reality and its dependence upon a greater being for its origin, sustenance, and goal. Human beings are merely one form of creature within this beautifully ordered cosmos

37. Augustine, Confessions, 238–45. 38. Quinn, “Time,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 835. 39. Quinn, “Time,” 836. 40. Ibid., 834. 41. Quinn, “Eternity,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 318.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

25

composing created reality, reflecting multiplicity throughout creation that is dependent upon original simplicity. Multiplicity Dependent on Simplicity Augustine’s ordered hierarchy of being continues describing the status of human creatures throughout City of God, On Genesis, and The Trinity. At least four components comprise Augustine’s understanding of what it means to be human: (1) how humanity fits into the overall cosmology as the mean between angels and animals; (2) the soul/body relation within human creatures as dependent on divine simplicity; (3) the status and meaning of the description “image of God”; and (4) the reality of humans as dependent relational creatures. First, Augustine delineates human beings as a mean between angels and animals in the hierarchical ordering of the cosmos. Angels, for Augustine, are spiritual beings (without bodies) existing in the heaven of heavens as “partakers in the eternal light” by participation in the changeless Word or wisdom of God.42 By definition, only God is immortal and eternal. Created reality, including angels, is dependent on God as the origin and sustenance of being. Thus, angels are mutable but experience immortality through participation and everlasting communion with God. Humans are next in the hierarchical chain of being. Humans exist as a medium between angels and animals given their created nature includes both bodies and souls. On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees and The Literal Meaning of Genesis depict how God creates humans as “ensouled bodies” with the capacity for relation with God through the gift of God’s presence in the spirit.43 God breathes the breath of life into Adam’s soul and awakens him to life. Adam and Eve maintain communion with God through the gift of God’s presence in the spirit symbolized by the “four streams of life” and the “tree of life” in Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Genesis in On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees. The soul animates the body and has the ability not to die in its pre-fall state through the gift of the tree of life. After the final resurrection, humans will adopt “spiritual bodies” (not merely “ensouled bodies”) in which they will be in perfect union with God, thus making the bodies incorruptible. In humanity’s created origins, however, they exist with a conditional mortality in which the soul relates to God through Divine presence and the physical “tree of life” acts as a kind of sacrament in the garden. As “ensouled bodies,” humans uniquely reflect their status as the medium between angels (spiritual beings) and animals (bodily beings). As “ensouled” bodies, humanity was originally dependent on God for sustentation, both body and soul, through participation made available by God’s presence in the physical sacraments of fruit from the tree and water from the river of life. Also, creatures were intended to progress or develop over time as seen through

42. Augustine, City of God, 440. 43. Augustine, On Genesis, 323.

26

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Augustine’s claim that humanity will move from “ensouled” to “enspirited” bodies in the Eschaton. Third, given humanity’s unique status involving ensouled bodies, Augustine views humans as imagers of God through the soul’s rational capacity to reflect on its relation with God. The status “image of God” uniquely reflects the Trinity. This is most likely due to the role of memory’s capacity to transcend time and reflect on past, present, future, or wholeness at once, thereby resembling eternity. He depicts humans as a tripartite of “existence, knowledge, and love” in City of God and “mind, knowledge, and love” as well as “memory, understanding, and will” in The Trinity.44 Existence corresponds with the Father as Origin and Creator; knowledge corresponds with the Son as Wisdom and Word of God; love corresponds with the Spirit as union with God and neighbor. The significance of these three Trinitarian persons and their relation to aging individuals through participation are further highlighted in Chapter 3. Fourth and finally, given their created status as imagers of God reflecting the imprint of the Trinity along with the capacity of the rational soul to order the body, Augustine constitutes humans as deeply relational creatures. The very description of the created universe in its mutability and contingency presumes the reality of a Creator in simplicity. Given the Creator’s role in creation’s origin, sustenance, and fulfillment, one can conclude the entire cosmos relates to God. However, humans in their unique status as imagers are deeply related to God in that existence, knowledge, and love (being, knowing, and doing) are bound to the One who originates and fulfills these capacities by participation. Moreover, as Augustine describes in the Confessions, our memory is our identity.45 Only our memory has the capacity to transcend the body or the physical limits of space by measuring time’s past, present, and future. In our memory, we are unified in our multiplicity through the One who is divine simplicity. For Augustine, ultimate simplicity belongs to God alone in that God’s being and attributes are identical.46 All creatures, however, entail some level of differentiation or “parts” comprising the whole. Thus, human beings comprised of bodies and souls are dependent on the One who unifies these various parts. Describing the unity found in eternity, Augustine says, Now we are human beings, created in our Creator’s image . . . who is a Trinity of eternity, truth, and love .  .  . and the constituents of the world which are inferior . . . could not exist at all, could not have shape or form, could not aspire to any ordered pattern, or keep that pattern, had they not been created by him who supremely exists. . . . Therefore let us run over all the scattered traces of

44. Augustine, City of God, 461; Augustine, The Trinity (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1991), 270–302. The latter two “psychological analogies” of the Trinity correlate deeply with the shared substance and three relations of the Trinity. 45. Augustine, Confessions, 194. 46. Augustine, City of God, 441.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

27

his being, more distinct in some places than in others. And let us gaze at his image in ourselves, and “returning to ourselves,” like the younger son in the Gospel story (Luke 15.17), let us rise up and go back to him from whom we have departed in our sinning. There our existence will have no death, our knowledge no error, our love no obstacle.47

Here Augustine exonerates individuals to run and collect the scattered traces of God’s being imprinted in the world, particularly in his image bearers by returning to Him (as a lost son) in order to find oneself again. Returning to union with God through participation completes our being in our existence (without death), our knowledge (without error), and our love (without obstacle). But in order to return to God, one must consider just how deeply humanity fell from that original relationship of harmony, peace, and order. But before doing so, I explore the conditional mortality and conditional freedom available to humans in Augustine’s literal interpretation of the garden and his figurative interpretation that involves the direct presence of God with humanity. Conditional Mortality and the Misuse of Freedom Augustine defines the status of created humans in books XII–XIV of the City of God, though the heart of these arguments is found in Book XII. Reiterating and further detailing the import of describing humans as the medium between angels and animals in Book XII, chapter 22, Augustine says, But he created man’s nature as a kind of mean between angels and beasts, so that if he submitted to his Creator, as to his sovereign Lord, and observed his instructions with dutiful obedience, he should pass over into the fellowship of the angels, attaining an immortality of endless felicity, without an intervening death; but if he used his free will in arrogance and disobedience, and thus offended God, his Lord, he should live like the beasts, under sentence of death, should be the slave of his desires, and destined after death for eternal punishment.48

In other words, if humans submit to the Creator in obedience, they attain an immortality of endless felicity whereas if they abuse their free will through disobedience, they attain the punishment of mortality or death. In this illuminating passage and others like it, Augustine seems to describe the original created nature as one in which humanity was possibly subject to death through the use or abuse of freedom, though not necessarily subject to death.

47. Augustine, City of God, 403. This passage sounds remarkably like Augustine’s prayer in his Confessions declaring that we are “scattered in times . . . in the storms of incoherent events .  .  .” resonating with the philosophy of Plotinus by delineating successive time as disintegration. Likewise, Augustine appropriates this theme in relation to God as the Eternal one who unifies our temporal identity. Augustine, Confessions, 244. 48. Augustine, City of God, 502.

28

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Furthermore, Augustine describes the state in the garden as animal bodies composed of corporeal matter and spiritual souls. The bodies were specifically material in that Adam and subsequently Eve were composed of the ground or clay. God breathed into their bodies animating life, thereby establishing the immortal soul. Here, Adam and Eve represent humanity as created in the image and likeness of God by bearing the immortal soul, the animating breath, and the grace that sustains spiritual life. The human bodies, as animal bodies, were animated by immortal souls, though the material bodies experienced specific creaturely needs in the garden. This is best seen through human dependence upon nourishment and food along with the corporeal feature of sociality, or community, displayed through the prelapsarian fellowship between Adam and Eve. Moreover, the bodies of Adam and Eve did not grow “old” and “senile” as post-exilic bodies but fed upon the “the tree of life,” which, by grace, humanity perpetually lived. Augustine likens this tree of life to a sacrament.49 He says, It could be said that other foods served nourishment, but that from the tree of life was a kind of sacrament. On this interpretation the tree of life in the material paradise is analogous to the wisdom of God in the spiritual or intelligible paradise; for Scripture says of wisdom, “It is the tree of life to those who embrace it.”50

By eating from the material tree of life, Adam and Eve were not subject to mortal death by necessity. Their animal bodies, while vulnerable as creatures in the created world, were vivified by a means of God’s sustaining grace. Augustine reiterates the vulnerability of pre-fallen created human life, a status that is neither necessarily subject to death (as assumed through the term “mortal”) or necessarily a recipient of permanent bodily life (as assumed through the term “immortal”). Instead, the pre-fallen human creature perpetually fed from the sacrament of life by God’s mediating grace. Augustine says, There is no doubt that his body was animal, not spiritual; this is shown . . . not by that ultimate immortality, which is absolute and indissoluble, but by the tree of life. Yet that first man would certainly not have died had he not, by his offence, fallen under the sentence of God who had given him ample warning in advance.51

Thus, death was neither inevitable nor impossible in this pre-fallen condition. In his commentary, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine explicitly claims that humans were created immortal, while qualifying this position through the use

49. Ibid., 533. 50. Ibid., 534. 51. Ibid., 537.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

29

of a kind of “conditional immortality.”52 Hence, immortality was conditional, not necessary or essential to their original status quo creatures. Death was a possibility in that humans were vulnerable to their own freedom yet also dependent on sustaining, life-giving grace. By exercising freedom in the wrong way, freedom that privileged self-love over love of God (which is the only source of life), humans banned themselves from the garden and from the continuous sacrament of sustentation for bodily life until the terms might be rectified by a source greater than human capacity alone. However, the descent into disorder by making the wrong choice, the turning away from God resulted in what might be described as nothingness or evil. Privation toward Nonexistence as Evil Evil as Privation and Sin as Perversion: The Movement toward Nonexistence in Death Understanding Augustine’s approach to evil as detailed in City of God parallels his account in Confessions. Augustine’s personal quest to understand the problem of evil initially attracted and later repelled him from the spirit/matter dualism of Manichaeism. In the Confessions, Augustine delineates his prior philosophical conversion to Neoplatonism’s account of the problem of evil as privation before fully converting to Catholic Christianity.53 Perhaps paralleling his move from the philosophical to theological on the problem of evil in the Confessions, so too does the City of God move from a more philosophical account in Book XII toward a more theological account in the form of scriptural reflection in Book XIII on the fall of humanity as depicted in the Genesis narrative. For Augustine, the difference between good and evil primarily concerns the difference between wills and desires related to their proper or “ordered” ends. Those persons (or angels) with desires and wills directed toward love of God (eternity, truth, and love) are good and those that turn away from God and toward self-love as their end are disordered.54 Moreover, all created reality consists of mutable or changeable goods. Mutable goods must cling to the immutable good for happiness as our created end. God created the scale of existence or “hierarchy of being” from God’s own “Supreme existence.”55 To exist as a mutable or lower good that is contingent, fragile, and dependent is not evil in itself. The only evil comes from willfully turning away from the source of created dependency, the Supreme good.56 Furthermore, attempting to locate an efficient cause of evil proves impossible. In Augustine’s schema, making a wrong choice is not a matter of an efficient cause but a deficient cause. To try and see the

52. Augustine, On Genesis, 236. 53. Augustine, Confessions, 111–32. 54. Augustine, City of God, 471. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 471–3. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, translated by Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff (Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964).

30

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

cause of a defective will is like trying to “see darkness” or “hear silence” in which there is the absence of perception by eyes and ears.57 As Charles Mathewes says, “The introduction of evil into a wholly good creation is fundamentally a negative act—ontologically privational and hence intellectually incomprehensible.”58 Ultimately, evil actually harms the original nature or substance of created beings, moving them toward diminution, destruction, and final nonexistence. Rowan Williams describes evil as a process rather than a substance or object. Interestingly, just as creation is an intended system of harmonious interactions between acting and being acted upon, evil, on the other hand, is a process of undoing or disordering such harmonious interactions. In other words, evil is the “process in which good is lost.”59 While evil as privation never exists as its own substance, its effects on physical objects interact within historical time. Williams says, “If evil itself is never a subject or substance, the only way in which it can be desired or sought is by the exercise of the goods of mental and affective life swung around by error to a vast misapprehension, a mistaking of the unreal and groundless for the real.”60 Thus, what Williams calls the error or vast misapprehension of the mental and affective life reflects what G. R. Evans describes as the “Evil of the Mind” in Augustine on Evil. She says, “Everything Augustine has to say about evil must be read in the light of one central principle: that the effect of evil upon the mind is to make it impossible for the sinner to think clearly, and especially to understand higher, spiritual truths and abstract ideas.”61 Evil takes on the form of deception in the world in which lying becomes the medium for turning reality toward false ends. When the mind and affect become slaves to deception, mutable goods turn away from the immutable good as their final end. Instead, mutable goods find satisfaction or happiness in created goods alone. In doing so, disorder of mind,

57. Augustine, City of God, 480. 58. Charles T. Mathewes, “Augustinian Anthropology,” Journal of Religious Ethics 27 no. 2 (1999): 205; Elsewhere Mathewes says, “Augustine understood evil’s challenge in terms of two distinct conceptual mechanisms, one ontological and the other anthropological. Ontologically he defines the concept of evil as simply the privation of being and goodness. Anthropologically he defines human wickedness in terms of original sin, and sin as fundamentally the perversion of the human’s good nature—created in the imago Dei—into a distorted and false imitation of what it should be. Privation and perversion: together these summarize the Augustinian tradition’s interpretation of the problem of evil, and delineate the conceptual contours within which the tradition proposes its practical response to it” in Charles T. Mathewes, Evil and the Augustinian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2001. 59. Rowan Williams, “Insubstantial Evil,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honor of Gerald Bonner, eds. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 105. 60. Williams, “Insubstantial Evil,” 111. 61. G.R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 29.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

31

affect, and will (capacities within the soul) harm not only the soul in its false beliefs but also the creature’s body, making it captive to time in a way that moves toward decay. The results are detrimental to the created world: existence moves toward nonexistence and thus, physical life to physical aging and death. Understanding how this happened, Augustine turns to yet another close analysis of the Genesis narrative and the cataclysmic fall as the source for understanding mortality and aging. But before considering the cataclysmic fall, I consider an alternative way in which Augustine frames the turn toward evil and negative goods through his famous order of love. Evil as Disordered Love of Created Goods Apart from Relation to the Creator In De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Teaching), Augustine describes his famous “order of love” or uti/frui (use and enjoy) distinction. Augustine opens by delineating the difference between res (signs) and verba (truth/thing). He says that some things (verba) are to be used while others are to be enjoyed. However, there is only one “thing” to be enjoyed, that is, God or the Holy Trinity. He says, There are some things which are to be enjoyed, some which are to be used, and some whose function is both to enjoy and use. Those which are to be enjoyed make us happy; those which are to be used assist us and give us a boost, so to speak, as we press on towards our happiness, so that we may reach and hold fast to the things which make us happy.62

Building on the Creator/created, Eternity/time, Immutable/mutable tensions between God and the created world, Augustine likens our temporal existence to that of a journey in which we travel through this world toward the goal of heaven as our home. To forget one’s final end through distraction or fascination with created goods alone rather than ordering such goods in relation to the Creator results in disastrous consequences. “To enjoy” is “to hold fast to an object for its own sake,” or find happiness in that object.63 To use, on the other hand, entails using an object for the purpose of “obtaining what you love—if indeed it is something that ought to be loved.”64 For Augustine, there is only one object that can be enjoyed for its own sake, that is, God. All other goods, including humans, are to be ordered in relation to this eternal, supreme good.65

62. St. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, translated by R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 9. 63. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 9. 64. Ibid. 65. Eric Gregory evaluates the difficulty of interpreting Augustine’s uti/frui distinction given Kant’s modern moral concern that humans not be treated as “instrumental” means only but as ends in themselves. Primarily drawing from Raymond Canning’s interpretation and Augustine’s own inclusion of loving the neighbor (as use and enjoy) near the end of On Christian Doctrine I, Gregory proposes we love the neighbor “in” God. Eric Gregory, Politics

32

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Augustine acknowledges that humans are continually in a state of ordering our loves. Created goods cannot satisfy our desire in the ultimate sense; only an eternal good can satisfy an ultimate desire. The just, wise, or virtuous person is one who knows how to rightly order her loves according to this final end. Augustine says, The person who lives a just and holy life is one who is a sound judge of these things. He is also a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more), or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally.66

Thus, the just or holy individual knows how to balance all loves in accordance with the final end of love for God. Eric Gregory likens the balancing of ordered loves between the dual tension of possibility and limits.67 Loving the neighbor “in” God protects our loves.68 One can love excessively in a way that suffocates or patronizes the neighbor on the one hand or love deficiently in way that overlooks or neglects the neighbor on the other.69 For Augustine, such ordering requires wisdom or prudence that develops (albeit imperfectly) with practice over time.70 Augustine includes love of neighbor, self, and the material world in the order of love. Again, departing from the tenants of Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, Augustine values the body insofar as it does not serve corrupt desires in the form of privation. To privilege the desires of the flesh over their rightly ordered place in relation to God results in disobedience and “abuse” of God’s created world. Not only does the disobedience turn from ultimate love of God, but disordered love harms the good creation with dire consequences as seen in the cataclysmic fall considered in Genesis 2. Aging and Death as Consequence of the Cataclysmic Fall In Augustine’s literal account of the cataclysmic fall in Genesis 2, humans were exiled from the garden, handed over to the ravages of a corrupt body, destructive time, and the experience of decay, most acutely represented through the phenomena

and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 347. See also Raymond Canning, “Uti/Frui” in Augustine through the Ages, 859–61; Oliver O’Donovan, The Problem of Self Love in St. Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); and Oliver O’Donovan, “Usus and Fruitio in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I,” Journal of Theological Studies 33 no. 2 (October 1982): 361–97. 66. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 21. 67. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love. 68. Ibid., 347. 69. Ibid., 197–240. 70. Evans, Augustine on Evil, 150–61.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

33

of “old age.”71 As John M. Quinn points out, “Every factor other than death is hypothetical and contingent; death alone is absolute and necessary.”72 After the fall, death becomes a constitutive feature of corrupt human nature, composing what Quinn calls the one necessity facing all individuals alike. Augustine describes the terms of death as “two deaths.”73 The first death is that so-called natural death (which is actually unnatural according to his argument) in which the body is separated from the soul. At this death, the soul no longer animates corporeal life. Temporal existence comes to an end. The self as we know it is no longer integrated as body and soul within space and time. This first death echoes the curse offered in Genesis, saying, “‘You are earth, and into earth you will go.’”74 The second death is when the first death is made complete. The body and soul are joined once again either in eternal bliss where creatures are subject to permanent, perpetual life (pure immortality) or in eternal punishment to endure what he describes as a state of “deathless death,” or unending mortality.75 In leaving the garden, Adam and Eve experienced the first part of the first death. They no longer had access to the tree of life and God’s sacramental sustenance. According to Augustine’s notion of original sin as the “contagion of sin,”76 the entire human community is subject to the first part of the first death in our first gasp for air. Thus, death is at work within us since our very beginnings. The curse had a totalizing effect, ensuring that the consequences of death run its course over time. He says, “What sort of death God threatened to the first human beings. . . . Was it the death of the soul? Or of the body? Or of the whole person? Or was it what is called the second death? Our reply to the question is, ‘All of these deaths.’”77 All expatriates cursed outside of the garden experience this totalizing effect, incorporating all forms of death. This position is further defended throughout Book XIII in which Augustine explicitly argues that “mortality” is a consequence of fallen humanity.78 He includes the term “mortality” itself to describe the fallen nature of humans. Thus, the so-called natural death for Augustine is by definition “unnatural.” What the Stoics,

71. Augustine, City of God, 537. As an aside, it is interesting to note that Augustine’s early works in On Genesis: Against the Manichees and Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis considered the subtle possibility that God’s creation of the heavens and earth in Genesis 1 may reflect a distinction between spiritual and material creation in the form of the spiritual “heaven of heavens” as opposed to material heaven and earth. This account might entertain the possibility of privation beginning among the angels as early as Genesis 1 in Augustine, Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, 116–19. Also, this will be pertinent to consider when studying the interpretation of Gen. 1–2 by Karl Barth in Chapter 3. 72. Quinn, “Time,” 836. 73. Augustine, City of God, 510. 74. Genesis 3:19 in Augustine, City of God, 524. 75. Ibid., 521. 76. Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, 696. 77. Augustine, City of God, 522. 78. Ibid., 510.

34

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

the Platonists, and Ambrose were inclined to call nature, Augustine delineates as unnature or corrupt nature. The corruptible body weighs down the soul outside the garden. Life since its very beginnings involves an impending tragedy in that all individuals are subject to death without escape. Augustine speaks of the irony of our existence given the weight of sin’s consequence. An early passage in the Confessions reflects his mixed anthropology saying, “I do not know where I came to be in this mortal life or, as I may call it, this living death” (italics mine).79 What Evil Meant for Harm, God Meant for Good: Christ’s Death and Resurrection as the Hope for Resurrected Life However, even the tragic news of death is not without hope in Augustine’s theology. The good news of Augustine’s presumably bleak theology is his Christological focus that offers new life not only for the future, but also hope for the experience of life here through the incarnation. Furthermore, for Augustine, true human nature is something better than commonly assumed in that humanity’s purpose, or core being, is not one originally created to be undone by death. Unlike Augustine’s philosophical and theological peers, he argues that death is evil precisely because it severs the soul’s existence from the body. While the Platonists, Manichaeans, Pelagians, and Christian Platonists regarded death as a good, Augustine saw death as evil because he affirmed the created goodness of bodily, creaturely existence. Rather than view death as the soul’s escape from this mortal coil, instead, Augustine affirms bodily goodness for this life along with the hope of resurrected bodies for the life to come. Regarding the life to come, Augustine also defends a position that is somewhat unique among his interlocutors. Because of Christ’s resurrection and the recreation of humanity, Augustine claims that individuals will attain resurrected bodies in the second death for those destined to eternal life by grace.80 Here Augustine defends the promise of resurrected bodies in the Eschaton. Such bodies will be better than those bodies formed at creation in that they will be changed into a spiritual body. This change is not a loss of nature (as “animal bodies”) but a change in quality by way of transformation to a glorified state where humanity will exist as animal bodies directly animated by perfect union with the life-giving Spirit. Thus, “the flesh will be called .  .  . spiritual when it serves the spirit,” and the “earthly will become heavenly.”81 This new change first established in Christ and perfected in the second death not only mitigates the harms incurred by Adam, the original man, but will exceed humanity’s prior existence by fulfilling the meaning behind the phrase that all die

79. Augustine, Confessions, 6. 80. St. Augustine, Instructing Beginners in the Faith, translated by Raymond Canning (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2006). 81. “This is not because the flesh will be converted into spirit . . . but because it will submit to the spirit with a ready obedience, an obedience so wonderfully complete” Augustine, City of God, 533; 537.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

35

in Adam while all live in Christ.82 Furthermore, Augustine claims the resurrected bodies will have no need for the tree of life or regular nourishment, much like the angels. Instead, they will live in perpetual immortality in a glorified state. Christ becomes the new tree of life, the life-giving spirit that changes the status of humanity’s plight by offering hope in the tragic circumstances of temporal death.83 Thus, what evil meant for harm, God is able to use for good ends. As will be discussed in Chapter 4 on Christology, both evil and good come together in the moment of the cross—along with death—though for differing ends. And just as the cross and resurrection exposes the nadir and summit of evil and good expressions, so too does death expose the twofold tension between good and evil intentions and ends. On the possibility of placing death’s end to good use, Augustine says, What has happened is that God has granted to faith so great a gift of grace that death, which all agree to be the contrary of life, has become the means by which men pass into life . . . [still] death is evil, because it is the reward of sin. But as unrighteousness puts all things, good and evil alike, to a bad use, so righteousness puts all things, evil as well as good, to good employment. Thus it is that the evil make bad use of the law, though it is a good thing, and the good die a good death, although death itself is an evil.84 (italics mine)

While death cannot be called good, nonetheless, the good can put death to good use. Just as labor pains brings forth the gift of new life, so too do the pains of physical death bring forth the possibility of new, resurrected life. However, while awaiting the hope of resurrected life, one cannot simply escape the realities of temporal pain and death in this life. Augustine’s sensitivity to the human experience of pain forges a new psychological position that emphasizes the role of emotions not only as naturally human, but also naturally Christian.

Death in Its Relation to the Emotions Death as Assault on Created Existence Considering the implications of Augustine’s theology of the unnatural natural death is rife with consequences in terms of the implications for temporal life. Lancel not only points out the biological consequences at work in Augustine’s theology, but also the psychological consequences of temporal death. In his City of God, Augustine describes the whole of our human lifetime as nothing but a race

82. Ibid., 536. 83. Ibid., 538–39. 84. Ibid., 514–15.

36

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

toward death. This process began at Adam’s expulsion and subsequently begins at birth for the rest of humankind. He says, In fact, from the moment a man begins to exist in this body, which is destined to die, he is involved all the time in a process whose end is death. For this is the end to which the life of continual change is all the time directed, if indeed we can give the name of life to this passage towards death.85

He continues, posing the question as to whether human existence is one of living or dying in which he says, “The whole of our lifetime is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is allowed the slightest pause or any slackening in pace. All are driven on at the same speed, and hurried along the same road to the same goal.”86 In other words, death is the end to which all continual change in time is directed. Our bodies are subject to aging, death, and decay. Those who experience a longer journey than others only experience an extended amount of time in this life, though the reality of death itself is the same. Here, the term “dying” is elusive in that we are constantly in a process of “living,” “dying,” and “death” or “before death,” “in death,” and “after death.”87 The term “dying” is elusive much like the concept of the “present” moment is elusive. The passage of time conveys the movement from past to future in which the so-called present moment is always slipping away, a moment that is always pregnant with the future. The moment in which we actually “give up the ghost,” otherwise known as the body’s release of the soul, is unclear.88 For once the soul leaves the body we are dead. Thus, as we move toward the moment of death as creatures of destiny, we are simultaneously living and dying. Death itself is an assault on our created existence. The ways we respond to this phenomenon varies, yet the way we respond generally reflects the character of our moral lives. Carving Out a New Position: The Legitimacy of Grief and Fear of Death Returning to the original challenges posed by his philosophical peers, the Stoics and Ambrose along with them argue that the process of death is natural and to fear death is irresponsible. Paul Kolbet says the Stoic, Seneca, claims individuals who fear or grieve death act from “evidence of disease of soul.”89 Like the other Stoics Augustine describes in Book XIV of the City of God, they aim for a “constant state of mind” in which the three mental disorders of desire, joy, and fear are to be controlled by will, gladness, and caution. In their estimation, the

85. Ibid., 518. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid., 519. 88. Ibid., 518. 89. Paul R. Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 74.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

37

wise man always avoids evil and though subject to biological change, he can will the good without effect from external causes by the power of internal judgments or right “reasoning.”90 Furthermore, they absolutely deny the passions of pain, such as grief. One should overcome such emotions through proper evaluative judgments. Kolbet says, “Emotions such as ‘fear, anger, grief, and love are not blind surges of affect that push and pull us without regard to reasoning and belief ’. . . . Grief derives its debilitating force not from the loss, but from one’s beliefs about the loss. In other words, ‘we suffer more often from opinions than from reality.’”91 Thus, the solution to such misjudgments was to rectify these misguided opinions. In response to what they viewed as malformed social conventions regarding the fear of death and its accompanied grief, both the Stoics and Ambrose argue that death is not only natural, but also good.92 By arguing that death is natural, the Stoics emphasize the role of reason, virtuous action, and pursuing “the good” in this life while Ambrose argues for the good death that releases the soul to rest with God in eternity away from temporal temptations. Augustine initially agrees with this position, believing that true love for the eternal God mitigates the role of emotions in this temporal life. However, over time, Augustine not only changes his position of death to one that is unnatural, but also changes his views on the role of temporal emotions that accompany death. Again, while he does not directly argue against Ambrose, the conclusions of his later position are in direct conflict with the position held by his beloved mentor. Viewing death as unnatural rather than natural also transforms how Augustine views “fear of death” or timor mortis. Since death is evil, death involves natural fear rather than natural escape. Legitimizing the fear of death as natural reiterates how Augustine departs from his philosophical peers, including the Neoplatonists, Stoics, and even Donatists who pursued suicide for the sake of Christian purity.93 Instead, Augustine says not to fear death is to deny the good in life. By fearing death, humans reveal their natural desire for existence.94 Anxiety is an emotion that naturally accompanies death. Augustine could not deny the realities of death within the human experience and the subsequent emotions that accompany this experience as seen through his interactive preaching with his parishioners at Hippo. But before turning to his sermons that reflect interaction and the experience of loss in the company of his parishioners, I first consider how Augustine’s famous order of love might serve as the implicit key to interpreting Book XIV of the City of God concerning the role of human emotions.

90. Augustine, City of God, 558. 91. Quoting Martha C. Nussbaum’s Therapy of Desire in Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls, 74. 92. Ambrose, “Death as a Good.” 93. Straw, “Timor Mortis,” 838–39. 94. Ibid., 839.

38

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

The Order of Love as Hermeneutical Key for Interpreting Human Emotions in Relation to Death and Aging Perhaps Augustine’s account of the emotions is best understood through his famous “order of love” as the hermeneutical key not only to the ethical life, but also to one’s approach to death and aging. In Book XIV, Augustine articulates a position that differs from the Stoic conviction that denies the legitimacy of desire, fear, joy, and grief as “reasonable” emotions replacing them with “will, caution, and gladness” in their stead.95 Instead, Augustine says these emotions are good insofar as they are directed toward a good end, namely love of God, self, and neighbor. However, these emotions go awry when directed toward evil ends that disorder personal loves in relation to God, self, and neighbor.96 Augustine says, “Will, caution, and gladness are felt by good and bad alike; and . . . desire, fear, and joy are emotions common to both good and bad. But the good feel these emotions in a good way, the bad feel them in a bad way, just as an act of will may be rightly or wrongly directed.”97 For Augustine, emotions correspond with rightly and wrongly directed wills insofar as the intentions behind acts of love reflect the ultimate ends of those loves. Augustine delineates his more mature position on the psychological emotions through several examples. In contrast to the Stoic drive to control the emotions, claiming only the fool grieves, Augustine, on the other hand, recognizes the way grief could be used for good as in the case of repentance that brings salvation. But not only in regards to salvation did Augustine see emotion as good. He also argues that Christians should feel fear, desire, pain, and gladness in conformity with the Holy Scriptures. Loving what is right, namely God and neighbor, orders and directs the emotions in the right way.98 Thus, Christians are to feel on account of others through neighbor love. He says, “So that they may feel pain in temptations, they have the sight of Peter weeping; so that they may feel gladness in temptations, they hear the voice of James, saying ‘Consider it nothing but gladness, my brothers, when you come upon temptations of all kinds.’”99 Christ himself wept upon the news of Lazarus’s death and the approach of His own passion. Augustine says, “If the Lord himself condescended to live a human life in the form of a servant, though completely free from sin, he

95. Augustine, City of God, 551. 96. Perhaps this approach to emotions by Augustine somewhat parallels the Stoics in that emotions are not without content in relation to some perceived loss or belief that is directed either toward or away from love of God as the ultimate good. However, Augustine is unlike the Stoics in that he does not deny particular emotions wholesale; they reveal something about the nature of reality. They are to be encouraged or discouraged in accordance with ultimate loves. 97. Ibid., 561. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid., 562.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

39

displayed these feelings in situations where he decided that they should be shown” according to “fixed providential design.”100 Augustine makes one of the strongest cases for the proper exercise of these emotions saying, Thus we sometimes weep, even when we do not want to, though we may be moved not by any blameworthy desire but by praiseworthy charity. That implies that we have these emotions as a result of the weakness of our human condition; but this was not true of the Lord Jesus, whose weakness resulted from his power. Yet if we felt none of those emotions at all, while we are subject to the weakness of this life, there would really be something wrong with our life. . . . In fact, complete exemption from pain, while we are in this place of misery, is certainly as one of the literary men of this world expressed it, “a piece of luck that one has to pay a high price for; the price of inhumanity of mind and insensitivity of body.”101 (italics mine)

Even the Lord Jesus exhibited emotions in his compassion toward others not from weakness but from power. Like Christ, praiseworthy charity propels His followers to grieve in compassion for the neighbor. To not express emotions and exempt oneself from pain is in fact inhuman and insensitive to our bodily needs. In Augustinian terms, Stoic apatheia is as unnatural as death itself. Robert Dodaro picks up this theme in his argument regarding “fear of death” (timor mortis). Dodaro interprets the whole of Augustine’s City of God to be a commentary on the problem of philosophical and pagan conceptions regarding “fear of death.”102 Dodaro claims Augustine’s understanding of the fear of death “epitomizes the effects of ignorance and weakness [as dual vices] upon the soul.”103 Instead, “non-Christian philosophies and religions give the soul a false sense of security, in effect encouraging it to flee the vulnerability to death which understanding of the Christian mystery requires, and to immerse itself in the vain pursuit of heroism.”104 Philosophically, Platonists and Stoics seek happiness in virtue, a quality that can transcend death. Roman and Stoic heroes such as Marcus Atilius Regulus or Cato “the Younger” seek heroic acts that end in death or suicide in order to bring glory to Rome as an empire. Others seek temporal goods, theatrical distractions, or political power in order to avoid the anxiety associated with fear of death.105 Instead, Augustine believes Christians are to approach death differently. Rather than harden themselves to the fear of death through false beliefs that call death either good, natural, or a worthy pursuit for the sake of political ends associated with empire, instead, Augustine claims accepting death entails imitating Christ

100. Ibid., 563–64. 101. Ibid., 564. 102. Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 103. Ibid., 30. 104. Ibid., 31. 105. Ibid., 36–40.

40

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

who was vulnerable in death. By sacrificing his life rather than seeking revenge, Christ exemplifies what it means to accept the limits of death through his own vulnerability to its reality.106 Moreover, Christ entered human anxiety as displayed through the account from the Garden of Gethsemane.107 Thus, rather than approach death through apathy or non-emotion, Augustine legitimizes not only grief in response to the loss of created existence, but also forges an ethic of vulnerability most directly seen through his own experience and response to parishioners enduring this loss. Response to His Parishioners: Forging an Ethics of Compassion Augustine describes the psychological experience of impending death throughout various sermons delivered at Hippo. He reflects on the dread of death that so disturbs the public and his parishioners, alluding to their psychological anxiety through pastoral appeal. Eric Rebillard argues it is precisely Augustine’s interaction with his parishioners through preaching that contributes to Augustine’s evolving position on death and timor mortis over time.108 By examining many of Augustine’s sermons on feast days honoring the martyrs, Rebillard traces the ways in which Augustine moves the focus of his sermons from one that emphasizes accepting God’s will when facing death to one that emphasizes natural fear when facing death. Rebillard claims the change in this focus is in large part a response to the psychological despair Augustine sensed among his parishioners, claiming that Augustine’s evolving discourse on the fear of death “is a response to a precise anxiety of his audience.”109 Reconsidering the deaths and concomitant fears felt by St. Peter, St. Paul, and even Christ Himself, Rebillard argues that Augustine actually changes not only the tone but also the focus of his argument to one of human compassion given the psychological realities facing his parishioners. But more than merely describe the role of emotions and grief at the expense of death, Augustine also expresses them in relation to his own life experiences in two important cases in the Confessions, that of the loss of his unnamed friend and the loss of his mother, Monica.110 In the first case, Augustine claims he experiences excessive grief at the death of the unnamed friend by grieving too dramatically, as if believing the friend would never die. This is attributed to his pre-conversion condition through hints of a kind of disordered self-love, obsessing over the possible absence of his half-self or even own death rather than his friend’s particularity. The second case is more complex in that it conveys the change in Augustine’s own position from the harm in expressing grief to the good in expressing grief.

106. Ibid. 107. Straw, “Timor Mortis,” 841. 108. Eric Rebillard, “Interaction between the Preacher and His Audience: The CaseStudy of Augustine’s Preaching on Death,” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 86. 109. Ibid., 91. 110. Augustine, Confessions, 60.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

41

Under the influence of Ambrose, Augustine initially tried to control his grief at the loss of his beloved mother. However, he continued to wrestle internally, admitting that he did not experience peace until he had conveyed a natural amount of grief at the pain of her loss. Reflecting on the loss of his mother, he says, I was glad to weep before you about her and for her, about myself and for myself. Now I let flow the tears, which I had held back so that they ran as freely as they wished. My heart rested upon them, and it reclined upon them because it was your ears that were there, not those of some human critic who would put a proud interpretation on my weeping.111

Here, Augustine describes the temptation to judge the other or feel judged that often stifles grief. Augustine himself does not feel reprieve until expressing grief before God in vulnerability. Thus, not only does Augustine theologically defend grief and those emotions that accompany death after reflecting on his own experience, but contends that other strategies for overcoming grief arise from pride. William Werpehowski interprets Augustine’s grief over the loss of his mother as sorrowing in connection with the virtue charity rather than portraying despair that revels in hopelessness as if death offers the final word.112 This sorrow is not “insensible” but one that expresses genuine grief over the “good of the lost relationship” as it pertains to the order of love.113 However, Werpehowski also claims he finds ambivalence in Augustine’s reflection on the experience of grief relating to his mother’s death. Werpehowski becomes skeptical of Augustine’s struggle to grieve alongside his focus on the shared eternal vision with Monica at Ostia. Werpehowski says, Grief now seems to be so aligned with inordinate carnal affliction that sorrow over worldly loss falls under suspicion. Augustine’s troubling struggle to curb his tears, and his self-reproach for finally having shed them, attests to this. . . . The embodied and worldly tie between mother and son gives way to a mode of spiritual friendship that seems to overwhelm the former bond.114

Like Werpehowski’s concern, both Nicholas Wolterstorff and Darlene Weaver further reiterate Augustine’s bifurcation between temporal loss and otherworldly bliss.115 Wolterstorff ’s “Suffering Love” critiques the authenticity of Augustine’s

111. Ibid., 176. 112. William Werpehowski, “Weeping at the Death of Dido,” Journal of Religious Ethics 19 no. 1 (Spring 1991): 176–77; 184. 113. Ibid. 114. Ibid., 186. 115. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas Morris (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988); Darlene Fozard Weaver, “Sorrow Unconsoling and Inconsolable Sorrow: Grief as a Moral and

42

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

grief over the value of the individual lost as merely the grief over one’s religious state.116 Wolterstorff takes issue with Augustine’s Plotinian conception of God (later developed within the Patristic and Medieval authors, including Thomas Aquinas) as the ontological argument that protects God’s unconditionality and immutability at the expense of a God who experiences pathos (emotion), primarily understood as suffering. Siding with a more modern conception of a God who suffers in opposition to the traditional view of God as immutable, Wolterstorff argues that by not suffering, God disvalues the world and the particularity of those created individuals lost through death. Likewise, by reflecting a general suffering rather than the particular suffering of God, humans lose the sense of genuine grief at the loss of a particular loved one’s absence.117 James Wetzel, on the other hand, argues the opposite position. In Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed, Wetzel describes Augustine’s departure from the Manicheans, Pelagians, and Stoics in his view of death and “fear of death” as it relates to the “delineation of the soul.”118 For Wetzel, Augustine’s grief entails a real loss over some value or good rather than expressing the desire to control one’s destiny through self-mastery (a kind of deceit) as seen in the pursuit of one’s own immortal virtue. Instead, Christ’s death is mysterious not because Christ’s death makes all deaths “an illusion,” but because Christ’s death is a real, actual loss (rather than a mere sign) that allows us, in turn, to grieve the particularity of those beloved individuals lost in this world.119 Like Dodaro’s depiction, Wetzel’s account of Augustine is one who departs from classical philosophy’s desire to secure the selfhood apart from external goods or external events and one that directly proposes human agency—along with God’s agency in Christ—as one susceptible to the material reality of this world. Wetzel, like Werpehowski, concludes with an account of Augustine’s eternal “beatific” vision shared with Monica at Ostia. But unlike Werpehowski, Wetzel suggests this vision reflects a genuine, realized, material loss when it comes to the death of Monica. Rather than claim this depiction personifies an “other-worldly,” disembodied focus in Augustine’s theology, instead, Wetzel deftly interprets this vision as one highlighting the particularity belonging to both Augustine and Monica. Wetzel says, “There is no evidence of dematerialization in this original state of things. Mother and son do not merge into a single soul, nor do they sink into the abyss of God. They talk to one another even as the Word hovers eternally over their breakable speech.”120 Rather than lose their identity in the eternal, beatific vision as individuals that are “imageless,” instead, they remain recognizable as Augustine

Religious Practice,” in Making Sense of Dying and Death, ed. Andrew Fagar (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004). 116. Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love.” 117. Ibid. 118. James Wetzel, Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2010). 119. Wetzel, Augustine, 41. 120. Ibid., 43.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

43

and Monica. Their full identities are not erased, but instead, more fully realized through their sharing in the wisdom and goodness of the Eschatological vision. Wetzel concludes that this reality portrays the good of “embodiment” or “incarnation,” not only in terms of humanity born of woman, but also the One born of woman as a “grievable God.”121 In this way, Augustine’s Christology depicts a God who suffers with humanity by entering human reality and thus, legitimizes grief over God’s particularized creation. Not only does God enter humanity through the incarnation, but once here, personifies grief through Christ’s tears over Lazarus and personifies anxiety or “fear of death” through his trial in Garden of Gethsemane. Through Christ’s weeping over the particular beloved and path to be endured, Augustine inaugurates a deeply human, deeply vulnerable ethics of compassion and lament. Darlene Fozard Weaver says grief drives us into the world with others as a kind of “dying and rising” with Christ.122 This kind of compassion draws individuals out of themselves and calls them into grief, pain, and lament with the neighbor. Such authentic grief coupled with Christ’s dying and rising is perhaps most poignantly captured through the example of Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s own Lament for a Son, whose reflections ache with deep loss and a realist account of suffering love in faith.123 Such grief is not denied or repressed through calibrated formulations as critiqued by Jeffrey Bishop in his account of modern medicine’s desire to assess grief and spirituality.124 Instead, such grief is held open like a wound or scar with theological hope that one day these wounds might be healed in an eternal realm. In this sense, the experience of dying and rising, or the way of Christ, is an ongoing path for Christ followers. Perhaps it is Augustine’s very “experiences” detailed within the Confessions and his psychological sensitivity to the realities of death among his parishioners at Hippo that embody the lengthy theological arguments originally outlined in City of God by reflecting upon the tragedy of temporal life with a kind of raw human honesty. In this way, Augustine hopes to depart from Stoic denial of emotions by embracing the reality of suffering. Interpreting uti/frui like Gregory’s incarnational love of neighbor materializes our ordered loves as loves that are deeply human.125 In Augustinian terms, death is an experience we authentically grieve in that God never intended the soul to be severed from the body—even if those bodies were originally intended for something better. In this way, Augustine’s approach not only alters the terms by which death is theologically perceived as unnatural within Christendom, but also supplies a new ethics of compassion or care through an ordered Christological love of God, self, and neighbor when facing the tragic realities of temporal death.

121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

Ibid. Weaver, “Sorrow Unconsoling and Inconsolable Sorrow,” 48. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987). Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse, 14–15; 238–41. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love.

44

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Because of Christ’s incarnational love for humanity, followers of Christ are now called into the pain and suffering of the neighbor. It is this Christological focus that John Cavadini highlights as essential to an ethics of Christian compassion. Rather than emphasize the resurrection alone as triumphal eschatological hope, Augustine underscores the significance of the incarnation and cross, a God who entered human suffering through brokenness, sacrifice, and humility. Rejecting Platonist Christian interpretations that denigrated the body by privileging the soul (even to the point of denying resurrected bodies), Cavadini says, “Christ’s ‘sacrifice,’ his free assumption of mortality, makes his mortal body the revelation of God’s perfect compassion and an invitation to be formed according to that compassion and thus to be ‘incorporated’ into Christ.”126 Christ’s assumption of human flesh in its mortality is the perfect act of compassion as seen through the sacrificial act of divinity taking on humanity. Christ’s broken body, His incarnation, death, and resurrection, become the new way by which we receive life that simultaneously orders our feelings in the right way—within the tension of grief and hope. By Christ’s compassion, we are invited to participate in His body, that is, the sufferings of Christ in this world through loving the self and neighbor in vulnerability. Modeling Christ through discipleship, we love the particular neighbor within this material world through our own broken sacrifices that constitute acts of compassion such as respect, justice, mercy, and love.127 On acts of justice toward the neighbor, Cavadini says, Justice is not in the first place a virtue acquired by separating ourselves from the body in order to be joined to God, as though in a walled-off garden, in mimicry of the virtue or utilitas of death. . . . Each moment of life may be lived ‘in Christ,’ ‘in hope’ in the ‘sacrifice’ or death constituted by compassion.128

As Christ followers, we live in the constant dying of mortal life, participating in Christ’s death and loving the neighbor as members of Christ’s body. We enter into their brokenness through an ethics of compassion that endures death in love alongside the neighbor. Rather than be numb to the pain and suffering of temporal decay, in Augustinian terms, we feel the pain and suffering by remaining present to one another in life, aging, and death.129 Acknowledging aging and death as unnatural and evil allows us to name the realities of aging and death as selfdisintegration and genuine loss.

126. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 244–45. 127. I further develop virtues for the community members surrounding the aging as respect, justice, mercy, and love in Chapter 5. 128. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 245. 129. St. Augustine, “Psalm 122: God Is True Wealth,” in Expositions of the Psalms, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 135–36.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

45

In terms of contemporary medical ethics, an Augustinian approach carves out a mean between the extremes, teaching us to neither seek out the illusion of a “good death” through active euthanasia made justifiable through a more Stoic position, nor aggressively deny physical death through grasping onto this material life by means of illusory salvation through medical technology as a kind of false idol. As for the first, Augustine’s theology denies the control sought through Stoic self-mastery that overlooks human vulnerability and suffering. In the Stoic desire to control grief through honor, self-mastery, or even suicide, Augustine rejected these attitudes as cloaked cowardice.130 Honor, virtue, or fame outweighed the loss. By denying its pain, individuals were willing to end their lives in an early death that appeared “dignified” as in the case of the political honor of Cato, or the desire to avoid shame as in the case of the virgin Lucretia, celebrated among the Romans.131 For Augustine, the Christian narrative is one that denies the virtue or honor of suicide by recognizing the action as self-murder. Rather than demonstrate “greatness of spirit,” through escape, instead, Augustine says “greatness of spirit” is attributed to those who endure the difficulties and challenges of life.132 If suicide were justified by means of avoiding evil, pursuing virtue, or hastening the reward of eternal life, Augustine wonders why suicide would not be an everyday occurrence.133 Augustine finds it faulty reasoning to justify suicide in order to escape one’s enemy or trials. His reasoning holds interesting implications for contemporary arguments pertaining to physician-assisted suicide that argues for a “dignified” or “controlled” death as opposed to the enemy of an “undignified” or “uncontrolled” death. The physician-assisted suicide movement in the United States, United Kingdom, and greater European context rehashes those age-old Stoic values in which contemporary dignity exalts autonomy or self-control as the highest virtue. To lose one’s capacities before loved ones through the loss of mind or body control is now perceived as worse than death itself. Retaining one’s image as controlled and able-bodied is now the mark of heroic virtue as seen through the public testimony of Brittany Maynard and the subsequent popular response in the US political context.134 Instead, Augustine’s position on death as genuine loss in all its forms opposes those philosophical perspectives that “naturalize” death, possibly leading to the justification of suicide.

130. Augustine, City of God, 33. 131. Ibid., 28–31; 34. 132. Ibid., 33. 133. Ibid. 134. Editorial, “Physician-Assisted Suicide Laws Grant Dignity: Our View,” USA Today, October 20, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/20/our-view-physicianassisted-suicide-california-oregon-editorials-debates/74282866; Charles C. Camosy, “The Vulnerable will be the Victims: Opposing View,” USA Today October 20, 2015, http://www. usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/20/california-physician-assisted-suicide-belgiumnetherlands-editorials-debates/74296214/

46

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

On the other hand, Augustinian vulnerability to death would also avoid medicalized forms of death that request aggressive care or advanced technologies even when the prognosis seems medically futile. While Augustine certainly recognizes the tragedy of death, he also recognizes the genuine good found in temporal limits. To continually pursue aggressive care and avoid accepting limits is yet another form of “self-mastery” or “control” that overlooks the vulnerability found in death. Augustine’s cosmology affirms humanity as limited by time and space. Accepting such limits and caring for others actually forges boundaries for our identities and assists our awareness in our dependence on God. Finally, by denying death’s reality through technologized means even in the face of futility, individuals deny the good of the soul/body connection by making too much of this material life as if the ultimate, eternal good could be captured in time. The temptation to deny death at all costs reflects a kind of idolized vision of the body, that collapses time and eternity, and disorders love of physical health(or “vitalism”) over the ultimate good found in God that results in resurrected bodies.135 In this sense, Augustine’s theology avoids the dual pitfalls of control exalted through either physician-assisted suicide or medical vitalism by way of technology. Instead, Augustine affirms that mortality is a broken part of the human condition. By definition, it is a necessary stipulation from which we cannot escape in this temporal reality. We are simultaneously living and dying with every waking breath. But even in this, Augustine reminds us that we have a God who not only alters our future condition, but enters into our suffering by compassion. For by turning to Christ’s broken body, we might fellowship in his sufferings through His ethics of compassion that reunites the creature to the Creator and, surprisingly, the unnatural human to the natural. As displayed through the eyewitness accounts of Augustine’s own death scene, it is only by our brokenness that we see ourselves as we truly are, that is, dependent, vulnerable creatures.136 In this creaturely vulnerability, we open ourselves to Christ, the self, and neighbor amid this temporal existence as disciples that embody an ethics of compassion. However, Augustine’s theology and ethics of death and aging does not end here. Not only does his theology empower believers to engage in acts of compassion through vulnerability, lament, and openness in this life to others enduring loss, but his theology also offers the hope of resurrection and Sabbath rest as the ultimate end of human happiness in our recreated existence aimed at eternity.

The Meaning of Aging: Sign and Preparation for Sabbath Rest While Augustine speaks more directly to the meaning of aging and death as a result of the human abuse of freedom resulting in the fall, he also offers a more positive, creative interpretation on aging in On Genesis: Against the Manichees and

135. For more on vitalism, see Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse, 65–68. 136. Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls, 162.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

47

The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Here he indirectly portrays aging as the final stage of life and the final age of this world moving toward Sabbath rest through his allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1. In this sense, Augustine portrays aging as a sign and preparation for Sabbath rest. However, to better understand Augustine’s depiction of aging as sign and preparation, I will first describe his sign/theory distinction in brief. Res, Verbum, and the Role of Sabbath Rest Understanding Augustine’s vision of aging as sign and preparation for Sabbath rest entails delineating his famous sign/thing theory. In On Christian Teaching, Augustine begins his uti/frui theory by delineating the difference between res (signs) and verba (truth/thing). A sign is a referent pointing to an actual thing. The clearest signs are those symbols portrayed through language that represents meaning. The sign (res), or symbol expressed through a word, points to truth, things, or substance (verbum). In some instances, “things” can also be used as “signs.” Augustine gives the example of “wood, stone, or a beast,” which are “things” used in the Old Testament to represent a higher meaning (wood: Moses sweetening the waters; stone: pillow for Jacob’s dream; beast: Abraham’s sacrifice in Isaac’s place).137 Signs can also be delineated as literal, figurative, or both literal and figurative in their interpretations. Literal signs are simple associations while figurative signs are more complex associations.138 Augustine distinguishes these signs at length in Book III of On Christian Teaching where he states the most useful signs are those that can be interpreted as both literal and figurative. However, one must exercise caution in interpreting signs; to misinterpret a sign as a thing involves “death of the soul,” that results in subordinating the soul to the flesh as it reflects a priority of created goods over the truth to which they refer.139 In cases such as these, misunderstood signs reflect a disordered love of material or temporal goods at the expense of the spiritual or eternal meaning to which they point. Augustine gives the specific example of interpreting the Sabbath solely in a literal way without pointing to its eternal meaning. He says, “On hearing the word ‘Sabbath,’ for example, he interprets it simply as one of the seven days which repeat themselves in a continuous cycle. It is, then, a miserable kind of spiritual slavery to interpret signs as things, and to be incapable of raising the mind’s eye above the physical creation so as to absorb the eternal light.”140 In this passage, Augustine displays how his sign/thing theory intimately relates to his temporal/eternal tension consistent throughout the whole of his theology. This theory becomes not only influential for understanding the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, but also for interpreting sacred scripture.

137. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 8; Cameron, “Sign,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 795. 138. Cameron, “Sign,” 796–97. 139. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 72–73; Cameron, “Sign,” 796. 140. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 72.

48

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

For Augustine, understanding sacred scripture entails multiple interpretations, primarily seen through the figurative, allegorical, and literal interpretation of particular passages. Also, some specific passages entail multiple interpretations. Augustine’s understanding of Genesis 1 involves this twofold interpretation. In a creative interpretation of this first chapter in On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, Augustine offers an allegorical interpretation of the seven days of creation as analogous both to the seven stages of human life and the seven ages of temporal existence. The seven stages of the human life span are infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth (prime), maturity, old age, and rest with “no evening.”141 The seven ages of the world, on the other hand, are Adam to Noah; Noah to Abraham; Abraham to David; the reign of David to Babylonian exile; Babylonian exile to the coming of Christ; the coming of Christ to the Son of Man coming where there will be only rest with “no evening.”142 On the seven stages of life, Augustine describes the sixth stage as that of “old age” that parallels the sixth age as “the coming of Christ.” He describes this stage saying, Now begins the sixth [day] in which the age of the old man (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) becomes evident. . . . In this age, however, as in the old age of a very old man, the new man (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10) is born, who is already living according to the spirit. For on the sixth day it was said: “Let the earth produce live soul” (Gen. 1:24). . . . Here . . . he talks of “live soul,” alive with the life in which a longing for eternal realities is beginning to show itself.”143

Here Augustine likens old age to the birth of a new man alive with longings for eternal realities by living an ordered life according to the spirit as opposed to a disordered life according to the flesh. Augustine associates aging with newness, rebirth, and a focus on spiritual, eternal realities informing temporal existence. This stage is most affiliated with the life of Christ in his delineation of epochs. To age is to be keenly aware of Christ’s presence with humanity as seen through the incarnation. Moreover, this sixth day turns into the seventh day of Sabbath rest. The seventh day is the only day Augustine notes to be without evening in the Genesis chapter. The seventh day of Sabbath rest only entails morning, for which there is no evening (here also drawing from the Letter to the Hebrews). Augustine interprets this passage to reflect the allegorical symbol of eternal Sabbath rest rather than temporal Sabbath rest alone. Day or life continues without closure. The seventh day represents eternity. Interestingly, Augustine likens the indefinite number of days experienced in old age (as opposed to more clearly demarcated lines adjudicating infancy, childhood,

141. Augustine, On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, 62–67. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid., 64–65.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

49

and adolescence), to an indefinite number of days (or generations) in the final age awaiting eternal rest.144 Augustine divides the life phases into seven stages with a specific calling or virtue developed by each successive stage. For example, the first stage of infancy entails the light of faith by which individuals believe visible goods; the second stage of childhood entails discipline to distinguish between things of the flesh and things of the spirit; the third stage as adolescence involves avoiding temptations of the flesh; the fourth stage of youth/prime of life entails seeking the unchangeable truth; the fifth stage of maturity involves productivity and fruit.145 The sixth stage of old age includes directing the mind or “live soul” (that already experiences spiritual fruits) to the service of reason and justice, not of foolhardiness and sin. In this way too, may [hu] mans be made to the image and likeness of God, male and female, which means understanding and activity. . . . In all these days, evening consists in the completion or perfection of the various works, and morning in the start of the ones that follow. . . . [Finally] After the works of this sort of six days, works that are very good, we should be hoping for everlasting rest.146 (italics mine)

Thus, old age involves the pursuit of virtue as seen through the soul’s order of reason and justice that engages both understanding and activity. Understanding involves contemplation of God and wisdom received through union with Christ while virtue portrays wisdom through specific actions during our earthly pilgrimage in time (as will be discussed further in Chapter 3). The sequence of progression through the six stages reflects change or maturity through growth. One grows or ages through physical experience with the outside world, but also in one’s inward relationship with God when cultivated through union and dependency on the Divine for wisdom and understanding. Moreover, just like God works through time over the course of six days or epochs, on the seventh day or stage, God rests from work to delight and contemplate the beauty of His created work in perfection. The aging stage reflects this movement from work to rest and reflection on life’s gift, goodness, purpose, and meaning. Aging seems to involve reflection on life as a whole—beginning to end. The limitation of life that often ends with aging toward death gives a sense of completion and identity where individuals make sense of the whole. From this perspective, aging is a gift. Likewise, Augustine allegorically interprets the morning of the seventh day as transitioning into the final Sabbath rest for eternity. In this way, creation moves toward perfection or completion that is fulfilled in eternity. Given Augustine’s understanding of the sixth day of creation as a sign both for old age and the final epoch involving Christ’s presence with humanity, aging might serve as a sign and

144. Ibid., 66–67. 145. Ibid., 67–68. 146. Ibid., 68.

50

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

preparation for Sabbath rest within the Christian community. Death that closes the sixth day and enters into the seventh involves the entrance into eternal Sabbath rest. Thus, aging specifically reflects wisdom and action working together, pointing to the ultimate purposes of God. In other words, much like the Eucharist points backward to the cross of Christ and forward to the coming reconciliation with Christ, aging persons are a Eucharistic or Sabbath people who point to Christ’s wisdom, love, and ultimate return. Transitioning into the final Sabbath rest for eternity, aging individuals move toward perfection or completion that is fulfilled in eternity. Death as reflected in the seventh day involves the entrance into this Sabbath rest. After identifying aging as sign and death as entrance into this Sabbath rest, I now consider the content of this sign/thing entailing age as inward sign and physical preparation for our eternal reality. “Outwardly Wasting Away”: Temporal Diminution Augustine’s theological interpretation of Genesis 2 as a fall from relational union with God entails consequences affecting nearly every part of the created world. As noted in his theological account of Genesis 1, the world was created good to exist in harmonious union with both its Creator and the other constituent parts of creation. By multiplicity (or differentiation), God’s created order reflects the wholeness of God’s unity primarily through ongoing sustenance and dependence on its Creator. With the creation of matter, form (including its differentiated parts), and time, the earth was set in motion as a series of processes (acting and being acted upon) in harmonious union.147 However, evil or nothingness enters the scene whereby angels and subsequently humans (with rational souls that include the capacity of intellect and will) choose to turn away from their Creator toward their own created ends. In choosing created goods as ends, evil reflects a kind of irrational act whereby creatures behave against their own nature. In one of Augustine’s more famous passages, he reflects on his early preference for created goods. He says, Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all.148

God’s creation, while good, becomes misused toward disordered ends apart from God. And by misusing created goods as ends, such goods lose their existence through a kind of inward and outward privation. Thus, not only does privation

147. Williams, “Good for Nothing?” 148. Augustine, Confessions, 201.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

51

exist at the interior level, but also affects the exterior reality of the created world. What began as an inward choice to turn against the Creator’s good for humanity results in outward consequences that become a symptom of this holistic privation. In other words, aging as decay toward death points to the reality of “fallen time” or the privation of the created world as it spiritually falls from union with God. God is the very source of existence. By turning from the source of existence at the inward, spiritual level, our bodies reap the consequences. This is perhaps best seen through the particular detail by which Augustine interprets the creation of humans in the garden throughout On Genesis. Humans were created as “ensouled bodies” in union or fellowship with God’s spirit in the garden. The original “ensouled body” of Adam had an inner man or union with the Spirit that reflected the image of God.149 As time-bound creatures, humans were in union with the eternal spirit of God. This union between the inward soul with God’s spirit entailed physical effects. Augustine says, “Now it is possible that previously God used to talk to them in other interior ways, whether expressible in words or not, as he also talks to the angels, enlightening their minds with the unchangeable Truth itself.”150 Remaining in union with God through knowledge of the unchangeable Truth with God’s spirit and repeatedly partaking from the tree of life or perhaps river of life, the ensouled bodies were able not to sin and subsequently “able not to die” (posse non peccare et mori).151 In other words, the tree of life ensured that the body would not change from good to worse and would not die from old age or other causes.152 However, this status involved an “original immortality with mutability” or conditional mortality in which creatures can change from better to worse.153 In choosing to turn from the Creator, creatures also choose against their own nature causing disintegration (between soul, body, and its union with God’s spirit), and diminution toward nonexistence. Such diminution occurs at both the spiritual and physical level. Aging is the outward sign of an interior reality. As the Pauline description captures, “our outer nature is wasting away.”154 In this sense, aging and death serve as an outward (and perhaps last) sign to turn from the exterior to the interior, from outward to inward renewal. By turning from outward toward inward renewal, creatures ascent or capitulate to the Creator again with the hope of recreation that not only looks toward rest in the form of eternal bliss, but also helps to transform the possibilities of recreation in union with God’s spirit in material or historical time.

149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154.

Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 323. Ibid., 454. Ibid., 320–21. Ibid., 354. Ibid., 345. 2 Cor. 4:16-18 NRSV.

52

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Inwardly Being Renewed Day by Day: The Process of Becoming Aimed at Eternity If internal sin results in external consequences, then the external consequences need an internal remedy to heal its effects. In Christ, the God-man, a remedy is offered. By God becoming human, the perfect sign and sacrament that intersects the eternal/temporal, immutable/mutable realms, Christ transforms the diminution toward decay, privation, and nonexistence into the possibilities for renewal. Christ’s perfect union with God rectifies humanity’s disassociation from its Creator. His soul and body, internal and external acts, function as one harmonious agent rather than one of fragmentation and dispersion. Whereas God once talked to humans (Adam and Eve) through invisible, interior ways, humanity now hears the voice of God through the visible created world in the God-man, Jesus Christ.155 Augustine continues describing how God helped draw him back toward himself through the mediation of the created world. He says, You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.156 (italics mine)

Now God uses the sensory and material world of signs and sacraments to point toward the eternal by realigning our inward, spiritual self back to God. Christ becomes the ultimate sacrament and reality that transforms the passing external realm into one that might be renewed in perfection. Given Christ’s transformation, His resurrection foreshadows the aim at new “enspirited bodies” (better than the original “ensouled bodies”) that gaze directly on the unchangeable substance (much like the angels) in bodily, spiritual, and intellectual bliss.157 Turning toward Christ in this temporal existence transforms the possibilities for some renewal (though imperfect) in this material realm. Augustine suggests that even the apostles who merely maintained “ensouled bodies” were “living an ‘enspirited’ inner life, being renewed, that is to say, ‘for recognition of God according to the image of the one who created them.’”158 By turning toward Christ, the immortal/mortal God-man, humans return to God and reverse the decay toward death with the hope of renewal and resurrection. The consequences of turning away from God to the external world require turning back to God by means of a temporal/eternal solution in Christ. The interior choice with exterior effects requires an internal choice with external effects as its remedy.

155. 156. 157. 158.

Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 454–55. Augustine, Confessions, 201. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 505–06. Ibid., 323.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

53

In the meantime, Christ followers can experience renewal within their inward spirit (or minds) by partaking of the “mind of Christ” since wisdom comes from the Spirit in union with God.159 The Spirit renews human nature and chastens our loves toward God as the end. By loving the self and neighbor in God, humans order their loves according to the Spirit as intended in both creation and fulfilled through recreation. In one of Augustine’s most famous descriptions, he confesses the importance of ordered love personified through a “good will” that clings to God’s gift or Spirit as its properly determined “weight.” He says, In your gift [Spirit] we find our rest. There are you our joy. Our rest is our peace. Love lifts us there, and “your good Spirit” (Ps. 142.10) exalts “our humble estate from the gates of death” (Ps. 9.15). In a good will is our peace. A body by its weight tends to move towards its proper place. The weight’s movement is not necessarily downwards, but to its appropriate position: fire tends to move upwards, a stone downwards. They are acted on by their respective weights; they seek their own place. Oil poured under water is drawn up to the surface on top of the water. Water poured on top of oil sinks below the oil. They are acted on by their respective densities, they seek their own place. Things which are not in their intended position are restless. Once they are in their ordered position, they are at rest. My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me. By your gift we are set on fire and carried upwards.160 (italics mine)

By the gift of God’s spirit, we ascend to our proper weight or proper order in accordance with a good will of love. Our “hearts ascend” with inward renewal enacted by a good will or ordered love. When ordered, love of God moves our soul to rest. When objects are not in their proper place, they are restless. But carried by love, not only do our souls find rest but so too do our bodies find rest. The ascent of love, the movement toward the peace of the New Jerusalem begins in this reality. Evans captures this ascent of love as inward growth or movement toward perfection in eternity.161 In Augustine’s anthropology, creatures are pilgrims on a journey toward eternity in the midst of time. Rather than assert that humans attain perfection in this material reality, Augustine articulates a “process of perfection” or inward renewal across time. Evans says, “The perfect in this life, then, are those who are busy driving out evil .  .  . their perfection consists not in their ‘being’ good, but in their ‘becoming’ good.”162 As Wetzel says, an ideal life for Augustine is a “confessed life.”163 Augustine’s realist account of human nature recognizes the inability to achieve or “be” perfect but nonetheless still struggles, receives love, and responds to God in “becoming” aimed at the Eschaton.

159. 160. 161. 162. 163.

1 Cor. 2:16; 6ff NRSV. Augustine, Confessions, 278–79. Evans, Augustine on Evil, 157. Ibid. Wetzel, Augustine, 8.

54

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Moreover, Evans says, “With God, to ‘be’ and to ‘be good’ are the same thing. With [humans], the unity of being and goodness is something in prospect, not something in the present.”164 For Augustine, God as Trinity is divine simplicity. Only God’s being and attributes are one. There is no potentiality, but only actualization. God is completely whole in Himself. Humans, on the other hand, are beings composed of potential that are in the process of actualization or “becoming.” Human beings have attributes, both external and internal, that are subject to change. Whether the movement is the external aging from childhood to an adult stage where potential is realized or whether the movement is one from vice to virtue where one’s individual character grows over time, both portray a maturing process. Humans were made to change, grow, mature, and age. The change is sustained toward wholeness, rather than fragmentation, through relational dependency on God. Augustine’s sense of “becoming” is particularly acute for the aging stage of life. “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”165 As seen through his interpretation of the sixth age of life as one in which Christ enters temporality as the new man, likewise the sixth stage of life entails contemplation and action embodying justice ordered by love in the Spirit. Again, Augustine says, On the sixth day [aging phase of life] . . . we already have the spiritual fruit of good thoughts and ideas, we direct all the movements of our spirit so that it may be a ‘a live soul,’ one at the service, that is, of reason and justice . . . may the man be made to the image and likeness of God . . . which here means understanding and activity.166

By inward renewal, aging individuals are “becoming” righteous through contemplation (understanding) and activity (love), thus pointing to the coming perfection of Sabbath rest for eternity. Sacramental Sign: Aging as Preparation and Death as Entry into Eternal Rest For Augustine, rest is the end and aim of human existence. Rest is the happy life, entailing peace, integration, and wholeness through union with God. God is the source of this rest and peace given that God is Creator and Redeemer. In creation, union with the Spirit of God integrates the soul and body through ordered loves. Given the turning away of creation toward privation and nonexistence, humans now endure disintegration, fragmentation, and divided desires enacted by divided wills. Such disintegration causes restlessness in which the weights of our loves are disordered. Only a divine-human physician can heal the disintegrated, disordered body-soul relation into one that is renewed and reordered by the gift of God’s spirit in time, culminating in eternal Sabbath rest.

164. Evans, Augustine on Evil, 157. 165. 2 Cor. 4:16-18 NRSV. 166. Augustine, On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, 68.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

55

Death and resurrection is the entrance into eternal Sabbath rest. Participating in Christ’s body or Christ’s death and resurrection, believers enter the eternal City of God, a kingdom without end. Following the Pauline idea, Augustine describes the corruptible that will put on the incorruptible and the mortal that will put on the immortal.167 Concerning our eschatological bodies, Augustine describes them as unified in a perfect whole without loss or excess.168 In perfect beauty and proportion, they will resurrect incorruptible and immortal much like the body of Christ. Nonetheless, such bodies will be recognizable as the body of Jesus was recognizable. Those wounds that brought glory to God in this material realm will also remain recognizable, though without harm or weakness to the whole. Regarding more difficult questions pertaining to mangled corpses disintegrated into parts, Augustine likens the Re-creator to the Creator who once created both matter and form. He says, “All that is required is that the whole pot should be re-made out of the whole lump, that is, that all the clay should go back into the whole pot, with nothing left over.”169 In other words, the essential substance will remain while those parts that were deficient or lacking will be removed. Augustine continues suggesting that the size of the incorruptible bodies will relate to their original size, while the resurrected age of those bodies will reflect the resurrected Christ who died in the prime of his life near the age of thirty.170 After thirty years, individuals “go downhill towards middle age and senility.”171 Yet shortly after implying the aging experience as one that is negative, Augustine assures us, saying, “it would be no disadvantage even if the form of that body were that of an infant or an old man; for in the resurrection no weakness will remain, either of mind or body.”172 Without weakness, these bodies will not only be defined as unable to sin, but also unable to die (non posse peccare et mori). After describing the outward appearances of the incorruptible bodies, Augustine details the inward renewal by which everyone will see the physical and spiritual reality of Christ among them. While in this temporal experience, we see God through the eyes of faith involving the mind and heart, there we “shall see face to face.”173 Augustine says, We shall then see the physical bodies of the new heaven and the new earth in such a fashion as to observe God in utter clarity and distinctness, seeing him present everywhere and governing the whole material scheme of things by means of the bodies we shall then inhabit and the bodies we shall see wherever we turn our eyes. It will not be as it is now, when the invisible realities of God are

167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173.

1 Cor. 15:53 NRSV. Augustine, City of God, 1056–57. Ibid., 1060. Ibid., 1056. Ibid. Ibid. 1 Cor. 13:12 NRSV.

56

Sabbath Rest as Vocation apprehended and observed through the material things of his creation, and are partially apprehended by means of a puzzling reflection in a mirror. Rather in that new age the faith, by which we believe, will have a greater reality for us than the appearance of material things which we see with our bodily eyes . . . in the future life, wherever we turn the spiritual eyes of our bodies, we shall discern, by means of our bodies, the incorporeal God directing the whole universe. God then will be seen by those eyes in virtue of their possession (in this transformed condition) of something of an intellectual quality, a power to discern things of an immaterial nature.174

Thus, our spiritual or intellectual eyes will precede our physical eyes, illuminating the whole universe as ordered by the incorporeal God in perfect harmony. Rather than move from the physical/exterior to the inward intellectual assent, the body will be perfectly illumined by the inward knowledge of God. Augustine’s understanding of the inward knowledge of God precedes physical sight. Moreover, future eternal bliss entails perfect peace and leisure. Joining the angels who now contemplate God in the immortal “heaven of heavens,” the nature and activity of the saints will entail leisure and praise. There will be perfect “felicity” without any trace of evil, corruption, or privation. The reward of virtue will be God Himself fulfilling the promise that “He shall be our God and we shall be His people.”175 Then time will turn into the seventh day, the greatest of Sabbaths without evening.176 There will exist eternal rest for both spirit and body. He says, “There we shall be still and see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what will be, in the end, without end! For what is our end but to reach that kingdom which has no end?”177 To be still, see, and love (being, understanding, will; memory, understanding, love), our existence will be complete. No longer spiraling into disintegration, our existence will be whole. And to be complete is to entail perfect rest and peace. Looking forward to the day when by death and resurrection, creatures enter that perfect Sabbath rest, aging individuals share in a mixture of contemplation and action. By contemplation, and inward renewal, aging persons might anticipate and experience eternity in the here and now. By loving and just actions, aging persons might show mercy and point to the reality of everlasting rest. Anticipating this sanctified Sabbath day, Augustine says, “Rest and quiet is worth more than any activity.”178 Like Aristotle’s controversial ending of the Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine too privileges contemplation in relation to activity.179

174. Augustine, City of God, 1086–87. 175. Ibid., 1088. 176. Ibid., 1090. 177. Ibid., 1091. 178. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 255. 179. Perhaps it is not surprising that Aristotle believed only the old could display true virtue given that habits are to be acquired over time through prudence and practice.

Sabbath Rest: Moving Toward Death

57

By contemplation, aging individuals might anticipate the inward, perfect rest of God that transforms our living in this material reality. Augustine opens his famous Confessions seeking this rest and closes his Confessions saying, The seventh day has no evening and has no ending. You sanctified it to abide everlastingly. After your “very good” works, which you made while remaining yourself in repose, you rested the seventh day (Gen. 2.2-3). This utterance in your book foretells for us that after our works which, because they are your gift to us, are very good, we also may rest in you for the Sabbath of eternal life. There also you will rest in us, just as now you work in us. Your rest will be through us, just as now your works are done through us.180

Whereas now we work in God, there we will rest in God. Contemplation inaugurates the possibility of experiencing moments of this eternity while enduring time throughout our pilgrimage. In conclusion, aging individuals are a sign and sacrament for this coming reality. Augustine invokes the image of Simeon from the Gospel of Luke as a symbol of one awaiting and pointing to the reality of Christ. He says, “But the clearest testimony is given in the words of the venerable old man Simeon, who took the infant Christ into his arms and said, ‘Now, Lord, you are releasing your servant in peace, according to your promise, because my eyes have seen your salvation’” (italics mine).181 Seeing and witnessing to the Lord’s salvation, Simeon enacts faith with his inward spiritual eyes and outward physical testimony. His inward sight directs his physical sight. As an aging man, he offers an example or witness to God’s salvation transforming this temporal realm while awaiting perfection for eternal bliss. Simeon’s testimony is a sign and preparation for the eternal kingdom inaugurated in time. Like Simeon, the aged among our communities become signs and witnesses of the eternal rest we anticipate through contemplation while embodying acts of mercy, justice, love, and compassion during our travel as pilgrims in time.

180. Augustine, Confessions, 3; 304. 181. Augustine, City of God, 29; 1085.

Chapter 2 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Introduction—Perspectives on Death and Aging in the Theology of Karl Barth Like St. Augustine before him, twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth addresses the subjects of death and aging through the dual tension of both negative and positive experiences. As a dialectical thinker, Karl Barth considers varying theological themes set within his doctrine of revelation, God, creation, and reconciliation that are nearly unparalleled in terms of breadth and detail. As Gerald McKenny says in his introduction to The Analogy of Grace, “The Church Dogmatics is a long series of nonidentical repetitions, of seemingly endless elaborations of a tight circle of ideas that exhibit a remarkable unity across the space structured by its topoi and the temporal span over which its volumes appeared” (italics mine).1 Barth’s discussion of death and aging offers a rich example of such topics explored throughout his Doctrine of Creation within volumes III/1–4, reflecting these experiences in their dualistic tension as challenging yet good. In this sense, an appropriate title for this chapter is “The valley of the shadow” as Christians are called into death’s mysterious darkness with the hope of attaining not only the other side through resurrection, but the good shepherd’s presence under the cast of this shadow. For Barth, death and aging are a contradiction involving both our curse and call. This phenomenon is best illuminated through the lens of Christ and secondarily, through theological “annexation” that turns to general sources of knowledge for interpreting human experience.2 In this chapter, I first will explain

1. Gerald McKenny, The Analogy of Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1. 2. First-order and second-order knowledge in Barth remains subject to interpretation and possible controversy given Barth’s initial denial of natural theology and the analogia entis. However, I conclude that first-order epistemology for Barth is Christocentric, rooted in Anselmian faith seeking understanding (or the analogy of faith, I/1 posed by the analogy of grace, II/1), reflecting a kind of revelatory knowledge through encounter (I/1). Encountering Christ (as initiated by God) illuminates knowledge of God for Barth. However, it is possible also to account for second-order knowledge in Barth (i.e., “little lights”) based on his own appropriation of varying philosophers and theorists that cohere

60

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Barth’s understanding of death by Christologically identifying its role as curse and judgment in relation to sin and evil; second, I will consider its opposite— that death is our natural calling through Christ’s death and experience; third, I will explore Barth’s use of created time and its role in defining persons as finite as well as mortal; and finally, I will conclude by considering aging as vocation and the significance of intergenerational relationships within his section on ethics as response to the Divine command.

Death as Curse: Evil and Negation A central question in Barth’s section, “Ending Time” (III/2 § 47.5) in his Doctrine of Creation is whether death is intrinsically evil or intrinsically good. Through Barth’s spiraling account he answers yes and no to both questions, initially outlining how death is primarily related to evil in terms of the sign of God’s judgment fulfilled in Jesus Christ. On Barth’s negative view of death, I will consider first his general discussion of sin, evil, or das Nichtige (nothingness) in III/3 through a Christological lens, and second, his explicit discussion of death as the sign of judgment responding to sin and evil in III/2. Finally, however, Barth concludes that even within the darker side of death there exists the reality of Jesus Christ, the God-man who conquered death with the light of resurrected hope. Evil, Sin, and Consequent Death within das Nichtige As R. Scott Rodin highlights, Barth did not set out to address the so-called question of theodicy in terms of an abstract concept, yet was compelled to discuss evil and sin given his aim at describing theology in terms of witness to God’s work in creation and reconciliation with integrity.3 Nuancing the tradition while remaining consistent with his own internal schema, Barth states that evil is most clearly revealed by what it contradicts, namely the God-man who took on human flesh, perfectly fulfilling the divine command. “The sickness is disclosed with the cure.”4 Just as Christ solely illuminates knowledge of God, so too is evil, for Barth, most acutely illuminated through a Christological lens. Similar to Augustine’s understanding of privation, evil cannot be described as a substantive entity, but as a non-entity or nothingness in relation to what it contradicts. The subject (or nonsubject) can only be accounted for by descriptions, which never quite capture the object. All theological statements, for Barth, are isolated thoughts and statements

with his theology by “annexation” posed in Church Dogmatics II/2 and his countless examples throughout III/2 and beyond. 3. R. Scott Rodin, Evil and Theodicy in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Peter Lang, 1997). 4. CD III/3, 309.

The Valley of the Shadow

61

directed from different angles at the one object under study without seizing that particular object.5 Nothingness is such a subject; it cannot be seized. However, discussion of nothingness is further exacerbated in that it exists under the “shadow of a break,” the break in the Creator-creature relation.6 As Barth describes, The break in the relationship between Creator and creature .  .  . which is compatible with neither the goodness of the Creator nor that of the creature and which .  .  . can only be regarded as hostility in relation to both. .  .  . For theology . . . knows its object solely under the shadow of this break.7

The theodicy problem for Barth has a concrete starting point rather than an abstract foundation, whose abnormal origin exists within the shadow of the break in the Creator-creature relation. One cannot discuss nothingness philosophically from without but only theologically from within—even if theology is broken by definition.8 Mindful of his own epistemological concern that theology, and discussion of nothingness in particular, involves descriptive accounts without fullcomprehension, Barth offers the closest definition of evil without “seizing” it as “receding frontier.”9 Nothingness can only be defined in terms of what God did not will while existing nonetheless. In an interesting hermeneutical move, Barth suggests that nothingness comes about with creation when God “separates” creation from non-creation. In this “separation,” nothingness or evil comes to feed on creation. Barth says, The first and most impressive mention of nothingness in the Bible is to be found at the very beginning in Gen. 1.2, in which there is a reference to the chaos which the Creator has already rejected, negated, passed over and abandoned even before He utters His first creative Word, which He has already consigned to the past and to oblivion even before the beginning of time at His command. Chaos is the unwilled and uncreated reality which constitutes as it were the periphery of His creation and creature.10

Nothingness exists as a receding frontier or chaos that feeds on creation at the moment God creates as a kind of parasite. Nothingness is that which God rejects,

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

CD III/3, 293–94. CD III/3, 294. Ibid. CD III/3, 366. Ibid. CD III/3, 352.

62

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

negates, or passes over. It only exists as negation and ultimately is subject to Divine sovereignty in that it feeds on creation’s natural boundaries or limitations.11 Yet nothingness exists. While nothingness exists as a non-entity or third sphere apart from God’s creative or positive will, it poses its reality on creation as a chaotic contradiction or “impossible possibility.”12 Barth further describes this chaos, saying, But chaos is not night, or the waters above the firmament, or the earthly sea. It still remains not merely distinct from the works of God, but excluded by the operation of God, a fleeting shadow and a receding frontier. Only in this way can we say that it “is.” But in this way it undoubtedly “is,” and is thus subject to the divine sovereignty.13

Thus, nothingness is the receding frontier that closely resides with or alongside creation’s natural boundaries and limitations. Perhaps this is best seen in Barth’s specific account of the creation narrative in III/1 § 41 whereby Barth interprets Gen. 1:2-3 and Gen. 1:3-4, the creation of light and day apart from darkness alongside the creation of heaven and earth apart from the vast waters as the separation of cosmic order from cosmic chaos. Barth interprets Genesis 1 as the nonhistorical, prehistorical “saga” (or divine poetry) that captures God’s speaking the world into existence apart from the world’s nonexistence as nothingness.14 Thus, Barth introduces the concept of evil or

11. Barth is slippery and somewhat unclear in this section. In many ways, it seems that Barth departs from the traditional Augustinian creation ex nihilo. If God creates out of chaos or nothingness, then Barth would seem to be Manichean in that God creates out of preexisting matter that sets the universe up as a kind of dualism. However, Barth does not make this strong claim (though perhaps critics might conclude this to be the case). Instead, he claims that nothingness exists as what God rejects, negates, or passes over. This implies either two possibilities: (1) nothingness begins simultaneous to creation or (2) a stronger claim that suggests God creates by separation involving creation from non-creation (nothingness) or good from evil. Both seem to imply a somewhat problematic conclusion in that nothingness or evil holds equal power to creation. However, Barth himself qualifies this by stating that light is greater than darkness in III/1 and that while death or evil has power over creation, evil is finally subject to God as the greatest power in III/2. Also, Barth affirms that evil will cease with the ending of time and not exist in eternity in III/2. In this way, evil is ultimately limited and God ultimately victorious as the “Liberator” of his covenant creation (as seen in III/3). 12. CD III/3, 352. 13. Ibid. 14. Barth defines nonhistorical, prehistorical saga as “nonhistorical” in that no objective historian was present to record the creation narrative. Barth claims all history is both objective and subjective. While the creation narrative is nonhistorical in terms of subjective record, the creation event objectively occurred nonetheless (much like the resurrection, which cannot be identified or recorded by direct observation—only witness in the aftermath). Thus, Barth affirms that creation is “real” and “true,” and denies that the

The Valley of the Shadow

63

nothingness within the initial creation narrative as opposed to Augustine (and his many followers) who refrain from interpreting the realization of evil until Genesis 3 with the introduction of the garden’s serpent.15 While perhaps dangerous in what appears to be Barth’s departure from Augustine’s traditional creation ex nihilo, his account offers a kind of logic whereby God creates time and space in juxtaposition to what God opposes, namely, a frontier of nothingness or darkness, an abyss or void. When God speaks light into existence, God separates light from darkness. Day becomes the temporal measurement of light; however, the shadow, limit, or night accompanies light close behind (Gen. 1:1-2). Upon close reading, it becomes apparent that night itself is not evil since night accompanies day within God’s positive will, but the receding frontier of darkness that threatens the night poses the negative or problematic nothingness. Likewise, God creates heaven and earth by separating the vast waters in Gen. 1:3-4 whereby heaven and earth are limited by the receding waters as their boundary. The boundary of water is not evil since it participates in God’s positive will, but the “menacing waters” from which God separated His creation reflects the dark void. Thus, in creation by separation—namely, the separation of order from chaos—God affirms one existence and denies another. According to Barth, “God said No to the world where man would be lost and Yes to the world where man would be protected.”16 In good providence, God creates the firmament (heaven and earth) in order to “restrain and limit the ‘menacing waters.’”17 Thus, God creates day as time and the firmament (heaven and earth) as space against the chaos of nonexistence. For Barth, such creation “includes the disarmament of chaos and the establishment of cosmos that poses the opposition of form and formlessness or the possibility of life as opposed to the necessity of death.”18 In sum, ordered creation aims at the meaningful existence of the creature for freedom, that is, freedom for fellowship with God and fellowship with others.19 Critics such as Rosemary Radford Ruether claim “it [is] possible to read Barth’s whole theology out of his view of the basic struggle between creation and chaos,

narrative is myth or fantasy. Instead, the narrative is saga or divine poetry reflecting a true happening and event in time, CD III/1 §41. 15. One caveat to this traditional perspective might be deduced from a comment made by Augustine in his Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis where he briefly alludes to the material heaven and earth as distinct from the spiritual heaven of heavens where the immortal angels dwell in opposition to the possible depths of hell where fallen angels reside. Heaven and earth, matter and form, seems to compose the space in between these immortal realms. In Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, 116–19. 16. CD III/1, 133. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. CD III/2 §45.

64

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

and to exhibit all the parts of his theology as working out of this basic conflict which runs through and underlies every doctrine.”20 Proponents, on the other hand, recognize a kind of insight that describes the conflict between good and evil throughout Church Dogmatics that reflects not only the realities of Christian experience, but also crescendos with magnitude in volume IV/1, particularly in his description of Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane along with Jesus’s conflict encountered in the passion narrative.21 Yet beyond describing nothingness in relation to creation’s beginning, Barth specifically claims that nothingness is best understood by what it opposes, namely God. In relation to God, its power is rated as low as possible while in relation to creatures, its power is rated as high as possible.22 Nothingness can only be understood in relation to these conflicting claims situated in the shadow of the Creator-creature break. Along with evil and nothingness is the category of sin, or the way in which individuals concretely encounter and succumb to nothingness. Sin concretizes evil and nothingness through specific attitudes and actions in time. For Barth, sin is defined as the repudiation of grace or disobedience to the will of God (as Divine Command), surrendering to the alien power. Sin is imperfection in contrast with God’s natural perfection designed for the creature.23 Such sin is not without consequence, however. Individuals find themselves faced with the impending and intolerable threat of death. Sin presumably gives power and privilege to the alien force of evil in its consequential threat over creation. Thus, sin harms God’s good creation originally designed for its own created flourishing, namely, freedom in fellowship with God and neighbor. As Barth says, “Sin as such is not only an offence to God; it also disturbs, injures and destroys the creature and its nature. And although there can be no doubt that it is committed by man, it is obviously attended and followed by suffering, that is, the suffering of evil and death.”24 Here one sees that sin has harmful consequences—not just because it represents an offence to God—but because it harms God’s good creation with destructive force in opposition to creation’s original aim. Nothingness in the form of sin is “wholly anomalous” and ends in destruction of the creature, composing a physical and moral death. Creatures, in their own power, cannot combat the pervasive threat of evil from this alien power. Thus, a remedy was needed in order to rectify the human situation from the powers of evil and nothingness.

20. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Left Hand of God in the Theology of Karl Barth; Karl Barth as a Mythopoeic Theologian,” Journal of Religious Thought 25, no. 1 (1968–69) quoted in Rodin, Evil and Theodicy in the Theology of Karl Barth, 131. 21. Paul Dafydd Jones, “Karl Barth on Gethsemane,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9 no. 2 (April 2007): 148–71. 22. CD III/3, 295. 23. Ibid., 308. 24. Ibid., 310.

The Valley of the Shadow

65

As Kathryn Tanner describes, “creation and providence (distinct yet related) is the subordinate precondition or presupposition of Christ.”25 Barth’s supralapsarian interpretation presents “creation as the external basis of the covenant” and “the covenant as the internal basis of creation.”26 For Barth, “Christ is the key to creation”—if not its implicit telos.27 God created with the intention to covenant and dwell with humanity in the form of the incarnation. Comparing God’s work in Christ to God’s work in creation, Tanner says, The subordination of God’s No to God’s Yes that is clear in Christ . . . finds a correspondence in the way darkness or nothingness forms around what God creates as a quite secondary consequence of God’s creative affirmation—the divine Yes—that brings the world to be. The way Jesus’ coming is a light in the darkness of a world of sin and death is then matched by the way light shines out of the darkness when God speaks God’s Word in creation. And like the antagonism displayed on the cross by the forces of chaos, sin, and death, this darkness from the beginning carries a threat against creation.28

Thus, God ordained His incarnation and redemption in the coming Christ, foreseeing the reality of creation’s accompanying evil frontier in God’s decision to create. However, before describing Christ’s reconciliatory work that ultimately redeems death, I next consider the painful sign of judgment accompanying human death in the realm of creaturely existence in “fallen time.”29 The “Sinister” Side of Death as Sign of Judgment The section “Ending Time” III/2 of the Doctrine of Creation follows a previous section entitled “Beginning Time” in which Barth discusses the two questions of our “whence” and our “whither.”30 “Ending Time” inevitably relates to how individuals perceive death, the closing boundary to life’s allotted time. Death is a return to nonbeing from being, nonexistence from existence as a consequence of living in contradiction or sin. Barth says, Can we accept the Old Testament’s designation and description of the nature and reality of death without realizing that, above and beyond what may belong

25. Kathryn Tanner, “Creation and Providence,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 118. 26. CD III/1, §41. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 119. 29. Barth describes fallen time as opposed to created time, which is flux. Created temporality recognizes past, present, and future, while fallen time (in accord with nothingness) reflects a “flight” or escape from time without time’s true center, namely, Christ who is not only eternal but also “time-ful,” CD III/1 and CD III/2. 30. CD III/2, §47.3-5.

66

Sabbath Rest as Vocation to the nature of man, there speaks in it a view of man and judgment on him . . . which is not normal . . . but is an intrusion from without . . . How else could death be so sinister?31 (italics mine)

The experience of death here is described as “abnormal.”32 Barth subtly begins parsing out his paradoxical view that maintains death as natural and death as sinister. Moreover, death as sinister accords with those consequences associated with sin and submission to the destructive forces of das Nichtige (nothingness). In one of his more ominous descriptions of nothingness, evil, and death’s reign, Barth says, “Nor is it a mere matter of dying as the natural termination of life, but of death itself as the intolerable, life-destroying thing to which all suffering hastens as its goal. . . . As negation nothingness has its own dynamic, the dynamic of damage and destruction with which the creature cannot cope.”33 Given the propensity to disregard grace by acting in accord with our creaturely contradiction, death here reflects destruction or its sinister side—a death from which the creature is destroyed and cannot cope.34 The sinister sign of judgment, however, is not an abstract or general principle, but a concrete occurrence in that every individual lives in contradiction to one’s created good by siding with the impossible possibility of nothingness. He says, But it can and must be said generally that death as it actually meets us is the sign of this judgment. . . . Limiting our life and thus belonging to it, it bears all the marks of this judgment (like a tree marked for felling). . . . The inevitability of death means that this threat overshadows and dominates our whole life.35

Rather than ascribe original sin to a literal Adam and Eve, here Barth acknowledges the theological claim that every human being concretely lives in contradiction to God’s original created good by succumbing to the power of the alien factor called nothingness through sin. Sin is resistance to God’s grace.36 From this perspective, death as evil reflects the sin and consequence humans brought upon themselves, looming over our lives like a shadow.37 Here, death is not the end of life in mere natural terms as discussed in the next section, but death reflects the evil and suffering belonging to fallen time. Thus, death as the consequence of sin stands as an ultimate negation, forcing every life-inhaling breath to move toward this fatal end.

31. CD III/2, 594–95. 32. Ibid., 595. 33. CD III/3, 310. 34. CD III/2, 596. 35. Ibid., 597. 36. CD III/3, 354. 37. Wolf Krötke, “Karl Barth’s Anthropology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 172.

The Valley of the Shadow

67

Older Reformed categories might call such negation God’s permissive will as opposed to God’s positive will, reflecting the theodicy of John Calvin.38 While Barth himself does not use the term “permissive will” per se, his use of the dialectic between God’s Yes and God’s No demonstrates the movement between these more traditional categories. One might say that sin’s consequence exists within the purview of Divine sovereignty proceeding from God’s permissive will even though this is not creation’s original intention.39 God did not positively will evil, but allows consequent evil in response to the nothingness humans actively embrace.40 Furthermore, the discussion of death as judgment and evil is illuminated by Barth’s excurses in which he explicitly says that the power of death is simultaneously the work of chaos or Satan enacting the power of evil’s presence in the world and the work of God’s sovereign power holding evil at bay. Relying primarily on biblical exegesis of the varying accounts of death, Barth says, The power of death . . . is certainly one of chaos . . . which is radically separated from the powers created by God, which is alien to His creation. .  .  . But as [death] erupts in the world created by God, it cannot put forward an absolute claim any more than Satan himself. Death has come (Rom. 5:12) into the world. It has become a tyrant over man. But so far as God is concerned it is not a sovereign power.41

There are limits to death as judgment under the sovereign domain of God. He continues, “Even that which is intrinsically negated by God . . . derives from God. Hence it does not exist side by side with Him or above Him, but under Him. It cannot, then, be a true and effective freebooter.”42 Here Barth suggests that Satan (evil) holds the power of death through chaos, a power opposed to God’s creative will. But once such evil enters God’s created world, it no longer exhibits an absolute claim (nor did it ever exhibit an absolute claim in Barth’s estimation), but comes under God’s dominion. Moreover, the dialectic between God’s positive affirmation (Yes) and God’s negation (No) reflects the movement between God’s right hand that affirms created goodness and God’s left hand that rejects evil.43 Here the more uncomfortable idea that evil exists under God’s domain is most explicit in Barth’s claim, saying, “It is God who sends the angel of death (Exod. 12:23, 2; Sam. 24:16; Job 33:22)

38. John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill and translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 311. 39. CD III/2, 367. 40. Ibid., 597. 41. Ibid., 616. 42. Ibid. 43. This same dialectic reflects the movement between God’s grace and God’s holiness, God’s mercy and God’s righteousness, and ultimately, God’s wisdom and God’s patience in accordance with the Divine perfections in CD II/1.

68

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

according to His wisdom and good-pleasure, just as Satan begins and continues his dark course only by God’s will and permission.”44 Here death responds to evil, the left-hand rejection of nothingness. And while working with different motives, wills, and ends, good and evil seemingly correspond in death—yet correspond in conflict. This unsettling prospect is considered further in one final climatic scene whereby good and evil momentarily coincide. The proposal that evil exists under God’s negation or non-positive will finds an almost disturbing “nadir” in the passage detailing the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in which we see the climax of the will of good and evil momentarily coincide in the death of Jesus Christ (IV/1 §59.2).45 Paul Dafydd Jones describes the Gethsemane account, saying, Christ is to accept that God’s punishment of sin carries with it a “strange logic” whereby God lets das Nichtige run riot, attacking even God’s own person, in order that it might turn upon itself and self-destruct, buckling under the weight of its own negativity within the time, space, and fiery love of the divine life—a “realm” in which God’s rejection of evil means its final impossibility as opposed to its impossible-possibility.46 (italics in original)

In this account, evil is finally abolished by God’s permissive will. Jones continues, “This is the way that God punishes sin: letting evil ‘do its worst’ to a human, cutting that human off from God, even as that human is lifted into God—for as this human, this history, abides ‘within’ God, evil is conclusively abolished.”47 In this sense, Barth’s cosmic conflict between order and chaos described in creation and his account of nothingness results in its ultimate clash on the cross. Jones says, “The key point: in Gethsemane, Jesus discerns that God intends to utilize evil to effect both the abolition of evil and God’s punishment of sin.”48 In this fascinating passage in Barth’s IV/1, Jones explains God allows das Nichtige to “run riot” in order that it might self-destruct under the power of God where it momentarily coincides with God’s will in the prayer of Gethsemane and the cross.49 Ultimately, Christ’s human and divine natures work together to defeat and secure freedom from death as judgment in this sinister sense. Instead, Christ’s death and resurrection offers new hope for the experience of death in time. The Light of Resurrected Hope amid Death’s Dark Judgment For Barth and his many predecessors including Augustine, the grave is not the final word in relation to death as a consequent evil. Barth describes the Christian God

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

CD III/2, 616. CD IV/1, 268 and Jones, “Karl Barth on Gethsemane,” 168. Jones, “Karl Barth on Gethsemane,”168. Ibid. Ibid., 167. CD IV/1 §59.

The Valley of the Shadow

69

who is concerned with the plight toward evil, concerned enough to enter human flesh and actively resist nothingness, reconciling the world with God.50 But even in this hope-fulfilling event, death remains an active sign of judgment upon humanity. Barth says, “Man and his life stand under the sign of God’s judgment. This is not just a religious opinion. It is a universal truth. It applies to all of us. . . . The sign of God’s judgment seeks recognition. It is objectively given to all men by the fact that they must all die.”51 Death negatively serves as a sign of universal judgment. However, Barth continues, conveying that the sign of judgment is dual-sided, including both a negative and positive dimension. Barth suggests the sign of judgment does not simply reflect human sin but also reflects Christ’s merciful response. Barth says, “It measures man by what God has done for him, by what Jesus Christ has accomplished in his place for his justification and deliverance from his burden. . . . It accuses him by showing him that all the charges against him have been dropped. It threatens him by showing him that he is out of danger.”52 The irony is that the full judgment of sin and evil to which the sign points falls on Christ. And yet while this judgment is fulfilled and conquered in an ultimate sense, the penultimate “sign” of this judgment remains present in our current time, reflecting both the negative reality of judgment and the positive reality of Christ’s mercy. In this sense, the measure of judgment does not completely dissipate but stands as a sign of both sin and Christ’s act on our behalf. On human sin, Barth says, “In our opposition to God we draw upon ourselves God’s opposition to us. In its perhaps concealed but very real basis our fear of death is the well-grounded fear that we must have of God” (italics mine).53 The negative sign of death reminds individuals that they fall into the hands of a holy God. The pain of death is not that individuals face death alone, but that they oppose God through the contradiction of their own sin. To fear death is ultimately to fear God.54 Here again does the problem of evil and death’s negation seem to coincide with the passive or permissive will of God. While implicitly proposing that the will of good and evil coincide in the reality of death, they only coincide in conflict. Creatures contradict that which God positively wills, namely, a relationship of freedom by succumbing to sin and evil, thus breaking the Creator-creature relation. As Jones claims, “For when each human sins, refusing the proposed option of covenantal action with God and embracing a divinely declined course of action with God, he or she ‘lets hell loose.’ Actualizing an otherwise ‘impossiblepossibility,’ each human provides evil with an entry-point into creation.”55 And this breach of sin that “lets hell loose” stands directly under God’s No rather than God’s Yes.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

CD IV/1, 157–283. CD III/2, 607. Ibid., 605. Ibid., 607–08. Ibid. Jones, “Karl Barth on Gethsemane,” 167.

70

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Following Reformed theology’s depiction of justice, Barth claims holiness and righteousness require “God’s opposition” to “our opposition of God.” Yet the same God of justice takes on the creature’s affliction and redeems death that it might stand under God’s Yes again. He says, “If death has such terrors for us, it is because in death we shall finally fall into the hands of the living God. But we shall fall into His hands and not the hands of another” (italics in original).56 God’s No, a more terrifying reality that includes the possibility of God’s absence, is rectified and redeemed by God’s Yes through mercy. In Christ, creatures fall into the hands of God’s mercy and Yes once more. Thus, even in the role of death as curse, or consequence for sin, God mercifully stands with humanity in solidarity as the ultimate helper, deliverer, and comforter. God is the Lord of death, who is “for us” even in this impending threat. God sets limits to the chaos in that God took on death, creating the boundary to death itself.57 In Christ, humans have a concrete helper who fulfilled the curse, for which death serves as a perpetual “sign” or reminder. However, the irony of death’s curse is that standing alongside the sign of judgment is the role of death as our natural end or “calling” in created time.

Death as Call: Shadow and Perfection A second aspect of death is to recognize its created goodness, rather than curse, in that it serves as our natural calling as finite creatures with limited ends. Secondary to a Christological explanation of death as curse, Barth uncovers this aspect of dying by recognizing the role of finitude and temporality as constituting human personhood. He defines death as calling through three fundamental aspects: first, Jesus Christ’s assumption of human finitude illuminating mortality as natural; second, human creatures experiencing mortality as constitutive of human nature; and third, the “shadow” side of creation as a mark of perfection where creatures ultimately stand in a dependent relation to the Creator. Jesus Christ’s Assumption of Human Finitude Illuminating Mortality In Barth’s theological schema, a Christological epistemology precedes other ways of knowing. Death as calling is another example in which his theological lens is reaffirmed. In essence, Barth’s primary claim is that Jesus Christ was free in his choice to take on sin in order to reconcile the world with God through death. Barth makes a strong case that Christ’s incarnation and subsequent atonement were two separate events freely chosen on His part in relation to the Trinitarian God-head.58 As Paul Dafydd Jones highlights, Christ’s atoning work on the cross

56. CD III/2, 608–09. 57. Ibid., 614. 58. CD IV/1 §59.

The Valley of the Shadow

71

was not a foregone conclusion. Christ enacts obedience to the eternal divine will in both the incarnation and his willingness to endure the cross.59 Through the incarnation, eternity entered time, taking on human flesh. God limited Himself as a finite creature—a creature who is subject to death. Christ’s incarnation anticipated a natural death since the choice to deliver humanity from the contradiction of sin was a separate act of God’s free grace.60 In choosing to become human, Christ chooses to become mortal and subject to natural death. The implication is that Christ would have died a natural death had he not encountered the cross. For Christ, negative death as judgment was not a biological necessity but a free choice.61 Christ’s choice to take on human finitude was not identical with the bondage of death as curse, but a willing encounter and subjection to God’s will and the chaos of evil (see IV/1). Thus, death as curse is not an absolute evil but a relative evil.62 Christ’s perfect employment of human flesh as the “Real Man” uncovers the neutral role that death plays for mortals as a natural aspect of creaturely reality, constituting our calling. As Wolf Krötke describes, Christ’s “ability to die” highlights the “anthropological necessity” of finitude.63 Christ as the “Real Man” not only transforms the role or sinister side of death as curse but also willingly took on natural death by becoming creaturely or finite through the act of the Incarnation. Mortality as Constitutive of Human Nature A second way in which death is revealed as calling rather than curse is seen through our second-order knowledge available through our theological anthropology or experience. Here Barth says that our finitude or temporal existence is the gift of “allotted time” or created time rather than infinite or perpetual time as constituting creatures. For Barth, like Augustine, limitation through time and space provides boundaries that compose our identities and are thus construed as good. Temporality ultimately eliminates the perpetual wavering that individuals daily experience in our attempt to properly order our relations to God and neighbor. He says, What would become of us if in an endless life we had the constant opportunity to achieve a provisional ordering of our relationship with God and our fellows . . .

59. In this way, Jones further affirms the full reality of Christ’s human agency and His work of obedience not only toward but also on the cross. He says, “This adjunction helps Barth to suggest that the justifying action of God qua Son does not exclude, but includes the action of Jesus qua human. In other words: Barth’s affirmation of ‘double agency’ goes all the way down, defining even his Christology” in “Karl Barth on Gethsemane,” 156. 60. CD III/2, 629. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Krötke, “Karl Barth’s Anthropology,” 172.

72

Sabbath Rest as Vocation or rather to postpone the ordering of this relationship, accomplishing it at best only in that daily drowning of the old Adam, which is always so doubtful a matter because he can unfortunately swim?64

Finitude is a gift. The boundary of time creates our identity by which we are limited in our choices and limited in our ends. Such limitation also prevents creatures from living in perpetual sin. Endless life does not exist and our mortality reminds us of our dependence on God in creation and redemption. In fact, Barth says that redemption consists of our very mortality, not an absolute elimination of our thissided finitude, but an eternal glorification of our this-sided experience as mortal beings. He says, Finitude, then, is not intrinsically negative and evil. There is no reason why it should not be an anthropological necessity, a determination of true and natural man, that we shall one day have to die, and therefore merely have been . . . our participation in God’s eternal life [requires] that one day we should merely and definitively have been.65

Not only does finitude reflect created goodness but also accepts the redemptive justification of our this-sided mortality with eschatological hope. In order to participate in God’s eternal life, creatures must be mortal or subject to time. The full work of the Trinitarian God (creation, reconciliation, and redemption) affirms our finitude as mortal creatures. Barth believes mortality is not merely an accidental property but constitutes our very essence, teaching us something important about being human. However, Barth is emphatic that death as our natural calling is only subsequent to reflection on death as curse or judgment. In this way, Barth maintains dialectical tension in his account as he is accustomed to theological paradox and affirms not only the curse, but also the call of death as central to our experience as creatures. Here Barth departs from Augustine’s cataclysmic fall and begins with human creatures in a modern context as both a composite of sin and grace. The “Shadow” Side of Creation as Human Perfection Third, mortality as calling is illuminated by Barth’s description of the “shadow” or “negative” side of creation alongside his description of nothingness in III/3. In III/3 §50.2, Barth describes “The Misconception of Nothingness,” positing one of his most intriguing theological claims, namely, that humans are composed of a twofold nature, both positive and negative, light and shadow, as part of our created goodness. This twofold nature that includes a shadow or vulnerable side

64. CD III/2, 631. 65. Ibid.

The Valley of the Shadow

73

is contrasted with nothingness as evil. Instead, the misconception perceives the shadow side as nothingness—a misconception that cedes too much ground to evil. The negative side of creation, on the other hand, constitutes the human dimension as fragile, vulnerable, and ultimately contingent. Not only does Barth call the negative side of creation, “good,” but he posits it as “perfect.”66 He says, It is continually reminded that as God’s creation it has not only a positive but also a negative side. Yet this negative side is not to be identified with nothingness. . . . It belongs to the essence of creaturely nature, and is indeed a mark of its perfection . . . dependent on God. . . . It thus follows that though its existence is under doubt and shadow it is not of itself involved in opposition and resistance to God’s creative will.67 (italics mine)

In this sense, Barth maintains the negative side of creation as separate from the chaos of nothingness—even if it stands in jeopardy. The negative side of creation is its “shadow” in which nothingness likes to attach itself. Here nothingness is parasitic much like privation in Augustine that attaches itself to our vulnerability. Perhaps it would be accurate to recognize the coherence of the “shadow” side of creation with the boundaries of night (as seen in the creation of day) and the receding waters (as seen in the creation of the firmament). These boundaries are still part of God’s positive will, though perhaps they are more vulnerable parts of His will. And nothingness, the deep void, quickly attempts to attach itself to our vulnerability in ways that might lead to sin. However, Barth maintains that sin-nothingness and vulnerability-goodness are distinct. Nothingness presumably attaches itself to creaturely vulnerability in order to lead us toward sin, but vulnerability itself is affirmed as creaturely good. Or more specifically, vulnerability and shadow are inherently good. The vulnerability of creatures constitutes our humanity. We are subject to relation by definition— and properly ordered relations in both an Augustinian and Barthian sense—in that we are intended for a vertical covenant relation with our Creator and ordered horizontal relations with our fellow humans in freedom. In a powerful description of such vulnerability, temporality, loss, and death, Barth says, “It is true that in creation there is not only a height but also an abyss . . .

66. While feminists may helpfully question why Barth places the vulnerable aspect of creation on the “negative” side, I would venture to guess that Barth uses the movement between “opposites” such as “positive” and “negative” creation in line with his overall dialectical theology that affirms two seemingly opposite statements regarding the complexity of God and human reality. Here placing “natural death” in the negative, while “life” in the positive, Barth describes those states of fragility and contingency that make human life vulnerable to loss as negative. But even in this vulnerability, Barth affirms such contingency as not only good, but perfect. In human vulnerability and loss, persons choose whether they turn or find solace in relation to God or self-reliance in the form of sin as nothingness. 67. CD III/3, 296.

74

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

not only progress and continuation but also impediment and limitation; not only growth but also decay . . . not only beauty but also ashes; not only beginning but also end” (italics mine).68 Here Barth describes limitations that include aging in the form of “decay,” “death,” or “end” as good. He continues, saying, There are hours, days and years both bright and dark, success and failure, laughter and tears, youth and age, gain and loss, birth and sooner or later its inevitable corollary, death. . . . In all this, it praises its Creator and Lord even on its shadowy side, even in the negative aspect in which it so near to nothingness.69

Our negative or “shadowy side” reveals the contingent and weak side of creation, evoking a sense of praise for the vulnerable dimension of creaturely reality. Concluding his section on creation’s shadow side, Barth cites Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as an example of one who captures the light and shadow of our general human experience. Referencing Mozart, Barth offers a poignant description of what he calls the twofold harmony intrinsic to human nature, saying, As though in the light of this end, [Mozart] heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow also belongs but in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, sadness cannot become despair, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is not ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway. Thus the cheerfulness in this harmony is not without its limits. But the light shines all the more brightly because it breaks forth from shadow. The sweetness is also bitter and cannot therefore cloy. Life does not fear death but knows it well. . . . Mozart saw this light no more than we do, but he heard the whole world of creation enveloped by this light.70

In Mozart’s music, Barth hears the “shadowy side” of creation in its breadth and beauty. To Barth, Mozart personifies the human condition in its dual status as light and shadow. Mozart also notes these dual aspects as unequal in our composition— yet simultaneously present nonetheless. He continues, saying, “Hence it was fundamentally in order that he should not hear a middle or neutral note, but the positive far more strongly than the negative. He heard only in and with the positive. Yet in their inequality he heard them both together . . . its twofold and yet harmonious praise of God.”71 For Mozart and for humanity, the negative side of creation, which includes life’s sorrows, limitations, and natural death, reflects creaturely perfection to the praise of its Creator. These perfections yield creaturely dependence. Such dependence illuminates the role human death plays in our final

68. 69. 70. 71.

Ibid., 296–97. Ibid. CD III/2, 298. Ibid.

The Valley of the Shadow

75

calling. The calling of death is by definition intimately tied to human temporality, a final subject that describes Barth’s account of the paradox of death as our curse and calling.

Finitude and Temporality: Affirming the End of Life as Human Good Barth’s shadow side of creation, depicting the creature as vulnerable and dependent, is perhaps most richly enhanced by his discussion of temporality as constituting human personhood. In III/2 § 47, Barth writes about “Man in His Time,” which includes “Allotted Time” (and subsequently “Beginning Time” and “Ending Time” as referenced above). Here Barth offers an account of first, Jesus’s time as distinct from overall humanity’s time; second, the role of temporality in defining our general anthropology; and third, the implications for human temporality as good rather than evil. Jesus as Time-ful: Eternal Temporality as Distinct from Created Time Barth consistently relies upon a Christological lens to illuminate his theology of death by first turning to the role of Jesus’s life in time. For Barth, Jesus is the Trinitarian Son, who is both eternal and temporal, entering time through the incarnation. Jesus Christ’s time is different than human time in that regular time consists of a beginning, present (or duration), and end that occurs in succession. Christ’s time, on the other hand, is fully beginning, present (duration), and end at once. Christ existed before His beginning, has a duration (which includes past and future), and continually endures beyond His end. Like Augustine’s distinction between time and eternity, Barth links Jesus’s time with eternal time.72 Rather than describe Christ’s eternity as timeless, it is more accurate to say Christ’s eternity is “time-ful.”73 Referencing the book of Revelation, Barth says, “The all-inclusive I am . . . means: I am all this simultaneously. . . . That is why I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. . . . All times have their source and end in my time.”74 Christ is fully eternal. However, Christ’s incarnation is not only “eternal” but also “eternal temporality.” Barth describes Christ’s eternal temporality further by saying, “But other times are previous or subsequent to mine [Christ’s]. They are overshadowed, dominated and divided into periods by my time. It is my present that makes them either past or future, for my present includes both. I was, and I am to come, as surely as I am and live.”75 In Barth’s estimation, Christ’s incarnation and resurrection events define all

72. 73. 74. 75.

Ibid., 463–64. Ibid. Ibid., 465–66. Ibid., 466.

76

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

aspects of human living, pointing both backward and forward, thus encapsulating all forms of created time. Christ as the God-man is simultaneously eternal and temporal or “eternal temporality.” Humans as Time-bound Creatures in “Flux” After defining Christ’s “eternal temporality,” Barth turns his attention to the human person as temporal. Here Barth says, “Humanity is temporality.”76 Like Augustine, Barth further defines temporality as distinct from eternity in its past, present, and future succession. Time is intimately connected to our being and action as concrete individuals in historical reality. It is God who gives humans the gift of time, which is further evidence of a God who is for us.77 The succession of temporality defining human creatures is ever fleeting, a chase in which individuals are in perpetual transition.78 In this way, created time is “flux” by definition.79 God summons persons to be faithful through trust and obedience amid life’s flux. According to Barth, every “now” is a particular occurrence, which does not return, one that is “pregnant” with the future.80 “We are always in transition. . . . The Now in which we are, is real as and because the present of the eternal God as the Creator of time is the secret of our present. What is this transition, then, but the offer, the summons, the invitation, to be with God now?”81 For Barth, the summons of the eternal God presents an urgency to the moment or the “Now” experienced today. While not directly using the language of “participation” here, Barth sounds much like Augustine in his emphasis on dependence. To fully realize oneself in the present is to respond to God’s summons. Responding to the vertical God-human relation entails subsequent impact on horizontal human-human relations for ethical living that enacts our freedom.82 The Good of Time and Our Final End Barth describes the implications of temporality for human living, reflecting death’s benefit rather than its harm. He posits six reasons for life’s fixed temporality, defining personhood and life’s end in a positive way. His first reason reiterates

76. Ibid., 522. 77. Ibid., 525. 78. Ibid., 531. 79. Barth distinguishes created, transitory time as “flux” from fallen, tainted time as “flight” in III/2 (with implications from sections on revelation, history, and time in I.2). 80. CD III/2, 541. 81. Ibid., 532. 82. Such temporal urgency helps offer context to Barth’s famous divine command ethics in which creatures are called to respond immediately to God in obedience. Because of God’s present and intimate relation to us in time and through time, Christians are called to joyously follow in obedience in CD III/4, 565–685.

The Valley of the Shadow

77

that Christ is eternal time, or time-ful, thus establishing the distinction between temporal life and Christ’s eternal life. A second reason temporality is beneficial is because unlimited time would not necessarily lead to a fulfilling life; it would include an infinite number of opportunities to create meaning, exhausting the creature’s identity. A third dimension is similar to the second in which Barth states that an unlimited life would lead to endless aspiring, yearning, and grasping both in relation to God and in relation to one’s fellow humans. It would be a life full of perpetual dissatisfaction, unrest, and longing for perfection. Barth goes as far as to say, “Could there be any better picture of life in hell than enduring life in enduring time?”83 Interestingly, in a postmodern era that offers limitless options whether through retail marketing, career paths, or relational opportunities, the sheer number of choices can be paralyzing. Recent popular clinical psychologist Meg Jay claims delayed adolescence now composing Millennials in their 20s may be linked to misperceived “limitless” choices.84 The irony is that in setting a limit, individuals might grow through their commitments to external projects, careers, and particular relationships. The limit of time helps circumscribe identity and freedom. A fourth aspect of human temporality in Barth’s account states that allotted time is good in that our very restriction poses the ground of our freedom. Here Barth brings forth his robust account of Christ as concrete person, preventing individuals from despair in limited time. He says, “The whole picture changes, however, if we are not concerned abstractly and generally with the limitation of our life, but with the God who limits it; if we are not concerned abstractly and generally with our allotted time, but with the reality of the God who allots it.”85 By focusing on the actual God who grants us our allotted time and walks with persons through each step, we turn from abstract despair in gratitude toward the relational God who limits and defines us as created beings. Here relationship with God and faithfulness to the call makes sense of life’s limitations. A fifth reason temporality is good is through its ability to offer a goal for human life. The goal is that persons are summoned to be in relation with God or to trust and obey Christ’s call with gratitude. A sixth dimension states that temporality is good in that it points to Eternity, the self-grounded, Trinitarian God who is “for us” by giving us the gift of time. God is wholly outside us yet wholly for us.86 Christ (Eternity) entered time and fulfilled time, illuminating the very meaning of our human temporality.

83. CD III/2, 562. 84. Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of them Now (New York: Twelve, 2012). 85. CD III/2, 564. 86. Ibid., 569.

78

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Lastly, a consideration of the problem of evil illuminates one final dimension to the time-eternity distinction. In III/3, Barth states that evil is a receding frontier, one that cannot exist in perpetuity. Only Christ is eternal. He says, What is nothingness? . . . Looking retrospectively to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and prospectively to His coming again, there is only one possible answer. Nothingness is past, the ancient menace, danger and destruction, the ancient non-being which obscured and defaced the divine creation of God but which is consigned to the past in Jesus Christ, in whose death it has received its deserts, being destroyed with this consummation of the positive will of God which is as such the end of His non-willing. Because Jesus is the Victor, nothingness is routed and extirpated . . . It is no longer to be feared. It can no longer “nihilate.”87

Evil is also subject to temporality without lasting effect in that Christ has conquered its sting for all time. Temporality, for human persons, can be lived in light of this resurrected hope for the duration of life’s appointed beginning, present, and end. Evil only has its way as we ignore this reality in blindness. In these ways, Barth reflects how human temporality and finitude serve as our creaturely good that affirms death as our calling alongside its initial description as curse.

Death and Aging in Responding to Barth’s Ethics as Command of God Death and aging serve as a paradox of curse and calling throughout Barth’s Doctrine of Creation (III/2 and III/3). In many ways, his ethics mirrors his anthropology with implications for responding to the call of God and neighbor through death and aging in II/2 §36 and III/4. In order to consider Barth’s ethical claims in detail, I will first briefly describe his methodological account of ethics as the command of God, second, discuss Barth’s ethical view of death as evil and the accompanied “will to live,” and finally, demonstrate how Barth’s “allotted lifespan” accounts for aging and mortality as creaturely good and vocation in his section, “freedom in limitation.”88 Ethics as the Command of God Within the Doctrine of God in Church Dogmatics II/2, Barth argues that ethics is one of Divine command or special ethics rather than one of universal, general, or natural law. Like his doctrine of revelation that claims knowledge of God comes through revelation of Jesus Christ, so too does his placement of ethics within the “Doctrine of God,” claim that ethics belongs to God’s election or self-revelation

87. CD III/3, 363. 88. CD III/4 §55.1 and §56.

The Valley of the Shadow

79

through Jesus Christ. While John Bowlin describes God’s election of humanity as friendship with God, Gerald McKenny describes Barth’s ethics as the covenant fulfillment of the promise, “I will be your God” with the sanctifying response, “You will be my people.”89 McKenny summarizes Barth’s contribution as an ethics defined and comprised wholly of grace, one that builds upon the Reformed tradition by subtly altering sanctification as rooted and fulfilled by grace in ways that Luther and Calvin—along with their followers—lack.90 For Barth, only God can define and determine the good. Humans are not able to know the good on their own accord. When ethics questions the rightness or fitness of laws or establishes constants in the form of rules or principles, such moral codes fail because they do not acknowledge the existential relation with the living God that offers the moral good in concrete situations. As McKenny emphasizes in his volume, Barth’s primary adversary is Promethean autonomy—or interiority that privileges the human apart from our constituted reality in Christ. Barth dismisses modern categories that propose “false alternatives,” such as divine sovereignty or human freedom.91 Instead, his analysis appeals to a premodern ethics of “ontological participation in the good,” through Jesus Christ.92 Barth begins with the “answer,” or “Jesus Christ,” as the object of revelation and electing grace that sanctifies the human through the divine command.93 Ultimately, Jesus is

89. John Bowlin, “Barth and Aquinas on Election, Relationship, and Requirement” paper presented at “Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Protestant-Catholic Dialogue,” Princeton Theological Seminary, June 19–22, 2011; McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 4. 90. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 28. Likewise, George Hunsinger describes this same dimension of human conduct as participatory sanctification in “A Tale of Two Simultaneities,” in which he details justification and sanctification as uniquely rooted in Christ within Barth’s theological account in ways that enhances his Reformed predecessors, Luther and Calvin. George Hunsinger, “A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Calvin and Barth,” in Conversing with Barth, eds. John C. McDowell and Mike Higton (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004). However, this also could be a matter of Barth’s interpretation of the Reformers and their understanding of “Christian Freedom” and sanctification as noted in Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion III. 1–6, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville:Westminster John Knox, 1960), 833–38. Conversation with Scott M. Manetsch, July 7, 2017. 91. Interestingly, McKenny notes Barth’s critique of autonomy is not so much antimodern as it is anti-Promethean, claiming Promethean self-reliance underwrites Stoic natural law, medieval Christianity (including Thomas Aquinas), and most of modern theology. The Reformation returns to premodern ontological participation in its Christocentric orientation that dislodges Promethean tendencies within theology overall, though the Reformers also remain vulnerable to modern bourgeois self-reliance given their view of sanctification built on human effort rather than grace in McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 24–121. 92. Ibid., 75. 93. CD II/2, 516.

80

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

the ethical “man” who determines good and evil. Only human arrogance presumes to know good and evil apart from an analogical relation to Him. Yet by starting with Christian ethics or special ethics, Barth does not deny general ethics or morality belonging to either philosophy or other religions. Instead, comparing ethics to Israel entering the land of Canaan that rightfully belonged to Yahweh, Barth says that ethics begins with Jesus Christ or special ethics and annexes other forms of ethics insofar as they comply with the truth of special ethics. It annexes not by “disarming the alien” element that composes these other forms of ethics, but maintains its special or distinctive status in relation to general ethics. Thus, one might say that theology precedes philosophy or faith precedes reason in formal compatibility insofar as these ethics comply with the Divine command or Word of God.94 The uniqueness of Barth’s ethics as expounded by McKenny is that Jesus Christ fulfills the moral good through perfect obedience that secures not only our justification but also our sanctification.95 Ultimately, McKenny claims Barth locates the ontological and analogical grounding of human persons in the intraTrinitarian God and the relation of Christ’s humanity to the whole of human nature. For Barth, “electing God is elected man” or “sanctifying God is sanctified man” in the person of Christ.96 Instead of an analogy of being, Barth establishes an analogia relationis or an analogy by relation through the perfect man, Jesus Christ. In Christ, individuals are made in the image of God, existing as a “predicate” to Christ as “subject.”97 Barth says, “In relation to the individual what we have to investigate is his participation in the righteousness of this Subject and not his own abstract immanent righteousness” (italics mine).98 As we participate in Jesus Christ or respond to this relation as “hearers” who obey the command, we enact not only our humanity and existence as elected covenant partners, but the ethical or good decision in the particular moment. This relation is not static for Barth, but dynamic as God gives commands through ongoing relationship with individuals.99 Furthermore, Barth details the actual concrete circumstances by which individuals hear and respond to the Divine command through creaturely

94. Ibid., 525; See also McKenny’s analysis of the complex relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy in their adherence to the Divine command in The Analogy of Grace, 153–65. 95. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 28–29. 96. CD II/2, 539. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid., 240. 99. McKenny seemingly responds to original critiques posed by James Gustafson, Robin Lovin, and Stanley Hauerwas pertaining to the inconsistent, “occasionalist,” and arbitrary nature of Barth’s divine command that lacks a coherent narrative by revealing how Barth’s ethics works within his broader dogmatic system and those consistent themes of revelation, God, creation, and reconciliation posed throughout the whole of Barth’s overall schema, McKenny, Analogy of Grace, 4.

The Valley of the Shadow

81

domains in Church Dogmatics III/4. Ethics concerns humanity’s real activity, which is concrete in time, space, nature, and history.100 He says, “Man’s real action is the related sequence of events in which this particular concrete man chooses and realizes a particular concrete condition and possibility, and in it himself.”101 By responding to the command, individuals actualize their freedom through a sequence of events.102 The Divine command reveals our theological anthropology as those created as covenant partners for freedom, sinners acquitted by grace, and children led by the Spirit in relation to Jesus Christ who liberates humankind in true freedom.103 Such freedom is enacted through singular decisions before God that comprise the whole of one’s lifetime as one of obedience. While Barth himself does not focus on “discipleship” until volumes IV of Church Dogmatics, one might acknowledge his analysis of the ethical response in III/4 elicits this more familiar biblical understanding of “discipleship” in the believer’s call to “follow me.”104 Finally, Barth claims there is continuity and constancy belonging to the Divine command and human action as the vertical intersects the horizontal in time.105

100. CD III/4, 5. 101. Ibid., 6. 102. However, Barth also affirms that the command of God is distinctive from mere reading or application of Scripture as law. Barth does not want to domesticate God— even through the use of Scripture. Thus, God is free to command through Scripture but only insofar as one encounters the living God with whom the relation is dynamic. Barth critiques casuistic uses of either Scripture or natural law that delineates timeless principles to be adjudicated or applied in concrete cases. The casuist or moralist sets herself on God’s throne, distinguishing good and evil on her own terms in McKenny, Analogy of Grace, 204. Instead, the moral agent is free by recognizing herself in relation to God and embracing her true freedom by following God’s command. 103. CD III/4, 24–25. Both McKenny and John Webster affirm the legitimacy of human moral action against critics that claim God alone fulfills the ethical action through grace without human participation in John Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). Against such critics, McKenny and Webster defend Barth’s theology whereby divine and human freedom is not competitive but complementary, reflecting “man too is everything in his own place, on his own level and within his own limits.” McKenny, Analogy of Grace, 204. 104. Here invoking Mk 1:17 and Jn 10:27. 105. CD III/4, 17. For critics that might suggest Barth’s description of the divine command to be one that is individualist and voluntarist in flavor, Barth has two responses. (1) The divine command cannot be individualist by the grounds of its own nature. The divine command is issued in the context of a relationship, primarily between the divine and human relation fulfilled in Jesus Christ. While this command emphasizes the divinehuman relation, this command is not without human-human implications (though often in his own account, the human-human implications are not always as explicit). (2) As for

82

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Barth emphasizes the reality that the divine command takes place in particular (and constant) spheres or relationships. Barth suggests such spheres might even be called orders or domains, though he is hesitant to use the latter terms because it could be misunderstood to be too fixed or static as he perceives in Luther and Calvin. Yet Barth acknowledges that a kind of pattern emerges between the perpetual divine command and the general spheres in which the divine and human relation interacts over time. Nonetheless, Barth maintains that within these spheres, there must remain “a certain breadth and openness” for the divine command to take place, which McKenny describes as “examination.”106 Unlike Nigel Biggar who claims Barth’s moral theology maintains a functional casuistry,107 McKenny argues that Barth’s rational “examination” of God’s activity within creaturely domains serves as self-examination and instructional preparation for encounter with the divine decision received through the act of prayer.108 Prayer, contemplation, or relation with God is the summons faced in the particular moment as well as the position of the individual before God through the duration of one’s lifetime, including the aging stage of life. Thus, I now consider Barth’s specific description of death and aging as it relates to ethics in III/4 in terms of faithful agency before God. The Command “Respect for Life” or “Will to Live” and Death as Evil Much like his initial account of death and aging in his Doctrine of Creation, III/2 and III/3, Barth describes an ethics of death in relation to his dialectical account of God’s No and God’s Yes. And much like his initial description of death as curse or judgment in III/2, so too does Barth describe his ethics of death in relation to the curse, evil, or “sting” of death and its appropriate response as resistance.

voluntarism, Barth aims to disassociate his position from those that would argue “might” or divine power as will makes something right. He does so by arguing that the “ground of the divine claim [is] the actualization of the good God has resolved on from eternity. In Jesus Christ, God has accomplished the good in our place,” McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 184. McKenny continues claiming God’s power is not abstract or arbitrary freedom in that “God’s eternal self-determination [is] to be with and for a human other,” 184. This act alone claims moral authority for “it alone claims us in a complete and decisive way,” 185. This relational God who establishes the moral good in Jesus Christ for humanity also does not portray a subtle voluntarism for Barth given that the law is a form of grace, one that was and is issued ultimately for human freedom. Thus, one might argue there is both a relationship and rationale to the moral law that holds consequence for human-human relations who live in community. 106. CD III/4, 31. 107. Nigel Biggar, “Barth’s Trinitarian Ethic,” in, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 108. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 237.

The Valley of the Shadow

83

Freedom for life in Barth’s ethical account involves the continual command to respect life through time. In III/2 §55, Barth considers practical components of his ethical method in three subsections, “Respect for Life,” “The Protection of Life,” and “The Active Life.” Here Barth explains that life is not independent or one’s individual property, but ultimately belongs to God in the form of a loan.109 As loan, human existence is to be held “in trust.”110 In Barth’s section on death and respect for life, he describes our creaturely purpose. Belonging to God, human life receives freedom from its Creator. God commands, “Respect for Life.” Such respect is not to be held as a rigid principle that is absolutized, but is determined by God’s free will within appointed limits, which is bound between birth and death.111 A practical form of the command to respect life is what Barth calls the “will to live.”112 The will to live is the resolve to be healthy in response to God’s command. Barth defines health “as the power to be as man exercised in the powers of the vital functions of soul and body.”113 Sickness, on the other hand, is “the impairing of this power, as crippling and hampering weakness.”114 The individual person, both body and soul, is to respond to God’s command with one’s whole life history. Such will “to live” or “strength,” for Barth, is to prevent oneself from becoming a mere object within history, but to remain subject by actively resisting impediments to one’s mental and physical life.115 Yet in relation to medical ethics Barth acknowledges that health and strength are not the supreme or ultimate goods. Health and strength serve a greater telos, namely existence. And existence, for Barth, is always in relation to the One who loans human life in the first place. Thus, health and strength offer capabilities that enable individuals to stand oriented to the Divine relation for the sake of God’s command. Perhaps foreshadowing Western culture’s obsession with health and fitness, he says, We are indeed appalled at the many people who look upon health itself as a lofty or supreme goal, and “live for their health” alone. Lovingly cherishing their bodies or even their souls . . . they raise such things as sun, air and water, the power of different herbs and fruits, the beauty of a tanned skin and the dynamic strength of well-tempered muscles, and perhaps the possibilities of medical and psychological skill, and even quackery, to the level of beneficent demons . . . and which . . . only show them to be the unhealthiest persons.116

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

CD III/4, 327. Ibid., 328. Ibid., 342–43. Ibid., 343. Ibid., 371. Ibid. Ibid., 359. Ibid., 357.

84

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Health, which is to be respected like other goods of life, goes awry when revered as the ultimate end. Such attitudes prove demonic. On the role of “medical science,” Barth specifically notes its powers as one conferred on humanity from above. Doctors and medical science assist individuals in their will to live, following the command of God. Sickness is a hindrance to following God’s command, impairing the congruent use of soul and body. Doctors are specifically called to improve health when individuals experience loss through illness or disease.117 Moreover, medical science might also research in order to help cure disease. Barth’s discussion of curative medicine implies his general approval of research that might assist furthering clinical practice. Yet, Barth also acknowledges that when cure and life extension seem impossible, care rather than cure is appropriate. By comfort care, medicine helps make pain more tolerable during the latter stages of life. Paralleling his previous description of death as curse and call, Barth offers an ethics that both resists death and accepts the limits of mortality. “Sickness is a forerunner and messenger of death . . . as the judgment of God and the subjection of man to the power of nothingness in virtue of his sin. From this standpoint, sickness like death itself is unnatural and disorderly.”118 Much like his account of death in III/2, sickness and death stand under the left hand or negation of God in accordance with evil in at least two ways: first, “It is an element and sign of the power of the chaos threatening creation” and second, as “an element and sign of God’s righteous wrath and judgment” in response to the problem of evil.119 Still, the paradox is continued in that the sign of judgment is also conquered by the death of Christ. This supports his earlier claim that both the power of chaos (evil) and God stand behind death—though with two entirely different motives. While Satan intends death for human destruction, God responds to this evil with righteous judgment and destruction. In an illuminating passage about Jesus’s approach to sickness, Barth says, This is the way in which sickness is understood in the Psalms and the Book of Job and the Synoptic Gospels. It is the inevitable encroachment of the realm of death upon the living space squandered and forfeited by man. And it is resisted by Jesus when as the Representative of the positive will of God He first institutes, in His miracles of help, healing, exorcism and resurrection, signs of the kingdom of God, of His true kingdom on the right hand in which He himself and man on earth will be really glorified, and then finally and paradoxically attacks and breaks it in His own surrender to the judgment of death, changing its victory into defeat as revealed in His resurrection as the proclamation of the glorious goal and end of all things.120 (italics mine)

117. 118. 119. 120.

Ibid., 362. Ibid., 366. Ibid. Ibid., 367.

The Valley of the Shadow

85

Not only does Jesus resist sickness through the healing miracles personified in the gospels, but ultimately Christ defeats death through his own surrender to the evil power. The inbreaking of Christ’s kingdom is the beginning of the victory over sin, disease, and ultimately, death. In this account, death is perpetuated as a product of evil. On giving into death or “accepting death,” Barth responds in the negative. On asking whether one “should just give up and die,” when faced with the ethical question, Barth says, But this whole consideration is only defeatist thinking, and not at all Christian . . . [the] man must will to live and not die, to be healthy and not to be sick . . . to maintain himself .  .  . to capitulate before it, to allow it to take its course, can never be obedience but only disobedience towards God.121

To capitulate to death or give oneself over to nothingness without the initial resistance personified by Jesus’s life and ministry results in disobedience. Death is partially a result of evil and to be resisted through strength in accordance with faith and prayer.122 Here, Barth does not deny that faith and prayer should usurp medical care, but claims they stand alongside medical science in their appropriate realms. Seemingly, the call or command is to resist death by mirroring Jesus’s initial ministry as the “will to live.” However, the “will to live” is also held in dialectical tension with the good in accepting our temporal limitation. The Allotted Life Span and Mortality as Good After describing death in its negative terms according to nothingness, chaos, and appropriate resistance, Barth also argues for another dimension beyond the perspective of evil. Consistent with his dialectical method that parallels the categories of death posited in his Doctrine of Creation, III/2 and III/3, Barth also recognizes a good and positive will behind death in its temporal limitation on life. But the fact is undeniable that sickness has also another aspect. For health, like life in general, is not an eternal but a temporal and therefore limited possession. It is entrusted to man, but it does not belong to him. It is to be affirmed and willed by man as a gift from God, yet not in itself and absolutely, but in the manner and compass which He gives it.123

121. Ibid., 367–68. Also, James F. Gustafson comments on how Barth describes psychical life unlike his theological predecessors, particularly in relation to suicide. Whether one might attribute this sensitivity to a modern context or his own personal empathy, he offers new dimensions to this analysis nonetheless. James F. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 187–216 122. CD III/4, 368. 123. Ibid., 371.

86

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Life, like health, is a limited possession. Health is not an absolute, but limited good. He says, “A life . . . begins and ends and is therefore limited. . . . He may see the goodness of God the Creator in the fact that to his life and strength and powers a specific space is allotted, i.e., a limited span.”124 Barth reiterates the limitation as good in that individuals do not “have . . . to give sense, duration and completeness to his existence.”125 The limitation is good in that it teaches individuals to number their days with wisdom, feeling the call to follow God’s command in the particular moment. One is to seize the phase of life in the current moment with freedom through obedience.126 There is a Divine freedom to living in the now. Here again does Barth emphasize the tension in which individuals face death’s evil and good. Barth says that while death is the result of chaos, there is yet a “deep concealment in which divine benevolence is born.”127 He does not suggest this perspective as an alternative to death as evil, but stands alongside the negative experience of death. He says, All that can be meant is that when the hard and bitter shell of the first aspect is broken, when therefore the fight of faith and prayer and action is and with God’s help victoriously fought against sickness, it finally . . . reveals this kernel, namely, that it is good for man to live a limited and impeded life and . . . return to the One who has lent them to him.128

After fighting the ravages of sickness with appropriate medical care, faith, and prayer, one finds the kernel of goodness in death—God’s mercy through limitation. However, Barth also subtly emphasizes that one not yield ultimately to death, but to the One who is “the Lord of life and death!”129 While still affirming the terror and evil of death on the one hand, he also affirms grace in God’s invitation to relationship through death. After the good fight is over and illness persists, Barth says, “[the end] cannot be evil but only good, and cannot finally be pain but only joy” (italics mine).130 In his ethics as response to God, one does not yield to death (on its evil terms), but one yields to God, the “Lord and Victor” of death who is present with the individual in the moment of death.131 This subtle distinction between yielding to death as evil and yielding to God in one’s temporal limitation maintains Barth’s important theological contrast. Death is evil; but the temporal limitation to life is creaturely good. In this way, he subtly

124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131.

Ibid., 372. Ibid. Ibid., 610. Ibid., 374. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

The Valley of the Shadow

87

maintains the tradition’s division between the sources of good and evil in unique paradox. Also, by emphasizing relationship to the One from whom our lives are “on loan,” Barth moves the emphasis to Christ’s presence with the diseased sufferer rather than an emphasis on suffering and death alone that tend to result in the feeling of individual alienation and self-defeat. By following Christ and yielding to the relationship in the moment of death, believers image God. By imaging Christ, believers defeat death with ironic “joy” by the power of Christ’s presence and the hope of resurrection.132 In a sense, one does not focus on the action of death or the circumstances surrounding death, but the Person of Christ who calls and leads the individual through her darkest hour in which the good shepherd leads with rod and staff through the valley of the shadow.133 In this way, believers follow Christ in union with Him through prayer, much like Jesus’s own dark hour at Gethsemane. Barth ends his section on the temporal limitation of life not only as creaturely good, but joy.134 Barth further describes joy as the temporary arrest on life’s movement and continual striving toward desired ends and distant goals. On the contrary, joy as “inner arrest” temporarily abandons life’s constant change within its varied and even painful circumstances. Here joy looks like meditation, contemplation, or a sense of eternal union with God much like Augustine’s glimpses of eschatological rest in time. Barth says, “Joy is really the simplest form of gratitude. When we are joyful, time stands still for a moment or moments because it has fulfilled its meaning as the space of our life-movement and . . . we have attained in one respect at least the goal of our striving.”135 Joy also entails an “eschatological character” in that it is generally anticipatory by definition. He continues, saying, “Even in the experience of the fulfillment [joy], and particularly when this experience is genuine, it usually changes immediately into anticipatory joy, that is, joy in expectation of further fulfillment. In this respect, it normally has something of an eschatological character.”136 Given the eschatological dimension to joy, believers may face difficult circumstances—such as the pain of death—with the presence and anticipatory hope of God in perpetuity. While Barth negates the evil in death, he also affirms the limitation of temporal life that leads to the hope of resurrected life in eternity. The constant impulse throughout this movement between God’s No and God’s Yes regarding death is that the disciple follows Christ in close relationship. And much like adherence to Christ in death, the believer is also called for relationship with Christ through the aging stage of life and its various intricacies as will be seen in the next section.

132. 133. 134. 135. 136.

Ibid. Ps. 23:1-4 NRSV. CD III/4, 374. Ibid., 376. Ibid., 377.

88

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Pertaining to the issue of euthanasia at the end of life, Barth strongly denies any form, whether active or passive. Pursuing death is philosophical sophistry.137 Contextually arguing against the terrors and atrocities committed through euthanasia in Nazi Germany, Barth resists the practice of euthanasia as human control over death. Yet, in a final statement on euthanasia and exceptional cases, he considers the possibility of withdrawing treatment given foreseeable innovations made available by modern technology and a so-called pharmaceutical company that might turn life into one of “artificial prolongation.”138 In an ominous passage, he says, Yet in this connection the question also arises whether this kind of artificial prolongation of life does not amount to human arrogance in the opposite direction, whether the fulfillment of medical duty does not threaten to become fanaticism, reason folly, and the required assisting of human life a forbidden torturing of it. A case is at least conceivable in which a doctor might have to recoil from this prolongation of life no less than from its arbitrary shortening. . . . But it may well be that in this special sphere we do have a kind of exceptional case.139 (italics mine)

While Barth does not see the artificial prolongation of life in his own context, he envisions an exceptional case given the nature and reality of social structures as well as advances made through modern technology and medical science. Human arrogance that results in the artificial prolongation of life might further the chaos of nothingness and sin. Accepting life’s temporal limitation through ongoing aggressive treatment or withdrawal of treatment, on the other hand, respects the dying life, its source, and end. In this way, Barth provides an “exceptional case” that is simultaneously consistent with his ethical methodology and overall theological perspective on death as curse and call. Finally, in a small book entitled The Christian Life comprised of lectures composing his posthumous IV/4 volume, Barth considers the “lordless powers” of creation that reflect those creative social structures gone array.140 “Lordless powers” are those powers created by human ingenuity and skill as positive capabilities, such as technology, government, philosophies, and ideologies that, in turn, bear down on the human community through oppression. What was once a creative power for good overtakes individuals through a kind of demonizing force. Such a passage might further illuminate Barth’s view on medical futility in contemporary bioethical literature that results in the artificial prolongation of life—and the possible powers of chaos present in this artificial prolongation.

137. Ibid., 427. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV.4: Lecture Fragments, translated by Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 213–33.

The Valley of the Shadow

89

Thus, the emphasis behind Barth’s ethics of death and dying viewed as initial resistance and final acceptance is directly linked to relationship with God through Christ. Whether following Christ through resistance to death or following Christ by accepting life’s ultimate limitation, believers enact discipleship through the rough terrains of our existence, its various plateaus, and life stages. Hence, it is not surprising that after considering death, Barth addresses the specific aging stage of life and its accompanied divine command in a final section of his ethics.

Freedom in Limitation: Aging as Vocation After describing death, Barth moves into his discussion of “aging.” One might divide his description of aging into three subsections, including, first, the human life span as “the unique opportunity” composing our identity; second, the Divine summons as the “common call” amid the varying life stages; and third, aging as the “unique call” or vocation within the differing life stages. Thus, I begin with the human life span as one’s particular opportunity. “The Unique Opportunity” Barth begins his discussion of aging by first considering human freedom in limitation, which he describes as “the unique opportunity.”141 For Barth, freedom in limitation is the temporal limitation placed on life between one’s birth and death. The limitation is a positive affirmation given that the boundary poses one’s “circumscription, definition,” and therefore, particular identity. He says, “Only the void is undefined and unlimited. Differentiating the creature from Himself, God limits . . . His creature and . . . gives it its specific and genuine reality.”142 By limiting the creature through the gift of time, God expresses love and offers boundaries to the unique individual through its substance and form. As creature, humans are part of “created time,” a time that Barth describes as transitory and “flux” in I/2. Here Barth is analogous to Augustine’s description of time along with Thomas Aquinas’s first question of the Summa Theologiae in which the world and created time is subject to change as opposed to an unchanging, eternal God who serves as creation’s origin. Barth says, “The basic limitation in which the individual is what he is obviously consists in the fact that he begins and ends, that he is not therefore infinite, that his life is given a fixed span.”143 The so-called bracket of life, or that which encloses life between birth and death, composes the “sign” of one’s individual finitude.

141. CD III/4, 565. 142. Ibid., 567. 143. Ibid., 569.

90

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

While Barth acknowledges that time appears relative in its length from one’s perception, the actual transitory quality of time compared to eternity remains the same. Upon questioning whether one’s life span will pass quickly or slowly, Barth says, It is remarkable that to the young man [or woman] striding forward quickly, time appears to be long and his movement in it gradual, so that he is deceived into thinking that time, and he within it, are unending; whereas to the older man advancing more slowly time becomes continually shorter and seems to pass by with increasing rapidity—“It is soon cut off, and we fly away.”144 (Ps. 90:10)

Not unlike Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, here Barth accounts for the perceived relativity of time depending upon one’s age. Commenting on Einstein’s theory of relativity, Carlos Eire says, Time has a relative value not only when measured against eternity, but also against itself. Who has not felt this? Even Albert Einstein admitted it, when trying to explain the concept for which he is best known. “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute,” he said. “But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it’s longer than an hour. That’s relativity.”145

For Barth, Eires, and Einstein, time may be relative, depending on one’s vantage point, but it remains limited when compared to eternity nonetheless. Hence, each temporal moment poses a “unique opportunity” in which the individual might respond to God by way of the Divine command.146 Uniqueness, to Barth, means that the individual experiences this “one time exclusively” without repetition or reduplication.147 The time in which we live not only forms our

144. Ibid., 570. 145. Carlos Eire, A Very Brief History of Eternity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 26. 146. While this section may sound particularly individualistic, it is because here Barth echoes many of the themes common among existentialists who focus on time, mortality, and finitude as the catalyst for coming to terms with one’s individual moral agency. While existentialism is to be balanced with community norms, the strength of existentialism is its emphasis on one’s individual agency that must internalize reality as opposed to simply adopt, adapt, or assume communal norms without criticism or authenticity. Thus, one might “teach” me that I have a limited life span, but until I face or existentially recognize the reality of my own mortality, I may not authentically live in the present moment as if it mattered. Barth’s existentialism that emphasizes union with Christ and reception of the gospel critiqued the German Christian Church in Nazi Germany, but also recognized the significance of lived Christian community in his instigation of the Barmen Declaration as part of the Confessing Church. 147. CD III/4, 571.

The Valley of the Shadow

91

individual identity, but also serves as the unique opportunity to participate in the kingdom of God. By “receiving, giving, and acting in human history one shares in the kingdom of God.”148 Separating his perspective from the romantic writers who valued temporality according to “carpe diem,” Barth, on the other hand, emphasizes the eschatological context of “New Testament ethics” that gives an urgency centered on Christ and the Kingdom of God. Christ stands at the center of “fulfilled time,” giving a sense of unknown duration, breadth, and urgency to fulfilling the divine command. Barth next distinguishes several criteria for obedience concerning the unique opportunity. They are (1) treating the occupation of one’s place as the right one assigned; (2) prioritizing by “making time” when there is no time; and (3) always remembering that one will die, yet never fearing death.149 These three factors contribute to the individual’s sense of obedience when responding during the here and now. In a moving passage, Barth says, That we shall die is the limit of our existence in time somewhere ahead of us. . . . Then it will be too late for any corrections or completions. Then the written or printed book will no longer be in our hands but in the hands of the public. . . . Then God will read it as it finally lies before Him.150

At some point the “printed book” will be written and our actions shall be no more. In failing to understand our mortality, we fail to understand ourselves. Barth says, “We must consider (Ps. 90:12) that we shall die. Otherwise we cannot be wise.”151 Sounding much like Heidegger’s “beings toward death,” Barth emphasizes human identity as transitory in nature.152 Quoting Heidegger, George Hunsinger describes this phenomenon, saying, Death, as the end of Dasein [Being], is not simply an event which Dasein ‘experiences. . . . It is a phenomenon to be understood existentially’. . . . Death must be understood as a possibility—as the fundamental and constitutive possibility of Dasein’s end . . . something distinctively impending—something that stands before Dasein in a distinctive way.153

For Heidegger, beings are always moving toward the possibility of death. With this death “distinctively impending,” individuals authenticate their existence through

148. Ibid., 580. 149. Ibid., 585–88. 150. Ibid., 589. 151. Ibid. 152. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper Perennial), 1962. 153. George Hunsinger, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Concept of Death in Stanford Honors Essay in Humanities, XII (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1969), 54.

92

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

genuine action. Barth, like Heidegger, acknowledges our impending death grants wisdom and authenticity through genuine action in the unique opportunity posed. For Barth, to recognize one’s mortality and the existential reality of death is to “accept ourselves” as transient creatures.154 Beyond Heidegger’s context, such transience includes a rich theological understanding that ultimately involves accepting time with Christ at the center. Making the most of each moment as one’s last ultimately means “to accept ourselves in our transience—that the Lord is the frontier toward which we move. . . . He awaits us there . . . and calls us.”155 Barth again emphasizes the relational component behind all activity including death and aging. Christ is the frontier toward which transience moves in fulfilled time. Relationship with Christ is also the ultimate reason for not fearing death. Reiterating his position cutting across Church Dogmatics III from his anthropology to his ethics, Barth says, “It is not the New Testament understanding of time as such which makes man fearless, but He to whom the New Testament with its understanding of time bears witness. He has utterly destroyed death, i.e., not merely dying, but the nothingness which threatens and lurks behind it, and brought life and immortality to light” (italics mine).156 Thus, the unique opportunity is framed by the transitory nature of our mortality. To be human is to die. The temporal limitation of life poses the unique opportunity whereby individuals respond to one’s particular “vocation,” composing three stages of life that include aging. The Divine Summons: The Common Call amid Life’s Varying Stages Continuing his description of the “unique opportunity” posed by our temporal limitation, Barth moves into a subsequent section in which he delineates between vocation and calling. Vocation is the descriptive term Barth uses to account for the totality of one’s particular life from birth to death that poses individual identity in responding to the divine summons. Calling, on the other hand, is the divine summons or new choice in the present moment. Barth qualifies this perspective by suggesting that the new call is not “entirely new,” but maintains some continuity with those prior “summons,” “commands,” and “responses” made in the life of the individual to this point in time. Thus, “vocation” is a more comprehensive framework for which the individual receives a particular “call.” Interestingly, ethicists might speculate that Barth’s depiction of vocation is a location in which Dogmatics subtly begins to suggest a modicum of virtue ethics. Vocation is the locus of responsibility whereby one hears the “divine summons” or “call” and must respond. Here, Barth expands the term vocation beyond the “technical” sense originally used by Martin Luther and modern tendencies to identify vocation as one’s profession or job. Instead, vocation encompasses

154. CD III/4, 592. 155. Ibid. 156. Ibid., 594.

The Valley of the Shadow

93

the whole range of experiences incurred throughout life. Barth critiques the “modern feverish over-estimation of production that uses the term vocation” in that it “overlooks the elderly, children, disabled, and women” or those individuals without “production-oriented” professions.157 Vocation, for Barth, is the whole of life by which we are individuated, progress, and continually respond to God as “this man” or “this woman.”158 While Barth claims it is “impossible to conceive [particularity] at a glance,” he offers some “criteria” that might identify “vocation” on the whole.159 From these “criteria,” Barth offers three stages of human life involving youth, maturity, and old age. He is cautious to articulate that these criteria do not constitute ethics.160 However, “age” is a “clear and definite element” in that it composes part of one’s place in responsibility before God.161 On age as vocation, Barth says, Identical with himself, man may and must continually assert this identity afresh in an unknowable but limited series of temporal moments under the gradually changing conditions of his psychico-physical existence. He finds himself at some point on the strange way—particularly strange at each of its stations—from the cradle to the grave. He is always at one point in his life-process which even at its end is still a “becoming” even though at its very beginning it is already a “perishing.”162

Acknowledging the relativity of life’s stages in that creatures are simultaneously “becoming” and “perishing,” one asserts her identity within this “unknowable but limited series of temporal moments.”163 Each stage entails its relative “strangeness” with particular conditions contributing to her psychico-physical existence. By acknowledging that each phase of life is simultaneously “unknowable” (in terms of duration) yet “limited” given the nature of human existence, Barth identifies that which is common to every phase of life. Barth’s “unknowable” but “limited” qualities anchor all the life stages in his estimation. The common denominator underwriting each phase of life is relationship to God and the call to respond regardless of life’s stage. While each stage encompasses its unique perspective, continuity persists through an obligation to pursue and respond to God throughout the various stages. One might say the common link

157. CD III/4, 599. Barth’s use of the term “women” here most likely references those women without “production-oriented” professions who worked in the home. Through this statement, Barth brings value and dignity to all persons, beyond limiting “vocation” to a mere profession or job as Western society tends to value most. 158. Ibid., 595–600. 159. Ibid., 600. 160. Ibid., 607. 161. Ibid. 162. Ibid. 163. Ibid.

94

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

composing each stage is the reality that each individual exists as creature before God. Barth says, The particular seriousness of every age does not consist, therefore, in a special attitude which one has to assume to life in youth, maturity or old age, but in the seriousness with which at every age one has to go from the Lord of life to meet the Lord of life and therefore to try to live as though for the first time or as though this were the only age.164

Here one must trust each hour and age respectfully as though it were her last. To conclude, the command of God leads the various stages of life rather than the various stages of life leading the Divine command.165 There is something common about each phase through the present call to “follow Him.” Barth suggests that one does not find meaning from being identified as “young,” “mature,” or “aged,” but that one finds meaning from being “those who are addressed” (italics mine).166 The grounding of one’s vocation does not come from “any science of youth and age, however wellgrounded. Neither in youth nor age can we try to deduce or assert an autonomous life independent of the command of God.”167 Instead of proving one’s self as autonomous in each phase, the crux is that one stands in harmony with God “as one addressed.” Aging as Vocation: The Unique Call amid Life’s Varying Stages Yet while acknowledging the “common” thread that links these life stages, in good dialectical fashion, Barth also maintains a particular “uniqueness” composing each phase. In an interesting move, Barth seems to delineate what appears to be certain virtues and vices that might accompany the phases of youth, maturity, and old age in their respective uniqueness. Beginning with the stage of youth, Barth first delineates particular weaknesses or vices that might accompany this phase. Youth are particularly tempted to live as if “detached” from the rest of the life narrative under a kind of “delusion.”168 In this way, youth tend to evade a sense of responsibility by living as if their actions remain unaccountable to God, others, or even themselves. Living as if each choice might be followed by countless others, youth often evade responsibility. Barth says the delusion consists in “the dreaming and playing, the careless yielding to different inclinations, the vacillations between various examples or friends, the following of differing teachers, the imitation and independent testing,” found characteristic in this stage without any semblance of accountability.169

164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169.

Ibid., 609. Ibid. Ibid., 610. Ibid. Ibid., 609, 611. Ibid., 611.

The Valley of the Shadow

95

Instead, authentic “youthful” activity involves not aiming at youthfulness, which results in “childishness,” but in obedience to the call of God, whose presence in this stage deems the activity truly “human,” and truly accountable.170 After posing the so-called weaknesses or vices along with the charge to follow Christ, Barth next delineates the possible strengths or virtues accompanying this stage. Given the newness of youth’s vantage point, Barth recognizes its advantage in avoiding routine, habit, or disillusionment from a troubled past. They are not slaves to customary ways of acting with self-projected limits and possibilities. Instead of portraying “victims of boredom” with life’s familiarity, they approach life’s opportunities with welcomed “simplicity and openness.”171 Youth personify the “gift of novelty.”172 Given the gift of novelty, youth might “think, decide, and act” without the baggage often accompanying maturity and old age.173 Their unique place in the life cycle includes an openness and simplicity unlike the latter stages. In this way, Barth also identifies the significance of interdependent relations amid the various life stages to assist and encourage one another in response to God. With this simplicity, youth act in ways that are “exemplary for the old.”174 “Young people must realize that they have a responsibility in this regard, the older or old standing in need of their example, i.e., the example of their youthful objectivity.”175 The old need the young as an example given their openness to the given moment and sense of novelty. The nature of the Christian community is to integrate these intergenerational relations, as the young, old, and mature ultimately need one another in interdependent relations. And in much the same way that youths entail certain virtues, vices, and responsibilities, so too does the “mature” phase of life, or those years composing the “middle stage.”176 Barth begins by listing those weaknesses or probable vices accompanying the middle stage in its deceptive role as expert with accompanied conceit. “Can he possibly invest himself with his role and position, his great or little reputations, his title, role or bank-account, and thus become solemn or even majestic, a minor deity, whether in the form of Prometheus or simply of a Philistine, a bourgeois, a schoolmaster or a bronze?”177 Barth points to the presumable pride that may accompany midlife in its “height” or “prime.”178 Deceiving oneself through personal accomplishment, middle age may enact autonomous tendencies given the temptation to possess the past as one’s own achievement rather than

170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178.

Ibid., 612. Ibid., 613. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 613–15. Ibid., 613. Ibid.

96

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

acknowledge direction by grace. Such autonomy poses the “great error to be recognized and avoided at the heart and height of life.”179 Instead, the mature—much like the youth—are called to relationship with God. However, Barth does not discount middle-aged experience as insignificant, but as a necessary advantage when placed in the appropriate relation to God. The mature are “no longer hampered by mist which may veil the urgency .  .  . and decision from the young .  .  . or the shadows which may have veiled it already from the old.”180 Rather than be veiled by mist or shadow, the “psycho-physical existence” of the mature offers great opportunity for responsibility before God and others. Recognizing the many years of preparation molding the mature individual, Barth says, “the sewing is behind; now is the time to reap. The run has been taken; now is the time to leap.”181 Given the dual position between youth and the aged, the mature enjoy a location of “limitless development” that involves both “expansion and concentration.”182 This expansion and concentration composes the mature’s unique virtue or strength. Because of this unique position, the middle aged are those individuals most called upon to “venture and work,” expanding the possibilities of innovation, society, and responsibility in their location as “in-between.”183 Given their maturity in comparison to youth’s novel decision-making and their more vibrant strength compared to the aged’s limitations, their capabilities—and thus responsibilities— are vast. In this way, Barth emphasizes the importance of interdependence between the mature, young, and old in that “both the younger and the older need the mature between them, the men [and women] who are truly ripe for obedience.”184 Thus, mature adulthood entails its various vices, virtues, and responsibilities in relation to God as well as the old and young neighbor. Finally, Barth describes the unique position of the “aged” before God and their accompanying virtues, vices, and responsibilities. And much like his previous two stages, Barth begins old age by detailing its possibilities for vice. Barth says, “The being and action of the old [is] unwise insofar as it may bear the character of an automatic repetition of earlier answers in easy disposal of the question of the command, thus claiming a supposed right of age to undisturbed tranquility.”185 To presume the aging experience as merely one of repetition and reduplication as opposed to creative newness is to deny one’s present existence.186 To dwell either on

179. Ibid. 180. Ibid., 614. 181. Ibid. 182. Ibid. 183. Ibid. 184. Ibid., 615. 185. Ibid. 186. In this way, Barth’s perspective echoes much of the existentialism posed by Constantin Constantius in Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds., Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

The Valley of the Shadow

97

the pains or joys of the past is to reflect “inactive reminiscence” or rely on custom and habit with a kind of hopelessness and even despair.187 Whether personifying either an extended “holiday” or its opposite existence as “finis” or “dead” overlooks the dignity and responsibility of the aged individual before God. By focusing on life’s conclusion through a kind of self-defeat or redundancy, the aged might also evade responsibility like the young. Citing examples of Abraham from the Hebrew Bible as well as various philosophers, including Heinrich Pestalozzi, Leo Tolstoy, Kant, Schelling, and others, Barth claims the aging phase of life holds not only ethical responsibility but perhaps the greatest opportunity to make a difference. Rather than relinquish this stage as one of “folly” or “finis,” instead, the aged are called to enact their agency as responsible individuals before God. The unique virtue of the aged’s position is their “actual proximity to the future” in that soon the future will be no more.188 He says, “The drama of age, however, is that this pure future obtrudes with increasing concreteness, thus making the view of life sub specie-aeternitatis more and more unavoidable” (italics mine).189 The reality of old age exposes the transitory nature of life and its eternal goal of communion. Since Cicero, Barth acknowledges a certain form of wisdom accompanies this stage in its limits, yet the “point” for Barth is in relation to the “Real Man” who “fights for us,” namely, Christ. Barth says, The point at issue was always .  .  . his own autonomy and arbitrariness being limited by the encounter with his Sovereign. But he must now do this in true earnest. The decisive moment is at hand. When he grows old it can be his special opportunity to discover that the Sovereign comes to meet him and to take him to Himself. Obedience to Him can now be more natural.190

Given both experience in responding to the call and proximity to the future, the aged might discover the presence of “the Sovereign” and obey through a more “natural” disposition. While Barth himself dislikes the language of virtue, vice, habit, and disposition, his analysis here reflects a sense of acquired experience in hearing the command, quickening the believer in response to the call. Perhaps Barth might separate his account from his (quite probable) erroneous take on Thomistic virtue as Promethean reliance on natural theology and autonomous virtue by default. Here Barth’s “hint” of virtue relies deeply on grace and relationship with God.

187. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). 188. CD III/4, 616. 189. Ibid. 190. Ibid., 617.

98

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Describing true wisdom as the awareness of one’s “existential understanding of the doctrine of justification,” Barth concludes, saying, Yet now his chance has come to realize in practice as well as theory—and thus to become truly wise—that even in the fire of youth and the strength of maturity he really lived only by the free and unmerited mercy of God, and that all his own free decisions and deeds are only of such value as may accrue to them in this unfamiliar light from without.191

By growing in understanding one’s existence as rooted in justification, an aged individual sees her whole identity—youth, maturity, and old age—through this corrective lens. However, this correction not only illuminates the past but opens “a new last time for free decision and action” in old age in relation to God and the surrounding world. Here, the aged reflect the importance of interdependence in their ability to “set an example to those who follow” through this special opportunity. They have a unique perspective to help the young and mature in their life stages. Given their experience and focus, the aged offer wisdom to others through relation to Christ. Interestingly, Barth reverses Luther’s translation of Deuteronomy 33:25, reading, “May thine age be as thy youth” to “May thy youth be as thine age.”192 For Barth, every phase of life is the opportunity to follow Christ through discipleship as one adheres to the Word of God. The “aging stage” is not excused from discipleship, but also possibly the height of our vocation in responding to God’s call.

Conclusion—Death and Aging as Curse and Calling with the God Who Is Present in Christ To conclude, death and the aging experience are simultaneously curse and call, evil and good, judgment and gift for Barth. His dialectical method, negating the evil and affirming the good, elucidates the complexity of these issues while maintaining the existential tension often felt when facing these realities. While Barth begins by negating the evil in death, associating this experience with das Nichtige, sin, and judgment, he also affirms the shadow side of life in its temporal limitation as creaturely good. Not only does Barth deem mortality as good, but even “creaturely perfection” in created time, by defining human identity as composed of temporal boundaries. Barth’s ethics regarding death and aging (III/4) parallel his earlier accounts of the nature of death and aging within his basic anthropology (III/1-3). And while his analysis on death and aging in their respective phenomena is vast, the overarching theme throughout his exploration is relationship with God and thus, relationship with humanity.

191. Ibid. 192. Ibid., 618.

The Valley of the Shadow

99

For Barth, God creates with the aim of fellowship: fellowship with Christ and fellowship with one another. As Barth says, “creation is the external basis of the covenant” and “the covenant is the internal basis of creation.”193 Kathryn Tanner summarizes Barth, saying, “Christ is the key [to] creation,” illuminating the meaning of creation through its telos.194 Thus, it is no wonder that Barth cannot discuss death, aging, or its accompanied ethics without grounding these analyses in the specific relationship between God and humanity, or Christ and the concrete individual. The natural outcome of this relationship is intended to be one of discipleship. The most integral component of death and the aging experience is adherence to God and the awareness of God’s presence. Being constituted in Christ, individuals participate in Christ’s justification and sanctification—illuminated by His presence through the particularities of their life stages. Likewise, Barth’s ethics of divine command strongly resists Promethean attempts to forge autonomous illusions of human control when facing moral decisions. Freedom is not a competitive zerosum game between God and humanity, but a harmoniously devised ontology involving attendance to human nature as relationally constituted rather than human “unnature” as autonomous contradiction. To live the ethical life is to live as “you are intended to be,” that is, related to God through participation in Christ through the Spirit. Thus, the whole of Barth’s anthropology, ethics, and analyses points to the Creator-created relation—even if theology admits humility from the shadow of this break. The realities of death and aging are strongly situated in the shadow of the Creator-creature break. Nevertheless, whether facing pain or joy, humanity is not alone when experiencing death and aging—for the God in Christ is present with both the individual and body of Christ, providing opportunity for participation in Him by grace.

193. CD III/1 §41. 194. Tanner, “Creation and Providence,” 118. Also see Tanner, Christ the Key.

Chapter 3 CONTEMPLATIVE ACTION

Introduction Augustine’s and Barth’s compatible view of aging and death as a result of privation and curse as well as the good found in temporal limits point to the remedy found in the God-man, Jesus Christ. While Barth’s position is dialectic by affirming both death and aging as curse and call, evil and good, both sides of these experiences are most illuminated in relation to Jesus Christ. In fact, much of the momentum behind the previous two chapters on Augustine’s and Barth’s theologies culminate in the person and work of Christ whose reconciliation is total in his redemptive healing of human nature. And much like the intricate web of systematic considerations on the nature of creation, evil, and human existence are closely tied, so too is Christology intricately tied to a renewed human existence that responds to our diminution and loss through aging and death. In sum, Jesus Christ images God through a perfected human nature with great consequence for the rest of humanity. Not only does the perfected nature of Christ pertain to the breadth and range of life experiences, but it also entails a deep reservoir of insight for those individuals enduring the aging experience. Thus, Christology has the ability to be both general and specific, reflecting the common and uncommon realities of human nature across the life span. And while one might argue that Christ himself did not live until a ripe old age, nonetheless, turning to the person and work of Christ illuminates not only desirable qualities and characteristics for those aging individuals, but also the renewed image of God that teaches a new way to be human and thus, a new way to be old. Traversing the theologies of Augustine and Barth along with W. H. Vantstone’s reading of the biblical Jesus as “waiting” in both the Gospels of Mark and John involves much detail. Nonetheless, each author helps illuminate how a Christological contribution might offer meaning to the aging experience. In large part, both Augustinian and Barthian Christologies help to elucidate how restored knowledge and love of God renews human nature resulting in contemplation and practice. Restored knowledge and love, contemplation and practice not only rectifies those many fractured and diminutive parts of human nature but does so by personifying how union with the divine completes human nature. And while Augustinian and Barthian Christologies depict a more systematic approach to

102

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

restored humanity in union with God, W. H. Vanstone’s depiction of Jesus through the gospels characterizes the giving, receiving, and waiting actions of Christ that might be modeled in the lives of aging persons. Thus, I begin with an Augustinian Christology and its contribution to our understanding of aging.

Augustinian Christology and Aging If Augustinian sin is understood to be disordered love of self over love of God in which the will attaches itself to a lower good, then not only is original knowledge of God diminished, but so too is the body affected by this choice. Evil as privation happens at every level, both internal and external, soul and body. The quality of the soul no longer images God in its original capacity through direct knowledge of God or direct access to knowledge of the eternal from within.1 Instead, the capacity of the will and reason are now tainted by weakness and ignorance. As Robert Dodaro says, Enlightenment of the intellect and healing of the will are not separate operations performed within the soul; nor, therefore, do they occur as distinct steps in a process. Grace heals the will of its weakness concerning justice in the same act in which the intellect is enlightened about the nature and content of justice, as both are understood in Christ’s example.2

In other words, the inner weakness of mind and will is healed by grace in relation to Christ’s perfect nature and work. Thus, only One with complete enlightened knowledge of God (union with the eternal Word) might enact a new way of willing (perfect obedience) by assuming flesh that defeats death and secures resurrected life in the form of an incorruptible body.3 In order to understand these claims more fully, I will consider Augustinian Christology in terms of (1) the person of Christ by considering both His divine and human natures as they pertain to contemplation and action; (2) the work of Christ by describing the atoning work of the cross for the aging and dying experience; and (3) the meaning of a renewed human nature through union with Christ and participation in the Divine life for aging and dying individuals. Person of Christ: Contemplation and Action While the significance of Christology may seem weak in Augustine’s early work, Rowan Williams describes a “coherent Christological scheme” in his more mature

1. Augustine, The Trinity, 152–55. 2. Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine, 74. 3. Augustine, The Trinity, 155–59.

Contemplative Action

103

writings such as The Trinity and City of God.4 A rekindled interest in his Expositions of the Psalms, Sermons, and Letters also provide an abundance of material in which Christ remains central for understanding both God and humanity. Historically, Augustine was situated in the midst of heated Christological controversies circulating throughout the fourth and early fifth centuries.5 Augustine’s development as a “Christian thinker lay precisely between the condemnation of Apollinarianism by the Council of Constantinople in 381 .  .  . and the controversy between Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria over the appropriateness of Mary’s title Theotokos, a debate that was just reaching a crisis at the time of Augustine’s death in 430.”6 Augustine’s life follows the Arian controversy regarding the divinity of Christ resulting in the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) while predating concerns regarding the humanity of Christ resulting in the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE). Augustine’s Trinitarian and Christological writings poignantly account for the full divinity of Christ represented at Nicaea while also affirming his humanity later represented at Chalcedon through the hypostatic union.7 In order to understand Augustine’s contribution to Christology, one must consider the heart of his claims in relation to the tradition’s classic development and affirmation of both the Divine and human natures of Christ. I begin by considering the divine nature or the Christological title “Son of God,” affirmed at the Council of Nicaea and subsequently explore the Christological title “Son of Man” affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon involving Christ’s divine and human natures. In order to elaborate Augustine’s perspective on the Person of Christ that embodies contemplation and action, I begin by describing (1) the Son’s divine simplicity in the Trinity that makes possible our participation; (2) Sapientia: the Son as “Wisdom of God” and Contemplation; (3) the Son of Man’s action through humility and obedience; and (4) the legitimacy of grief displayed through His psychological experience of abandonment on the cross. Son of God: Divine Simplicity Makes Possible Our Participation Augustine opens The Trinity by affirming the full equality of the Son with the Father in Book I. He says, “According to the Scriptures Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the inseparable equality of one substance present a divine unity; and therefore there are not three

4. Rowan Williams, “Augustine’s Christology: Its Spirituality and Rhetoric,” in In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daly, ed. Peter W. Mathewes (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2008), 176. 5. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 6. Brian Daly, “Christology,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 164. 7. An ancestral version of this opening section also appeared in Autumn Alcott Ridenour, “Imaging God through Union with Christ,” in Convictional Civility: Engaging the Culture in the 21st Century, eds. C. Ben Mitchell, Carla Sanderson, and Gregory Alan Thornbury (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2015), 97–98.

104

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

gods but one God.”8 Grounding his claim in Scripture, Augustine affirms both the unity and equality of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. He departs from the Arian heresies circulating throughout the third and fourth centuries by explicitly denying the Son as “created” but instead, sharing the same substance with the Father. Interpreting Jn 1:2 declaring “all things were made through him,” Augustine says, “And if he is not made he is not a creature, and if he is not a creature he is of the same substance as the Father. .  .  . But all things were made through him; therefore he is of one and the same substance as the Father.”9 By denying the Arian claim that the Son was created, Augustine reiterates the classic Nicene creed established in 325 CE that affirms the Son as co-essential or “homoousios” (of “one substance”) with the Father, that is, “begotten, not made.”10 Augustine fears the Arians depart from the classic monotheism prevalent throughout the Old Testament canon as seen in Deut. 6:4, saying, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, is one” thereby emphasizing divine simplicity.11 He also challenges Arianism’s suggestion that Christ is something higher than creation, but lower than the Father.12 Instead, he emphasizes the Son as one with God the Father in creation. Citing the opening to the Gospel of John, he says, So because there is but one Word of God, through which all things were made (Jn 1.1-6), which is unchanging truth, in which all things are primordially and unchangingly together, not only things that are in the whole of this creation, but things that have been and “will be,” there they simply are; and all things there are life and all are one.13

Here Augustine emphasizes the oneness of God that makes possible the original unity of creation in that all share one divine origin. Augustine’s concern for emphasizing the oneness of God is important for developing the unity of creation. As Augustine’s translator and commentator Edmund Hill says, He rhapsodizes on the reintegration of the many in the one. The whole gist of his argument in the course of these two chapters is to present redemption, or the mediation of Christ . . . as a work of restoring a fallen and fragmented mankind to divine unity, of which the model is the unity of the three persons.14

8. St. Augustine, The Trinity, 2nd edition, edited John Rotelle and translated by Edmund Hill (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1991), 70. 9. Ibid., 72–73. 10. “The Creed of the Synod of Nicaea” (June 19, 325) in The Trinitarian Controversy, ed. and trans. William G. Rusch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 49. 11. St. Augustine, “Answer to the Arian Sermon,” in Arianism and Other Heresies, ed. John Rotelle and trans. Roland Teske, SJ (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1995), 142. 12. Ibid. 13. Augustine, The Trinity, 154. 14. Edmund Hill, n9 in Ibid.

Contemplative Action

105

The union of the three persons in which Augustine emphasizes the Son sharing the same substance as the Father and Spirit is important for recognizing a common origin to creation that brings order, integration, and unity amid the varying parts. Because the Son shares the same substance with the Father and Spirit, the Word brings a diversified world into being through unity.15 But not only does Augustine affirm the shared substance of the Trinity. He also affirms the diversity of the Trinity by delineating the three persons or relations through analogies that would help shape the Western tradition for centuries to come. His famous analogies including lover, beloved, and love; memory, understanding, and will; and mind, knowledge, and love relating to Father, Son, and Spirit emphasize both the diversity and unity of the Trinitarian God.16 From the outset of the first book of The Trinity, Augustine describes the unity and equality (shared essence) concerning three nonidentical persons (Father, Son, Spirit) that compose the Trinity. His detailed account also describes the specific missions of the Son and Spirit in history as portrayed in Scripture. While Augustine acknowledges the individual work of each person, he also acknowledges the “inseparable” quality to these operations given the shared nature of the three persons.17 But not only does Augustine acknowledge the inseparable operations of the three persons. He also acknowledges the distinct attributes of each person through their missions. In what appears at first glance to be a cyclical argument, Augustine simultaneously affirms the distinct attributes as relevant to the whole substance of the Trinity in divine simplicity. Lewis Ayres argues Augustine’s appropriation of Platonic divine simplicity affirms not only the unified substance of the Trinity, but also three persons. Ayres says, None of the persons is dependent on the others for anything that is essential to God although the essence of the three persons is one. . . . Not only does the doctrine of divine simplicity provide a grammar for asserting the generation of the persons from the Father, but it also provides a grammar for ensuring the irreducibility of the persons in Trinitarian language.18

For example, while the Son is traditionally considered “wisdom,” one can say both the Father is wise and the Son is wise in themselves without these attributes

15. On the role of Augustine’s response to the Arian Sermon, Roland J. Teske writes, “[The sermon] provides us with a key work for coming to an understanding of Augustine’s mature Christology. B. Daley describes Augustine’s work as making ‘a turning point in his Christological thought and in a new assimilation of the anti-Arian polemic of his old mentor, Ambrose of Milan’” in “Introduction,” Augustine, Arianism and Other Heresies, 124. 16. Augustine, The Trinity, 255–57; 300–02; and 384–89. 17. Ibid., 70–76. 18. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 381.

106

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

depending on another person. This is because the shared essence of the Trinity would also affirm shared attributes. However, it is important to note that there are also “non-shared” attributes that pertain only to the status of the inner relations of the Trinity, such as the Son as “begotten.” While the Son is begotten, the Father is un-begotten, and the Spirit “proceeds” from the Father and the Son in the Western tradition.19 These latter attributes are distinctive in that they do not relate to the Trinity ad extra but solely the relations pertaining to the Trinity ad intra.20 In this sense, the Trinity reflects both multiplicity in its relations and simplicity in its essential attributes as a shared substance. Ayres says, “We do not find the unity by focusing on something different from the persons: it is focusing on the persons’ possession of wisdom and existence ‘in themselves’ that draws us to recognize their unity. The triune communion is consubstantial and eternal unity—but there is nothing but the persons.”21 In other words, to speak of the Trinity is to speak of the persons.22 One cannot affirm the unity without affirming the multiplicity.23

19. Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 5th edition (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 247. 20. Augustine, The Trinity, 190–95. 21. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 379–80. 22. Moreover, Ayres defends Augustine against modern criticisms that charge his Platonist use of divine simplicity privileges the unified substance of the Trinity in a way that subordinates the persons of the Trinity. Beginning with what sounds like a somewhat cyclical argument, Ayres identifies how the use of divine simplicity affirms both the oneness and three-ness of the Trinity’s identity. He says, “Thus, summing up these three steps: (1) The Father generates the Son who is light from light, wisdom from wisdom, and essence from essence. (2) The Son is an essence in Himself, not just a relationship: to talk of the person of the Son is to talk of the Son’s essence. (3) And yet, because the Father’s and the Son’s essences are truly simple, they are of one essence. Because the principles of his Trinitarian faith tell him that the Spirit is also God and is a distinct person, the same arguments apply to all three persons. Thus, in using the grammar of simplicity to articulate a concept of Father, Son, and Spirit as each God, and as the one God, we find that the more we grasp the full reality of each person, the full depth of the being that they have from the Father, the more we are also forced to recognize the unity of their being,” in ibid. 23. Interestingly, Ayres’s depiction of Augustine’s divine simplicity that simultaneously affirms the irreducible nature of the three persons along with the shared nature of the whole not only seemingly departs from modern social constructions of the Trinity but might also support Sarah Coakley’s feminist critique of the social model of the Trinity. Sarah A. Coakley, “‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion,’” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, eds. S. T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 123–25. Coakley critiques recent social models of the Trinity along with some feminist positions that bring a modern, individualized conception of “person” into the Trinity rather than the premodern

Contemplative Action

107

Ayres also expounds Augustine’s statement in City of God 11:10 that describes God’s being and attributes as identical, thereby establishing divine simplicity. For Ayres, Augustine affirms divine simplicity for two reasons: (1) “things which are not simple are corruptible” and thus subject to change and (2) “things which are not simple possess their qualities through participation.”24 However, God does not possess his qualities by participation but exists as the source of all existence. As Rowan Williams describes Augustine’s cosmology, every existing creature depends or participates in the divine life given its source of existence. Divine simplicity makes possible our existence, an existence most fulfilled through participation in the Divine Being. To experience self-integration as body and soul involves participation in the Divine Being who suffuses our disparate parts. Creaturely existence is dependent on divine simplicity to hold the varying pieces together in harmony. Likewise, while there is potentiality in creation, there is no potentiality in God. God is actual rather than potential. God’s being and attributes are one. Creatures, on the other hand, can display attributes imaging the source of their being or not. The notorious fall is an example of creation choosing against participation in the Divine Being and moving away from the source of existence, which held creation’s identity as originally intended together. In other words, the creation narrative is a story of unity moving to disunity. In divine simplicity, the Trinity creates the world in its multiplicity. Concomitantly, the world of multiplicity depends on simplicity for its origin and participates in God for ongoing sustenance. Such unity in multiplicity will have important implications for the entire created order and aging individuals who were intended to be unified in body and soul. Each person of the Trinity operates together, yet fulfills its specific mission in the creative, redemptive, and reconciliatory schema of the created world with implications for aging individuals. Interestingly, the Son plays both a specific and holistic role in the redeeming of human nature through what Augustine describes as divine “wisdom,” to which I now turn. Sapientia: The Son as “Wisdom of God” and Contemplation Augustine introduces the idea of Christ as mediator for the purpose of bringing humanity into “direct sight of God” or the direct “face-to-face vision” known as eternal contemplation of God beginning as early as Book I of The Trinity.25 Here Augustine defines contemplation as the end of all activity and “the eternal perfection of all joys. . . . For the fullness of our happiness, beyond which there is none else, is this: to enjoy God the three in whose image we were made.”26 It was for this reason that Jesus

use of “person” by patristic authors such as Augustine or in her case, Gregory of Nyssa that rely more on “person” as a relational term. 24. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 380. 25. Augustine, The Trinity, 79. 26. Ibid., 82–83.

108

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

came, died, ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit: that we might know or contemplate the eternal Trinity in perfect union. Book IV of The Trinity discusses the prologue to the Gospel of John in which the Word exists as light and life for all creation. Particularly, Augustine says the Word’s light and life illuminates the human soul, which in turn, animates the body.27 Given the fall, or humanity’s penchant for sin, Augustine continues expounding the Gospel of John in which the darkness does not comprehend the light by which it was made. Augustine says, To cure these and make them well, the Word through which all things were made became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1.14). Our enlightenment is to participate in the Word, that is, in that life which is the light of men . . . to contemplate God, which by nature we are not, we would have to be cleansed by him who became what by nature we are and what by sin we are not.28

Here Augustine describes Christ, the mediator’s work in bringing about union or participation with God the Father again by contemplation. Rowan Williams describes the specific mission of the Son as “wisdom” just as the specific mission of the Spirit is love. The Word of God, Christ, serves as Divine self-revelation to the world. Williams says, The Word of God is the uttering by the Father of the truth that is his (15.14.23), so it is appropriate to call the Word “wisdom” (15.17.29); the Spirit causes us to abide in God, that is, in the love that is identical with the divine life itself, and so may be called “love,” caritas, since this abiding is the effect of love.29

By sending the Spirit not only do we have a foretaste of this communion with God, but without Christ’s absence, we would be forever dependent on material symbols mediating the divine as opposed to an intellectual and volitional ascent by grace through the Spirit that helps our souls contemplate eternal Truth. As revelation, God the Son begins the mediating work consummated with the gift of the Spirit that ultimately aims at bringing individuals to “the direct contemplation of God, in which all good actions have their end, and there is everlasting rest and joy that will not be taken away.”30 Through the Mary and Martha narrative, we see “Martha, busy doing what had to be done—activity which though good and useful is going to end one day and give place to rest.”31 While Mary, on

27. Ibid., 154–55. 28. Ibid., 155. 29. Rowan Williams, “De Trinitate,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 850. 30. Augustine, The Trinity, 83. 31. Ibid. Here instead of dismissing Martha, Augustine recognizes her “activity” as valuable for this temporal existence, though Mary’s contemplation proves better in its eschatological vision—a gift that cannot be taken away.

Contemplative Action

109

the other hand, rested at the feet of Jesus, “intent upon his words; at rest from all activity and intent upon the truth,” she enacted a better choice, participating in a reality “which shall not be taken away from her (Lk. 10:38).”32 In this way, Mary participates and anticipates a reward that will not end, a rest that will endure, a time and place where desire will cease through faith that becomes sight. Mary participates in a glimpse of eternity, anticipating its wholeness and complete rest as opposed to the more fragmented experience of time. Contemplation is the goal and purpose behind Christ’s revelation as wisdom and mediating work. In Book VII of The Trinity, Augustine discusses the Son who reveals the Father as the Wisdom or Word of God. In doing so, he describes wisdom as begotten (as opposed to made) through which all things were made (Jn 1:3). Quoting John, this same wisdom or “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). Consistent with his affirmation on the unity and equality of the Trinity, Augustine acknowledges that all three persons of the Trinity entail the attribute Wisdom and yet the Son becomes that “wisdom, justification, and sanctification” (1 Cor. 1:30) on our behalf.33 Describing the Word as the image of God along with our participation in that image, Augustine says, For we too are the image of God, though not the equal one like him; we are made by the Father through the Son . . . we are image because we are illuminated with light; that one is so because it is the light that illuminates, and therefore provides a model for us without having a model itself .  .  . because for us he became a road or way in time by his humility, while being for us an eternal abode by his divinity.34

Humans image God not because we were born of the Father alone, but because we were born of the Father through the Son, illuminated by the Word who is both light and life. Augustine describes this light and life as a kind of eternal wisdom that illuminates the mind with the unchangeable eternal truth by participation.35 By becoming one of us through humility, the Word reveals God and the path of wisdom. Revealed as wisdom, “we may be refashioned to the image of God; for we follow the Son by living wisely.”36 Later, in Book XV, Augustine again describes why the Son is considered the Word or Wisdom of God. In this passage, he reflects on our status as the blurred image that sees “through a mirror in an enigma, but then we will be face to face. The mirror is interpreted to mean the image of God, which is the human mind.”37

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Ibid. Ibid., 223–24. Ibid., 225. Ibid., 155. Ibid., 226. Ibid., 407.

110

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

In this book, Augustine recognizes wisdom as a non-bodily substance, much like “inner” thoughts that are present before language, gestures, signs, or symbols can embody those thoughts through “external” words and human communication. In this way, words are communicated through external senses while pointing to an internal meaning or light of understanding. And just as our meaning or words appeal to bodily senses, so too does the Word of God who becomes flesh appeal to our bodily senses in order to communicate meaning.38 This Word of God “precedes all the signs that signify it and is begotten of the knowledge abiding in the consciousness, when this knowledge is uttered inwardly just exactly as it is.”39 The same Word by which all things are made becomes creation in order to reveal wisdom. However, there is a problem in that the image is “broken up” due to the fall. In Book XII, Augustine opens with chapter 1 and closes with chapter 4 by describing the distinction between two kinds of knowing. The first, scientia entails knowledge of temporal things below in common with the outer man and animals. The second, sapientia or wisdom entails knowledge of eternal things. While knowledge is essential for ordering virtue in time, wisdom is essential for clinging to eternal truths that image God. Unfortunately, after the fall this image is broken and the two functions of the mind become disassociated as opposed to associated.40 The fall disorders these two ways of knowing by twisting the knowledge of temporal goods as the final goal through an illusory happiness.41 Instead, both ways of knowing are intended to act in tandem, that is, knowledge and wisdom, each within their proper limits.42 “Wisdom belongs to contemplation, knowledge to action.”43 Interestingly, Augustine’s description of wisdom might coalesce with Jeffrey Bishop’s use of Aristotle as well as Thomas Aquinas’s notion of formal and final causes that offer ultimate meaning to activity.44 Augustine’s category of knowledge relating to temporal ends and practice might track more specifically with efficient and material causes. Given the parallel concepts, Augustine’s understanding of wisdom and knowledge is important for understanding human institutions such as medicine—or even politics—as important within their specific domain. Medicine and politics serve temporal ends and human goals built on knowledge pertaining to virtue and activity. However, they cannot usurp or displace eternal goals based on wisdom. Knowledge-based enterprises such as medicine and politics are best practiced when informed by eternal ends in accordance with wisdom. However,

38. Ibid., 411–12. 39. Ibid., 412–13. 40. This was seen through Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis in which humans no longer “know” God in a spiritual, relational intimacy that existed before the fall. 41. Augustine, The Trinity, 337. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-1. Q.44.1-4, translated by Fathers of the Dominican Province (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1948), 229–32.

Contemplative Action

111

the murkiest forms of practice take place when knowledge or practice becomes the arbiter of value as both Bishop and McKenny argue currently takes place within modern medicine.45 Knowledge as scientia (or knowledge of lower goods in time) functions with wisdom as sapientia (involving the eternal good, contemplation, and worship of God) to order our actions by pursuing good and avoiding evil.46 Virtue, including courage, moderation (temperance), prudence, and justice belong to the activity of scientia that seeks good activity while avoiding evil activity in accordance with sapientia.47 However, the disobedient act of self-love over love of God fractures this knowledge into one that is broken as opposed to one that works in tandem as originally intended.48 Only a divine-human redeemer could repair the damaged image into one of perfect union. Opening with the Gospel of John, Augustine cites creation as made through the Word of God or Son who became flesh. This belongs to the eternal things of God, that is, sapientia and contemplation that results in the happy, blessed life. However, turning to darkness, humans now need faith in our lower, temporal knowledge (scientia) in order to believe what cannot be seen.49 Faith exists in our consciousness while those things believed through faith are outside our consciousness. Believers share together one faith much like universal humanity shares one will or desire for happiness. However, for Augustine, happiness is unattainable apart from immortality, which only comes through an immortal God putting on flesh.50 The Word became flesh in order to repair the broken image so that humans may now become children of God by sharing in his immortality. Augustine then describes the incarnation, death, and resurrection by which the Son acted as mediator fulfilling justice. Acting from his two natures, human and divine, Jesus frees humanity from the debt of sin and empowers us with the possibility for an immortal, bodily resurrection that secures eternal happiness.51

45. Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse; McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition. 46. Augustine, The Trinity, 338. 47. Interestingly, this division of wisdom and knowledge informing action will be later developed in Thomas Aquinas’s own virtue theory that places prudence among the practical intellectual virtues derived from speculative wisdom and understanding that in turn directs the moral virtues of temperance, fortitude, and justice in Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II Q. 57–58, 827–37. 48. Augustine also here exposes ways that his theory departs from Plato. According to Augustine, if Plato was right in that our souls were previously present in this reality by differing bodies, then everyone would have access to the same kind of knowledge (such as geometry and those skills belonging to Pythagoras of Samos) like sleepers awakening from deep sleep. However, Augustine says this is not the case. Not everyone recognizes the same truths equally in Augustine, The Trinity, 338. 49. Ibid., 343. 50. Ibid., 354. 51. Ibid., 355–66.

112

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Augustine continues this Christological theme incorporating Christ’s divine and human natures in correspondence with sapientia (wisdom) and scientia (knowledge) in Book XIII chapter 6. Here Augustine says, But all these things that the Word made flesh suffered for us in time and space belong to knowledge and not to wisdom. Insofar as he is Word, he is without space, coeternal with the Father and wholly present everywhere; and if anyone can utter a true word about this, as far as he is able, it will be a word of wisdom.52

The flesh or human nature of Christ concerns those things pertaining to knowledge that are relevant to temporality whereas the Word or divine nature of Christ concerns those things pertaining to eternity. Augustine continues, saying, “In the Word I understand the true Son of God and in the flesh I acknowledge the true Son of man, and each joined together into one person of God and man by an inexpressible abundance of grace.”53 Augustine also likens grace to knowledge and truth to wisdom. “Among things that have arisen in time the supreme grace is that man has been joined to God to form one person; among eternal things the supreme truth is rightly attributed to the Word of God.”54 Believers are purified by faith that they may “contemplate him unchangingly in eternity” as divine wisdom through the gift of grace.55 Knowledge is analogous to the “outer man” or “form of a word” from a particular language whereas wisdom might be analogous to the “inner man” or “meaning of a word” that is universal across various languages.56 Ayres cites Book XIII’s “repaired image” through the divine and human natures of Christ as analogous to our two ways of knowing, that of sapientia and scientia.57

52. Ibid., 366. 53. Ibid., 367. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 369. 57. Interestingly, Lewis Ayres cites Book XIII as perhaps the culmination of the passage in which Ayres (along with Rowan Williams and John Cavadini) abandons interpretations of Augustine’s trinity as analogous to proto-Cartesian self-knowledge and instead, emphasizes faith lived in community as a departure from pure Neoplatonism. Ayres highlights the whole of Augustine’s Christology as consistent within Book VIII-XV rather than dividing The Trinity into a first part about the substance and relations of the Trinity with the second half as a reconfiguration of Neoplatonic ascent. Lewis Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV,” Augustinian Studies 29 no.  1 (1998): 111–39; John Cavadini, “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s De trinitate,” Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 103–23; and Rowan Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on De Trinitate in Bruning, Collectanea Augustiniana, ed. Bernard, Mathijs Lamberigts, and J. van Houtem (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), 317–32. Finally, Sarah Byers argues that Augustine departs from Plotinus and Neoplatonic

Contemplative Action

113

Sapientia correlates with Christ’s divinity whereas scientia correlates with Christ’s humanity. In this way, the division of sapientia and scientia is unified in Christ’s person. Believers need the presence and absence of Christ to ascend to sapientia, the wisdom of God in communion with the Spirit. The Word made this wisdom manifest in time and enables believers to participate in Christ and participate in the whole Trinity that moves us beyond our obsession with the material realm alone—without awareness of eternal love. In this way, Augustine’s theology of wisdom proves consistent with his overarching order of love.58 Finally, Augustine discusses the image perfected in Book XIV, describing (1) God as the supreme wisdom and (2) worship of God as human wisdom. In other words, the “Wisdom of God” is also the “Wisdom of man.” In time, individuals walk by faith rather than sight, ordering their lives to the eternal reality that also causes them to enact virtue in this material reality.59 However, while humans were intended to image God fully, distortion occurs through sin in which the image becomes faint and worn. Nonetheless, the image of God remains in the capacity of the mind, memory, or reason to know eternal truths through wisdom. Still, the fullness of this image is contingent on the human person in relation to the Divine, receiving wisdom from above, rather than a notion of the person as self-sufficient that results in folly. Augustine says, This trinity of the mind is not really the image of God because the mind remembers and understands and loves itself, but because it is also able to remember and understand and love him by whom it was made. . . . To put in a word, let it worship the uncreated God, by whom it was created with a capacity for him and able to share in him. In this way it will be wise not with its own light but by sharing in that supreme light, and it will reign in happiness where it reigns eternal. For this is called man’s wisdom in such a way that it is also God’s. Only then is it true wisdom; if it is merely human it is hollow.60 (italics mine)

Sounding much like Barth in his departure from Promethean autonomy as selfenclosed folly, one receives wisdom from relationship with the Divine. A more robust image of God takes place when individuals participate in the Trinity by partaking of divine wisdom. In this sense, the wisdom of God becomes the wisdom of man.

metaphysics given that Augustine’s structure of the Trinity shares one substance rather than presenting individuated substances between the forms, goodness, and divine intellect. This is seen in the distinction between the models of the forms and the forms themselves in Plontinus. Sarah Byers, “Augustine and the Philosophers,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. M. Vessey (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2012), 182. 58. Lewis Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV,” Augustinian Studies 29, no. 1 (1998): 111–39. 59. Augustine, The Trinity, 370–72. 60. Ibid., 384.

114

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Rowan Williams cites Book XIV as integral to understanding Augustine’s anthropology as one grounded in God’s love in which we know ourselves as creatures.61 Augustine portrays a God of divine relations with a shared substance that grounds humanity in love. To image God is to receive sapientia or divine wisdom rather than rely on human knowledge alone. Williams says, “Unless the mens [mind] is actively participating in the life of God, the image is imperfect (14.8.11). This implies, of course, that when the mind most fully knows and loves God, it most fully knows and loves itself—a theme familiar from the Confessions and elsewhere in Augustine’s writing (14.14.18)” (italics in orginal).62 In other words, to know God is to know oneself. Moreover, the Holy Spirit enables individuals to participate in the life of God. Receiving this shared love and wisdom from the divine life, individuals love and act justly in this material realm. According to Williams’s interpretation of Augustine, to love God is to love humans in the world. By receiving wisdom and participating in the life of God, believers enact works of charity in time. Quoting Tarcisius J. van Bavel, Williams says, “This vision involves an immense responsibility for those who are believers. We become responsible as a group for the presence of God’s love in the world. For our love of man, in the end, is the love of God himself: God loves the world through us.”63 For Augustine, faith as divine wisdom is active in love. Finally, Augustine ends The Trinity with Book XV in which he describes the image as an enigma through a mirror in which we reflect both likeness and unlikeness. While here we see by a mirror, in eternity, however, we shall see face to face.64 Until that time the just live by faith, enacting love in time.65 In this way, the faithful participate in the divine life as imagers of God through the Word as Son of God. Moreover, these believers anticipate a day when they will fully comprehend divine wisdom in perfect contemplation and perfect union throughout eternity, most noted as eternal Sabbath rest. Awaiting that day, however, believers continue to live in time and learn not only from Christ as Son of God in eternity, but also from Christ as Son of Man. His own life makes possible our participation in divine wisdom with implications for virtues particularly relevant to the aging experience. Son of Man: Humility and Obedience Not only does Augustine’s theology support the divine nature of Christ affirmed at the Council of Nicaea, but he also uses the language of “one person” with two natures familiar to Chalcedon with implications for the experience of suffering, death, and aging.66 For Augustine, Christ assumed

61. Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 317–21. 62. Williams, “De Trinitate,” 849. 63. Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 332. 64. Augustine, The Trinity, 434. 65. Ibid., 369; Heb. 10:38; and Heb. 2:4. 66. While Lewis Ayres says one should not treat early patristic Christology as the years leading to Chalcedon, nonetheless both Ayres and Brian Daly acknowledge that Augustine’s theology anticipates the position later concretized at Chalcedon. In fact, Daly

Contemplative Action

115

both a human soul and a human body against Apollinarianism that says Christ only assumed a human body but maintained the Word’s soul. As Gregory of Nanzianzus coined, “That which was not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God is saved.”67 Thus, I explore Augustine’s understanding of Christ as Son of Man by describing his portrayal of humility through obedience in body and soul as well as his own psychological experience of abandonment on the cross. In this way, I build on Augustine’s claim that the soul’s disordered choice led to physical consequences and thus, an ordered soul must rectify our inward situation with renewed outward consequences. For Augustine, Christ’s death and resurrection is a sacrament for both inward and outward renewal.68 In Letter 137, Augustine offers one of the strongest accounts of the “union of two natures” present in the person of Christ. He says, “He, who without change on his part framed the order to the ages by changing them, preserved in his body the rhythm of time and measured the sequence of the ages. For what began in time grew in time, but the Word in the beginning, through whom times were made, chose the time at which he would assume flesh.”69 Augustine builds on the prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-14) in which the Creator becomes creation, or the Word through whom all things were created takes on flesh. The timeless enters time without being fully subject to its limitations in that both man and God exist in one person. Augustine explains this further by offering the analogy of soul to body. Just as the soul unites with the body in mystery, the divine also unites with the human in the person of Christ. The incorporeal Word of God is to the human Christ what the incorporeal soul is to the human body.70 However, Augustine is persistent in describing Christ’s humanity as including both a soul and a body. In Answer to the Arian Sermon, he says, Christ united not merely flesh, but also a human soul to the only-begotten Word. Thus the one person who is Christ is the Word and man, but man is soul and flesh; hence, Christ is Word, soul, and flesh. Therefore we should understand that he has two substances, namely, divine and human, with the human substance composed of soul and flesh.71

says Augustine’s use of “the paradoxical rhetoric” of one person, two natures “apparently exercised a considerable influence on the Christological formulations of both Pope Leo I and the Council of Chalcedon.” In Lewis Ayres, “Christology as Contemplative Practice,” in In the Shadow of the Incarnation, ed. Peter W. Martens (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 191, 205; Brian Daly, “Christology,” 167. 67. Gregory of Nanzianzus, “Letter 101,” quoted in J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1976), 297. 68. Augustine, The Trinity, 156. 69. Augustine, “Letter 137,” 218. 70. Ibid.; Augustine, “Letter 187,” 234. 71. Augustine, “Answer to the Arian Sermon,” 147.

116

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

In other words, Augustine denies Apollinarian tendencies to describe Christ as including only a divine soul from the Word of God merged with a human bodyflesh.72 Instead, the person of Jesus entails both the incorporeal Word merged with an incorporeal soul and corporeal body, involving a whole human nature.73 Rowan Williams describes Augustine’s departure from Neoplatonic ascent in that sapientia includes valuing the body as opposed to mind alone. He says, While the wisdom of the world seeks truth by escape from the body, by techniques designed to free us from the distortions imposed by fleshly life, God’s wisdom takes root in us only as we accept our bodily limitation and our spiritual frailty as things we cannot cure from within . . . God’s love brings the eternal Word into the human world, and that same love allows us to face our creatureliness.74

Rather than escape the world through intellectual ascent alone, Christ reveals a new way that enters our world and orders our material reality with perfect humility and love. Christ both shows love and solidarity for humanity by entering the full human experience, body and soul, which includes death, aging, and suffering through humility. Williams describes how the incarnation of Christ teaches us the perfect order of love in time, saying, Here, as in De Doctrina Christiana, the underlying point is that the abandonment required for us to receive the true knowledge of God is not, so to speak, the ‘spatial’ abandonment of the world of material things in order to rise to a higher realm, but the abandonment of attachment to the projects and desires of the unregenerate will . . . putting behind those desires that look for satisfaction within time.75

Augustine’s order of love involves detaching from the temporal world in the wrong way and uniting with Christ so that individuals might reattach to the world with a proper eternal-temporal ordering of loves.

72. Daly, “Christology.” 73. According to Augustine, since both the Word of God and soul are incorporeal, it should be easier to believe a union exists between the Word of God and a human soul than to believe in the union of an incorporeal soul with a corporeal body. Lewis Ayres says Augustine’s argument here emphasizes the incomprehensible reality of the Chalcedonian claim while simultaneously affirming the importance of precision when articulating this reality. Moreover, the incomprehensible reality of Christ’s person should cultivate our own humility in relation to language and understanding about God as creatures much like the humility displayed through Christ’s own person in assuming flesh in Ayres, “Christology as Contemplative Practice,” 205–06. 74. Williams, “Augustine’s Christology,” 178. 75. Ibid., 179. See also Rowan Williams, “Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine’s De Doctrina,” Journal of Literature & Theology 3 no. 2 (July 1989).

Contemplative Action

117

Williams continues, saying, “Growing into knowledge of the incarnate Christ means the reconstruction of desire into hope for God. . . . By the incarnation, God both binds us to the temporal world as always and inescapably our starting point and dispossesses us of the illusion that there is a point within that temporal world where we can settle.”76 Unlike Neoplatonism, Augustine’s abandonment does not deprive existence of material persons and things, but is the detachment from temporal persons, projects, and desires in a disordered way. The path of humility unveils our creatureliness before God and demystifies our illusion that temporality is our only end. Desire for God should order our human loves in time. Christ’s humility reminds aging individuals that this temporal life is not our end and helps order love of neighbor and self (including one’s own body) in relation to our ultimate love of God. However, not only does Christ teach us the path of humility before God as the beginning of wisdom, but so too does the harmony of his two natures enact perfect obedience that rightly orders the will in time. Williams says, The incarnate Word “adds” to our humanity in congruentia or “what the Greeks call harmonia,” an element which in its “simplicity” overcomes the discords or fractures of our “double” humanity. The merciful will of God forms a human identity in which mortal body and damnable soul are united with the single purpose of divine love so that they are made capable of seeing God and being resurrected. . . . The incarnation here is seen as the act of divine self-offering which, so to speak, gathers up the elements of broken humanity and constitutes thereby a new humanity, integrated in virtue of the divine act which takes and holds the twofold life of the human beings, body and soul, bringing them into harmony.77 (italics in original)

The body and soul of Christ acts together in perfect harmony ordered in congruence with the divine will. By acting in harmony, Christ’s nature and will overcomes our fractured soul and body that acts in disjunction without our best interest as creatures. Christ’s perfect simplicity overcomes our broken, duplicitous desires that result in a splintered self. Instead, Christ’s humility that enacts the divine will reverses our disordered self-love otherwise known as pride. As Williams further describes, Christ’s person does not represent divine, human soul, and body as a threefold compound, but a person whose human body and soul is perfectly “animated” by the divine will.78 He continues describing this image saying, “What substantiates or gives active presence to this particular duplum of soul and body is the action of the Word, without which no human word can be spoken by this individual, Jesus of Nazareth. He exists because the Word has elected to be incarnate, and thus what he says is said because of the

76. Ibid. 77. Williams, “Augustine’s Christology,” 180. 78. Ibid., 181.

118

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

eternal Word” (italics in original).79 In other words, the human Christ does not exist without the divine Christ.80 Together they act as one person—not two natures “alongside” one another, but through what appears to be a perfect ordering of soul and body by an undivided will. Williams says there is no “drama” between Jesus and the Word, but instead, continued obedience. “Here the natural and eternal self-surrender of the Son is enacted in the circumstances of weak flesh, both displaying and creating the possibility of obedience to the Father in all circumstances; human pride is overturned by divine love.”81 Both the eternal self-surrender of the Son and incarnate Christ perfectly obey the divine will that creates the possibility for obedience to the Father in all human circumstances. In this way, he fulfills and perfects human nature, creating (or re-creating) a new way to be human in which humility becomes the new way of life as creatures before God and before one another in community. Christ’s humility as the new way of life holds great consequence not only for aging persons, but also for those community members surrounding aging persons in love. Augustine’s Ennarations in Psalmos (Explanations of the Psalms) further expounds the central role of humility in his understanding of Christology. Augustine interprets the Psalms figuratively as opposed to literally, like a “prism refracting the light of the entire Bible.”82 Rather than interpret the Psalms literally line by line, he interprets the Psalms as prophecy of the coming Christ, thereby forging Christology and the totus Christus or the “whole Christ” (including Head and Body, Christ, and Church) as the focal point of their meaning.83 Interpreting the Psalms in light of Christ, Augustine likens Christ to a “motherhen” who becomes weak for her young from Psalm 58, a “poor man” who emptied himself and took the form of a slave from Psalm 40, and finally, the “Good Samaritan” who comes to our aid and lifts us up by taking on flesh from Psalm 125.84 Augustine further describes Christ’s self-emptying through his taking on

79. Ibid., 185–86. 80. Likewise the divine Christ does not exist without the human Christ. However, I do concede that the eternal Son of God as Word could have existed in triune relation with the Father for all eternity, but instead actively chose to become human—not from need but from love. 81. Ibid., 186. 82. Michael Cameron, “Enarrations in Psalmos,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 290. 83. Cameron, “Enarrations in Psalmos,” 293. 84. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 40,” in Exposition of the Psalms, 33–50 ed. John Rotelle and trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 226; Augustine, “Exposition 1 of Psalm 58,” in Exposition of the Psalms, 51–72 ed. John Rotelle and trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2001), 156; and Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 125,” in Expositions of the Psalms, 121–50, ed. John Rotelle and trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 81.

Contemplative Action

119

blood and flesh, thereby displaying his humility as an example to follow as seen in Psalm 33.85 Augustine further describes Christ’s coming for human weakness and the need for One whose will is greater than our own. He says, In his human will he embodied ours in advance, since he is our Head and we all belong to him as his members [as totus Christus] .  .  . “Father,” he said, “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” It was his human will speaking here, wanting something individual and private, as it were. But he wanted the rest of us to be right of heart, and whatever might be even slightly warped in us to be aligned with him who is always straight, and therefore he added, “Yet not what I will, but what you will be done, Father” (Mt. 26:39). But was Christ capable of wanting anything bad? Could he, in the end, will anything other than what the Father willed? They are one in godhead, so there can be no disparity of will. But in his manhood, he identified his members with himself . . . So too in displaying the will proper to a human being he displayed your nature, and straightened you out.86

Augustine here displays how Christ took on human nature including our will and “straightens out” what is slightly warped by subjecting himself to the divine will. In this way, Christ takes on humanity as the totus Christus and identifies himself with us. Through his incarnation, he “straightens us” with perfect humility and obedience. Brian Daly says Augustine’s affirmation of the two natures and one person does not involve “a symmetrical joining of two equal ‘parts.’ The real personal unity of Christ, in fact, is due to the fact that the divine person of the Word is the ‘owner’ and the ‘true life’ of both soul and the body of Jesus.”87 As “owner” Daly means Lord and director. Just as Christ surrendered to the divine will in perfect human obedience, so too might individuals—aging or otherwise—surrender to the divine will in obedience. Recognizing that true life comes from above, humanity might yield to God the Father as seen through Christ’s example in his love for the Father above. In other words, the divine Word animates the person of Christ much like participation in Christ is intended to animate human life. Likening the Wordhuman union to the soul-body union, the Word directs the whole person as the soul directs the body. This does not take away from the reality of Christ’s humanity as seen through his psychological suffering on our behalf, but displays a perfect obedience of human will to divine will in a way that transcends and perfects the “warped” will of human nature. To further elaborate this perspective, I now highlight the psychological experience of Christ’s suffering on our behalf.

85. Augustine, “Exposition 2 of Psalm 33,” 25. 86. Ibid. 87. Daly, “Christology,” 167.

120

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Legitimacy of Grief: Psychological Experience of Abandonment Not only does Christ’s union of divine and human natures perfectly enact obedience through humility, but so too does his person embody our psychological anguish as humans. Following Gregory of Nanzianzus, what Christ assumed, he redeemed. In the years preceding Chalcedon, Augustine was one of those figures writing of the realities of Christ’s humanity, including his psychological abandonment experienced through the cross. Rowan Williams describes how the Psalms function as the divine and human voice merging together that ultimately reflect the divine and human union in Christ as Head of the Body or Church. Acknowledging how the first sentence of the Confessions opens with a quotation from the Psalms, Williams depicts how the Psalms are integral to self-knowledge before God. Williams says, “The psalm is a meaningful narrative structure, a history of the soul. And souls only have a history in conversation with God, Augustine argues. Without the divine interlocutor, the self is broken and scattered.”88 Only Christ’s simplicity in agency, or His perfect aligning of the human with the divine will, can draw together the multiple pieces of our fractured selves. Thus, the Psalms simultaneously “unseal emotions otherwise buried,” and “provide an analogy for the unity or intelligibility of a human life lived in faith.”89 In doing so, the Psalms reflect the union of human emotions with divine desires. In this way, the Psalms reflect the union of the divine and human voice of Christ.90 Williams here identifies how interpreting Christ as the center of the Psalms depends in many ways on viewing Christ as the ultimate “sign” of God’s reality in our world. This is perhaps most explicit through Christ’s quoting Psalm 22 as an expression of forsakenness before God. Williams says, In the state of spiritual darkness, we are tempted to think that God is absent, yet when we hear Christ speaking “our” words of anguish, we know that this cannot be so. His humanity is inseparably united with God so that, if he gives voice to our suffering, we know that such suffering does not silence God. The opening of Psalm 22 (21 in LXX used by Augustine) is central, and Augustine reverts to it many times: “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” is a kind of paradigm of how Christ as Head speaks for the Body . . . [Here we are] caught up in Christ’s prayer. Just as Christ makes his own our lament, our penitence, and our fear by adopting the human condition in all its tragic fullness as the material of his Body, so we are inevitably identified with what he says to his Father as God.91

88. Rowan Williams, “Augustine and the Psalms,” Interpretation 58 no. 1 (January 2004): 17. 89. Ibid., 18. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid., 19–20.

Contemplative Action

121

Christ identifies with our human suffering and takes up our pain as His own in petition. Christ assumes all that humanity feels and “[makes] his own . . . the cries of pain and doubt uttered by humans, so as to show that the transforming grace of God can work in situations of the gravest human extremity.”92 Since the Son is in a position of eternal self-offering in the Godhead, our “words become His own as divine petition before the Father.”93 This holds great significance for aging individuals and those who face their final hours in death. Christ’s cries of anguish to God the Father stand in solidarity with every form of human suffering. Even if feeling alone or abandoned, there is solace in knowing the incarnate God in Christ felt these same emotions. Augustine explores the various ways in which Christ’s human soul feels abandoned before the Father through numerous expositions on the Psalms and tractates on the Gospel of John. Departing again from the Stoic philosophers who emphasized freedom from sorrow (or disturbances of mind), Augustine legitimizes the emotions of grief before God. Instead, Augustine says one loses stability of health and one’s mind by losing “the feeling of pain.”94 Augustine says Christ experiences a troubled soul not from weakness but from power. He cries out to God as a kind of “sacrament” for the soul’s sense of death.95 By choice, Christ willingly took on suffering and human troubles as seen in the incarnation, passion, and weeping over the loss of Lazarus. Whether the reason for Christ’s troubled soul derived from pity over Judas or by his own death at Gethsemane, Christ willingly troubled himself on our behalf. By willing his own troubled experiences as a result of his power, he takes up those unchosen troubling experiences in our weakness.96 Augustine’s commentaries on the Psalms further reiterate the weakness experienced on behalf of humanity. Describing Christ’s prayer at Gethsemane, Augustine says, “He prefigured certain weak persons in himself, in his own body and because he felt compassion for them he cried out in the name of these weak members.”97 Brian Daly says Augustine’s exposition of this Psalm notes Christ’s struggle to complete our nature in a specifically “human way.”98 However, this struggle to complete human nature through a harmonious union of human and divine will also seemingly affirms Williams’s conviction that for

92. Rowan Williams, “Christological Exegesis of Psalm 45,” in Meditations of the Heart: The Psalms in Early Christian Thought and Practice, eds. A. Andreopoulos, A. Casiday, and C. Harrison (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011), 30. 93. Williams, “Christological Exegesis of Psalm 45.” 94. “Tractate 60,” in Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 55: III, trans. John W. Rettig in Thomas P. Halton, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1994), 29–30. 95. Augustine, The Trinity, 158. 96. Ibid., 31–32. 97. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 93,” in Expositions of the Psalms, ed. John Rotelle and trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2002), 395. 98. Daly, “Christology,” 167.

122

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Augustine, there is no “drama” between the divine and human wills. While there is some enactment of struggle, Daly, like Williams, says the divine Word animates the person of Christ much like the human soul animates the body for Augustine.99 While Christ’s human soul and body experiences trouble, he does not depart from the divine will through a kind of drama otherwise known as sin that is common to general human experience. Instead, the Word is the “owner” or director of the person as a whole that recognizes God as the Lord and giver of life. And just as Christ feels human pain on behalf of those persons experiencing human weakness, so too does this pain include individuals experiencing old age and death. Aging individuals can know the solidarity and presence of one who suffered on their behalf when facing bodily pain and psychological change, a general correlate to the aging stage of life. However, there is some interesting distinction in the cries of Christ from regular human suffering. Christ certainly experienced agony in his soul as personified through cries of joy during the “day” and cries of pain during the “night” or adversity. In Psalm 87 Augustine affirms that Christ’s suffering included pain from the soul and body, since both faculties are connected.100 Moreover, Christ experienced a kind of loneliness in that there was no one to grieve with him at Gethsemane, particularly for the reason he grieved as portrayed in Psalm 68.101 While the disciples ultimately grieved for his death and loss resulting from the passion, Augustine highlights how they did not grieve with him for those individuals persecuting him. The disciples grieved over his death while Christ grieved over the sins of the world. In this way, he willingly grieved on behalf of those who were weak and without power resulting from sin and the frailty of human circumstances. While Christ’s experience of loneliness was unique given his specific mission, his own experience of loneliness might also bring comfort to those individuals who are aging, suffering, or facing death. Finally, Augustine portrays how Christ willed to be subject to temptation in Psalm 60. In doing so, Augustine says he was tempted and teaches us to fend off the devil. In this way, Christ exchanges our temptation for his own and the consequence of sin resulting in our mortality. He says, “Yes, Christ certainly was tempted by the devil, but in Christ’s person you were being tempted, for Christ accepted flesh from you and gave you salvation from himself; he accepted death from you and gave you life from himself; and this is why he accepted temptation on your behalf, to give you victory in his own person.”102 He accepted temptation in order to give humanity victory. His willingness to assume mortality changes the situation of our own aging and mortality. In this way, Christ’s willingness to assume both temptation and our own mortality resulted in the great exchange whereby his decision to become human elevates humanity to participate in the divine life. To

99. 100. 101. 102.

Ibid. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 87,” 259. Augustine, “Exposition 2 of Psalm 68,” 388. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 60,” 194.

Contemplative Action

123

further understand this great exchange, I now consider the atoning work of Christ through the cross in Christ’s physical experience of death and resurrection as it relates to death and aging. Work of Christ: The Cross and Resurrection for Aging and Dying Understanding Augustine’s Christology requires exploring the significance of the person and work of Christ as integral to one another. Affirming and understanding the import of both the divine and human natures of Christ is essential for appreciating the meaning of Christ’s atoning work affirmed through his activity involving the cross and resurrection. While modern typologies associated with the varying atonement theories did not yet exist, one might identify Augustine across a broad spectrum of categories.103 For my purpose, I first want to consider at least three primary images or motifs used throughout Augustine’s texts. They are Christ the Mediator as (1) sacrifice and priest; (2) deliverer and liberator; and (3) physician and healer. Throughout my exploration of these images, I consider how Augustine’s own theological descriptions unearth these three images as well as their possible practical relation to the experience of aging and death. Finally, I conclude with a fourth consideration on how the great exchange accomplished through union with Christ entails both a bodily death and resurrection offered to all. Christ descended that we might ascend and in his humility, we are exalted. Christ the Mediator as Sacrifice and Priest Augustine uses several images to illuminate how we might better understand Christ’s atoning work through the cross and resurrection. Like theological descriptions of God in general, these images use human language and analogies in order to depict the significance of this event not only for Christian faith and practice, but also for our interpretations of death and the aging experience. Sometimes the varying images within Augustine’s work are mere sentences apart as he describes diverse ways to interpret the same event through different angles. The first of these images that draws most directly from the Old Testament and the Letter to the Hebrews is that of “sacrifice and priest.” Some short passages within Confessions, City of God, Expositions of the Psalms, and The Trinity each use the language of sacrifice or priest more than once. On a passage describing the true Mediator in Christ as opposed to the false Mediator (or the devil), Augustine says, “For us he was victorious before you and victor because he was victim. For us before you he is priest and sacrifice, and priest because he is sacrifice. Before you he makes us sons instead of servants by being

103. Perhaps there are ways that Augustine describes the atoning work of Christ throughout his various works that track across three of the contemporary atonement theories, including the cross as victor (Christus victor); the cross as sacrifice or satisfaction (substitution); and finally, the cross as the demonstration of God’s love (moral exemplar). While the three categories may vary, I pull these particular typologies from Alister McGrath, Introduction to Christian Theology, vol. 5 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 315ff.

124

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

born of you and being servant to us.”104 Here Christ is victor and victim, priest and sacrifice. By the sacrifice of Christ who is the great high priest,105 Christ is able to make his creatures sons and daughters as opposed to servants. The irony of this great exchange is personified in that Christ became servant among servants in order to make us sons and daughters. Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms describe the role of Christ as priest and sacrifice at differing points. His “Exposition of Psalm 130” says, But we know we have a priest in heaven who intercedes for us with the Father. He has entered into the holy of holies, beyond the veil, where in the liturgy of the figurative temple the high priest entered only once a year, as our Lord also was offered once only, at one moment in history. He offered himself, he who was both priest and victim, and entered once for all into the holy of holies.106

Here Augustine more directly references the argument in the Letter to the Hebrews in which Christ is considered the high priest who intercedes behind the eternal holy of holies, invoking the sacrificial system under the Jewish law in the Hebrew Bible. Augustine’s “Exposition 1 of Psalm 33” further considers Christ’s sacrifice in the order of Melchizedek who was both priest and king (as opposed to the line of Aaron), from Hebrews 7. “Exposition 2 of Psalm 26” considers how the priest was victim or spotless lamb that is able to unite with humanity as members into his own body. In this way, the priest’s sacrifice pertains to the totus Christus or whole body of Christ given that Jesus serves as the Head and humanity, its members.107 However, it is within Book X of City of God that perhaps offers the most sophisticated engagement with the notion of sacrifice, beginning with Christ and reciprocated by humanity in response. Here Augustine describes Christ as mediator who is priest and offering. He says, “The whole redeemed community, that is to say, the congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice, through the great Priest who offered himself in his suffering for us—so that we might be the body of so great a head—under the form of a servant.’”108 As head of the body, Christ came in the form of a servant and offered himself as a sacrifice on behalf of the body through his suffering. In this way, Christ the Mediator both receives the sacrifice in his divine nature in union with the Father and offers the sacrifice as servant in union with humanity. As servant Mediator, Christ is both “priest and sacrifice,” “offering and

104. Augustine, Confessions, 220. 105. Heb. 4-5; 7-8; 10, NRSV. 106. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 130,” 141. 107. Augustine, “Exposition 2 of Psalm 26,” in Expositions of the Psalms, 33–50, ed. John Rotelle and trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2000), 275. 108. Augustine, City of God, 380.

Contemplative Action

125

oblation.”109 As priest and sacrifice, the remission of sins was effected through the One without sin “through whom we are purified from our sins and reconciled to God.”110 Augustine builds on this same theme in The Trinity where he claims Christ’s death was a twofold sacrament for body and soul. Christ’s inner man was just and purified from sin. He assumes mortality in which his soul and body both experience death and resurrection. In this sense, his outward death points to humanity’s inner wound needing transformation. The physical death of a pure, just man accomplishes inward as well as outward salvation personified through Christ’s death and resurrection.111 Christ’s willingness to take on our death and resurrection was an act of perfect humility. Augustine asserts that the body (or Church) now mirrors Christ’s sacrifice through a posture of humility toward others. This results in acts of compassion involving love for neighbor in light of love for God. Augustine references Old Testament sacrifices as those requiring a “broken and contrite heart” rather than mere external sacrifices. Here Augustine highlights the continuity between the Old and New Testament sacrifice in that God considers the inward posture as primary to the exterior animal or bodily sacrifice. The totus Christus enacts a sacrifice of praise by imaging Christ’s humility and compassion. The Church as body now reciprocates acts of compassion directed toward the good of the neighbor and God.112 Augustine says, “Thus the true sacrifice is offered in every act, which is designed to unite us to God. . . . So then, the true sacrifices are acts of compassion, whether towards ourselves or towards our neighbors, when they are directed towards God.”113 True sacrifices are those acts of compassion directed toward self or neighbor in relation to love of God, thereby continuing the theme of Augustine’s famous order of love. Such sacrifice acknowledges the intention behind these acts of compassion: they become legitimate sacrifices when performed from a humble spirit in relation to love of God. Thus, we open ourselves up to the hope of Christ that is not solely rooted in the Eschaton, but reenters this material world through faith and love as “living sacrifices.” Cavadini says, For us true hope is the death that is compassion, not the construction of a mythic, separated life that will deliver us from its exigencies. Our mortal life recovers its integration as that is revealed in the Incarnation and Passion of Christ, and our bodies become transparent to the compassion that enlivens them, themselves “a living sacrifice of praise” as signs and bearers of the compassion of Christ.114 (italics in original)

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

Ibid., 401. Ibid., 403. Augustine, The Trinity, 156–57. Ibid., 379. Ibid., 379–80. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 245.

126

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

In other words, mortality recovers meaning not through escape from death, but by hope in death and compassion toward others experiencing death. The life of discipleship is one that is broken and vulnerably open to God and neighbor as a living sacrifice of praise. True hope becomes patient endurance, or endurance that is rooted in the future while transforming the possibilities for our present experience. In Book X of the City of God, Augustine says, Meanwhile, now is the time . . . “to place my hope in God.” For, as the Apostle says, “To experience what one hopes for is no longer to hope; for why should anyone hope for what he already experiences? But if we hope for something we do not experience, it is with patient endurance that we await it.” Now since we are established in this hope, let us put in to practice . . . a sacrifice to God.115

As sacrifices established in hope that aim at eternal rest, aging individuals and their community members are propelled into an ethics of compassion in this time, in this material world. Again, Augustine here recognizes the Letter to the Hebrews in that it affirms that the body not “forget to do good and give to others: for it is with such sacrifices that God is pleased.”116 Reciprocating Christ’s great act of compassion through humility, Christ followers offer acts of compassion toward the self and neighbor in humility and love. Such sacrifices include service and love for the aging neighbor in need. Even the aging individual might experience ways of serving those around them in a way that empowers her own agency in the latter stages of life. In this sense, every aging person still has agency and a call to participate in intergenerational relationships of mutual love and service. Kathryn Tanner also emphasizes “sacrifices of praise” as acts of compassion toward the neighbor.117 She says, Humans are not to offer sacrifices to God. God to the contrary makes gifts to us for use on our behalf (for which we are admittedly to be grateful in “sacrifices” of praise and thanksgiving). The whole of Jesus’ life—before, as after his death—is such a life-giving sacrifice given by God for us to feed on, for our nourishment. Putting those gifts to use for the good of themselves and others, human beings

115. Augustine, City of God, 408. 116. Ibid., 378. 117. While Kathryn Tanner takes seriously feminist critiques of sacrifice, she departs from those critiques that excise the notion of sacrifice altogether. Instead, she recognizes that sacrifice links the New Testament with the Old Testament by its identification of expiation, a ritual that cleanses humanity in purity and brings about communion between the divine and human parties. However, the New Testament concept of sacrifice hinges on Christ who is the one-time sacrifice (Hebrews 10). Following this one-time sacrifice, Christians now understand sacrifice to be neighbor-directed (as opposed to expiation before God) by serving those in need while departing from human hierarchies. In Christ the Key, 207.

Contemplative Action

127

become living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1). . . . The direction of these living . . . sacrifices becomes in this way the same as God’s: toward the satisfaction of human needs, the reversal of the effects of sin on human life. Service to the neighbor becomes the reality designated by “sacrifices” to God.118

Like Augustine, Tanner emphasizes that sacrifices of praise offered to God result in compassion toward the neighbor in human need. By following Christ in humility, believers enact loving sacrifices in this material realm from love of God. By loving the aging neighbor who experiences need, individuals love God in the neighbor. However, much of Augustine’s atonement theory moves beyond the sole image of sacrifice and focuses on liberating the captive that reflects more of the famous Christus victor or ransom model, to which I now turn. Christ the Mediator as Deliverer and Liberator Interestingly, Augustine’s use of varying images that describe the atonement is often closely referenced together in much of his texts. For example, in Confessions XI, Augustine says, “For us he was victorious before you and victor because he was victim” quickly after citing Christ as priest and sacrifice.119 In the same passage that describes Christ as priest and sacrifice, he also invokes the language of victor and victim. In the Expositions of the Psalms, Augustine explores the image of “captivity,” “deliverance,” and “liberation” further. In “Exposition of Psalm 142,” Augustine says that Christ was free from sin and death, who in turn, was able to free others from the consequences of sin resulting in death. In this sense, Christ liberates humanity from sin and the negative consequences of aging and death. Augustine says, “Clearly he could not free others from their fetters if he were not free himself. Being free, he slew death, broke bonds, and captured captivity when they assigned him a place in dark regions, like the dead of this world.”120 In this way, Augustine begins to sound more like ransom theory in Christ’s opposition to the evil forces of sin and death by Christ’s ability to liberate humanity from their “captured captivity.” He continues in “Exposition 1 of Psalm 70,” asking, “But why, then, are we captives? And why is it in the guise of captives that we come to know grace, to know it as the grace of our liberator?”121 Here Augustine contrasts the disobedience of Adam that causes humanity’s captivity in opposition to the obedience of Christ that frees us from captivity to sin and death. Only Christ is able to liberate humanity from the “death-ridden” body and law of sin. However, it is perhaps The Trinity building on previous images in Confessions and elsewhere that contrasts the “True mediator” with the “false mediator.”122 The

118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

Tanner, Christ the Key, 272. Augustine, Confessions, 220. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 142,” 352. Augustine, “Exposition 1 of Psalm 70,” 415. Augustine, The Trinity, 166–71; Confessions, 218–20.

128

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

false mediator operates under the dominion of deceit, the reign of pride, and the preference for power over justice.123 Moreover, the false mediator draws individuals to lower goods in contrast to the true mediator who leads to higher goods through humility, truth, and justice. This same false mediator is also the mediator of death as opposed to the true mediator who is the mediator of life. He says, For it came about that the chains of many sins in many deaths were broken by the one death of one man which no sin had preceded. For our sakes the Lord paid this one death which he did not owe in order that the death we do owe might do us no harm . . . . By his death he offered for us the one truest possible sacrifice, and thereby purged, abolished, and destroyed whatever there was of guilt, for which the principalities and powers had a right to hold us bound to payment of the penalty; and by his resurrection he called [us] to new life.124 (italics mine)

In perhaps the most candid language yet, Augustine uses more or less “debt” language in which Christ pays the death “owed” by humanity to the “principalities and powers,” which had a “right” to bind humanity to this penalty.125 This seems to anticipate the image of ransom theory in the transaction between Christ and the devil over the payment of innocent death. Augustine continues the image of Christus victor or ransom theory in a later section of The Trinity in which he says Christ’s act of justice precedes and corresponds to his power. By justice, Christ liberates humanity from the debt of death. He says, By a kind of divine justice the human race was handed over to the power of the devil for the sin of the first man . . . this should not be thought of as though God actually did it or ordered it to be done, but merely that he permitted it, albeit justly. When he withdrew from the sinner, the author of sin marched in.126

Here Augustine alludes to God’s passive will by withdrawing from the sinner and handing him over to the power of the devil by justice. However, Christ overcame the devil by God’s justice. Like Barth’s emphasis on letting hell do its worst on the incarnate God-man, Christ subversively overcomes the unjust schemes of the devil through his inner justice. Through Christ’s sinlessness, He overcame death and the negative consequences of the aging experience. Christ’s death acted as a twofold sacrament, redeeming both inner and outer humanity. Augustine claims that Christ’s inner man or soul was just while his outer man or body assumed the consequence of sin through mortality. Yet, his

123. Ibid., 166. 124. Ibid., 169–70. 125. See Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven: Yale University, 2009) for historical development of biblical “debt” language. 126. Augustine, The Trinity, 357–58.

Contemplative Action

129

death and resurrection involves a twofold death and resurrection of soul and body that makes right our injustice through sin.127 Augustine says, “He [the devil] found nothing in him deserving of death and yet he killed him. It is therefore perfectly just that he should let the debtors he held go free.”128 In this way, Augustine says Christ beats the devil at the “justice game” rather than the “power game” by enacting justice that precedes power. Through Christ’s divine nature as Creator, He had the power to overcome death and did so after subjecting himself to human death. Christ overcomes the devil as victor, deliverer, and liberator.129 In addition, Augustine continues the use of human metaphor to describe the work of God, including that of physician and healer as it applies to the aging experience toward death. Christ the Mediator as Physician and Healer In Augustine’s stirring Confessions, he considers the intimacy of God who knows him better than he knows himself. In line with his confession that God gathers and restores the broken pieces of humanity, Augustine describes God as “physician of my most intimate self.”130 Augustine continues the image of physician of the soul by saying, For you will cure all my diseases (Ps. 102:3) through him who sits at your right hand and intercedes with you for us (Rom. 8:34). Otherwise I would be in despair. Many and great are those diseases, many and great indeed. But your medicine is still more potent. We might have thought your Word was far removed from being united to mankind and have despaired of our lot unless he had become flesh and dwelt among us.131 (Jn 1:14)

127. Ibid., 156–58. 128. Ibid., 359. 129. Stephen Finlan dismisses the centrality of the “atonement” for Christian theology given its violent image, posing that Pauline and Scriptural reflection conflates sacrifice, scapegoat, and lawcourt images. Instead, he proposes the Incarnation or participation in the divine as theosis as central to union between God and humanity (making atonement a secondary concept). Stephen Finlan, Problems with Atonement (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), 7ff. J. Denny Weaver, on the other hand, dismisses substitutionary atonement theories that emphasize sacrifice, expiation, or propitiation before God. Instead, he proposes what he calls the “narrative Christus victor” motif that emphasizes the historical reign of God in the nonviolent resistance of Christ to the power of evil forces. J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). While Weaver makes some important and interesting claims regarding Christ’s overcoming evil forces, particularly death, I resonate with his interpretation of the Gospels and Revelation in the reign of God against evil, though depart from his interpretation of Paul, Hebrews, and his understanding of Old Testament sacrifice. Thus, while I agree with Weaver in his use of “narrative Christus victor” in overcoming evil forces, I depart from his interpretation that sees this atonement motif as the sole explanation of the cross at the exclusion of sacrifice or substitution. 130. Augustine, Confessions, 180. 131. Ibid., 220.

130

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

In this way, Christ serves as the Mediator between God and humankind that heals those diseases, including spiritual, emotional, and physical decay that constitute broken humanity. Augustine takes up this same point in his description of Christ’s twofold death and resurrection as a sacrament for our internal and external self. Both the soul and body experience death and resurrection in Christ. Since humanity sinned and became less capable of participation in the divine, the human race was in need of a “cure.”132 He says, Each thing of ours, that is, both soul and body, was in need of healing and resurrection in order to renew for the better what had changed for the worse. . . . Just as the soul dies when God leaves it, so does the body when the soul leaves it. It becomes lifeless in this process, as the soul becomes wisdomless.133

Here he acknowledges both the soul and the body are subject to disease and need healing. For the soul, such healing involves “resuscitation” through repentance while for the body, such healing involves final resurrection when the dead shall rise in Christ.134 Paul R. Kolbet likens Augustine’s interest in the physician of souls to his philosophical influences, particularly Neoplatonism and Stoicism. Augustine introduces “Christian philosophy” that helps cure the diseased soul by lifting it to the true, beautiful, and good by way of mental and willful assent through the material Christ.135 As Augustine explicitly states in The Trinity, the death of the soul becomes “wisdomless.”136 Lacking participation in God, the soul’s existence becomes a dim image of its original identity through union with the divine. The notion of Christ as physician of human souls corresponds with Augustine’s description in which the pain of the soul is tied to pain of the body in City of God, XIV. Describing pain and its connection to the emotions, Augustine says, “the so-called pains of the flesh are really pains of the soul, experienced in the flesh and from the flesh. The flesh can surely feel no desire or pain by itself, apart from the soul.”137 In this way, Augustine describes the existential grief associated with physical pain in which individuals endure a sense of emotional loss in relation to physical loss. Not surprisingly, aging persons experience psychological loss with the experience of bodily change as individuals grappling with their particular mortality. Furthermore, Augustine correlates the physical loss of life toward death as material consequence resulting from spiritual pride. Like his description of evil,

132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137.

Augustine, The Trinity, 155–57. Ibid., 156. Ibid. Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls, 41–61; 88–117. Augustine, The Trinity, 156. Augustine, City of God, 576.

Contemplative Action

131

corruption serves as a privation of substance, decay, and diminution. Augustine says, “Evil is eradicated not by the removal of some natural substance which had accrued to the original, or by the removal of any part of it, but by the healing and restoration of the original which had been corrupted and debased” (italics mine).138 Here Augustine correlates healing or restorative work to the reversal of sin’s evil effects. In other words, another way of conceiving the atonement may be of divine healer, involving both the body and soul. What began as spiritual disease leading to bodily effect must be remedied by a spiritual cure with bodily effect. Augustine explicitly calls Christ’s death and resurrection as a sacrament for our twofold death of body and soul.139 Both are in need of healing and Christ’s harmonious act becomes a sacrament for the inner life through repentance and faith as well as a model for the outer life when facing physical death and deferred resurrection. Augustine claims this “cure” comes through repentance and faith in the inner person with outward consequence that results in the ultimate resurrection.140 Christ’s harmonious act restores aging persons through a renewed spirit and participation with the divine while ultimately healing aging and death through the promise of future resurrected life. Augustine continues in The Trinity in which he enlists the image of healing amid the image of priest, sacrifice, deliverer, and liberator. In a short passage in Book IV, Augustine says, So then, into the place where the mediator of death transported us without accompanying us there himself, that is into the death of the flesh, there the Lord our God by the hidden and wholly mysterious decree of his divine justice introduced the healing means of our amendment, which he did not himself deserve.141 (italics mine)

Against the false mediator toward death, the true mediator introduces new life by way of healing justice that restores not only our souls but also our bodies through his resurrection power. In this way, Augustine identifies the atonement not only as that of sacrifice, and liberation, but also as one involving healing by the great physician. The image of God as healer and physician holds great hope for persons who are aging and experiencing the reality of impending death. Even in the reality of physical death, individuals are reminded of the Great Physician who ultimately overcomes human death and offers the hope of resurrected life. Moreover, this same physician-healer helps offer a balm for the soul with the gift of Christ’s presence through union with him and union with others who display acts of love, compassion, and mercy in life’s final hours. But beyond healer, Augustine also

138. 139. 140. 141.

Ibid., 569. Ibid., 156–57. Ibid., 158–59. Augustine, The Trinity, 168. See also “Exposition of Psalm 44:3,” 282.

132

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

adds a fourth image, that of exchange accomplished through union with Christ and the Church much like a marriage union to which I now turn. The Great Exchange through Union with Christ In a fourth and final image invoked in reference to the atonement, Augustine addresses the notion of “exchange” of attributes, qualities, and benefits much like a marriage union in which the two partners share the same goods and benefits in common with a shared interest or will. This image seems most invoked in Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms and again personifies humility as central to the incarnation and saving work of Christ. This saving work extends from the head to the body through the marriage union of Christ and the Church. Augustine says, “Christ and the Church together are one person, but the Word and flesh do not form one nature. The Father and the Word together are one nature; but Christ and the Church together are one person, one perfect man growing toward his fullness.”142 While Augustine does not collapse the two distinct natures of God and humanity into one, he does unify the two natures in the person of Christ that extends those benefits pertaining to the divine nature and Christ’s perfected human nature to the rest of humankind, particularly the miracle of resurrected bodies. Perhaps most associated with Martin Luther in his focus on “alien righteousness” that comes through union with Christ, Kathryn Tanner comments on the kind of “happy exchange” in its interpretation of the atonement through the incarnation. She says, The happy exchange of the atonement is just a case of the saving communication of idioms that the incarnation brings about. As a result of the incarnation, the characteristics of human life become the (alien) properties of the Word, and thereby the properties of the Word (its holiness, its life-enhancing powers) become the (alien) properties of humanity in a way that saves humanity from sin and death.143

While preceding Luther’s later development, Augustine’s notion of exchange between divine and human benefits resonates throughout his works, particularly his commentaries on the Psalms. In “Exposition of Psalm 138,” Augustine says, “God is Father to Christ in this coequal form, Father to his only-begotten Son who is born from his own substance. But the only-begotten Son became a participant in our mortality, as I have reminded you, in order that we might be created anew and be made participants in his divinity, being restored to eternal life.”144 Here Augustine discusses how Christ’s participation in our mortality enables our participation in eternal life. Moreover,

142. Augustine, “Exposition 1 of Psalm 101,” in Expositions of the Psalms, ed. John Rotelle and trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2003), 47. 143. Tanner, Christ the Key, 254. 144. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 138:3,” 258.

Contemplative Action

133

Augustine likens this great exchange whereby Christ entered a far-off country through exile145 as one in which Christ received “insults while giving honors,” and “drinks the cup of suffering” while “offering salvation.”146 In doing such, Christ exchanges our sorrow for his joy, our shame for his honor, enabling those who were once slaves to sin to become sons and daughters of God. Ultimately, this act of humility reverses the consequences of aging and death that result in separation from the life of God and instead, renews human nature through participation or completion in the divine. Finally, the image of exchange used in the atonement further affirms humility in that Christ descended that we might ascend. In The Trinity, Augustine describes how participation in God was lost following sin in which wisdom was forfeited in the inner man and physical death became the penalty for sin in the outer man. Augustine says, To contemplate God . . . we would have to be cleansed by him who became what by nature we are and what by sin we are not. By nature we are not God; by nature we are men; by sin we are not just. So God became a just man to intercede with God for sinful man. The sinner did not match the just, but man did match man. So he applied to us the similarity of his humanity to take away the dissimilarity of our iniquity, and becoming a partaker of our mortality he made us partakers of his divinity.147

As Augustine affirms throughout his texts, Christ becomes the road to participation in the Triune life. Christ descended that we may ascend. His humility that takes on human nature—including our mortality—brings about the possibility for humanity participating in the divine nature and resurrected life. In his commentaries on the Psalms, Augustine describes Christ as the Good Samaritan to us, entering our suffering by taking on flesh.148 Christ was willing to “sit down” or be “humbled” in order that he might be “exalted” by the Father.149 Moreover, the “Psalms of Ascent” are littered with passages that speak to Christ’s humility whereby we understand Christ’s material descent is how we ascend to the true, good, and beautiful, that is God, by way of Christ’s body in time. In this sense, the way down is the way up, or Christ’s descent into our humanity enables humanity’s ascent to participation in God. By Christ’s humility, he established our salvation through the atonement and a new way to be human as believing participants in God and the body of Christ. Christ’s humility and willingness to suffer on our behalf exalts our own nature in its weakness, including the experience of aging and death that we might be united with Him through this happy exchange.

145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 148:8,” 482. Augustine, “Exposition 2 of Psalm 30,” 323. Augustine, The Trinity, 155. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 125,” 81. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 126,” 88.

134

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Union with Christ: Participating in God and the Body of Christ Wisdom and the Word: Contemplation and Action Given Augustine’s theology of the Trinity in which Christ is the Word or Wisdom of God imparted to humans by way of union with him, Augustine forges congruence between sapientia and scientia, wisdom and knowledge, contemplation and action. In this way, Augustine offers a vision that enables our “eyes to see.” Eternal truth opens up our myopic vision of temporal reality as if temporality were our only existence. Instead, linking the temporal in relation to the eternal, scientia in relation to sapientia, humans—and particularly the aging—are reminded of their creaturely status that enables a more authentic form of self-knowledge and the ability to more genuinely image God. From The Trinity Augustine describes humans as made in the image of God, particularly given their rational capacities. However, as Rowan Williams highlights, the image of God is “imperfect” unless the mind actively participates in the life of God by way of sapientia.150 Only wisdom pertaining to our creaturely status as contingent beings in relation to God offers true knowledge of oneself. Thus, being made in the image of God is not directly contingent upon our rational capacities, but our status as creatures in relation to God. The deeper we embody the awareness of our relational dependence, the stronger we image God. This interpretation also holds import for aging individuals given that one’s rational capacities may be compromised in one’s older stage of life through dementia. But bearing the image of God has not so much to do with rationality as relational dependence, a quality that many older persons experience—even when cognitive capacities are somewhat compromised.151 Moreover, Ayres finds Book XIII of The Trinity as central to understanding the union of scientia (knowledge of the temporal realm) with sapientia (wisdom

150. I here affirm the status image of God beyond “rational capacities” in the way The Trinity is commonly interpreted. Instead, imaging God is contingent upon relationship to God primarily through Christ, the perfect image of the divine in the human person (Col.  1). Rather than emphasize “rational capacities,” imaging God should emphasize “participation.” By participation, I intend to incorporate both strong and weak senses of the meaning as described by Kathryn Tanner. For Tanner, the perfect image of God resides in Christ while the strong sense of participation entails the presence of the Word and Spirit in human life. The strongest form of weak participation involves “‘imitation’ that comes from the reformation of human life” [by the presence of Word and Spirit]. The weakest form of weak participation involves our status as human creatures that still maintains some image of God even if the image is in need of a fuller sense of divine presence in Christ the Key, 33–37. 151. Acknowledging weak and strong participation removes the burden of human personhood (image of God) from rational capacities that might slip into “reasoning abilities.” Persons with dementia may not coherently recognize their present reality, but those persons may still relate to God and others through an altered present or re-lived memory. Thus, imaging God would include persons with dementia or compromised cognitive capabilities in that they may still relate to God and others through affective response.

Contemplative Action

135

pertaining to the eternal good) as located in the union of Christ’s two natures. Christ’s human nature corresponds with scientia while Christ’s divine nature corresponds with sapientia. In other words, the union in Christ’s person draws together the eternal and temporal realms and the forms of knowledge requisite to each realm. For those things pertaining to eternal truth, contemplation is appropriate as one’s soul feeds on wisdom, particularly the wisdom of Christ. For knowledge pertaining to temporal reality, action or virtue is ordered by faith that links humanity to eternal truths. Ordering temporal action with eternity’s wisdom orders our loves or “wills” in time. As such, Christ perfectly embodies virtuous acts toward others given his final end is directed toward love of God. Unlike humanity’s bended will that separates the two realities, Christ’s human nature follows the divine will in perfect correspondence or perfect obedience. Kimberly F. Baker adds to this perspective by arguing that action and contemplation perfectly align in Christ.152 Interpreting Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms as drawing together the relation of temporal activity with eternal contemplation, Baker focuses on the totus Christus or body of Christ as the location for sharing in Christ’s love through works in time. In this way, Baker agrees with Rowan Williams who says Christ is the Head of the Body, assuming flesh through the historical Christ as well as the historical Body “that is the company of believers.”153 Thus, not only does action and contemplation meet together in the person of Christ, but also action and contemplation meet together in the body of Christ, the Church, through its active witness in time. The marrying of wisdom and knowledge, contemplation and action holds great consequence for aging persons and those community members surrounding aging persons (as will be discussed in Chapter 5). Michael Cameron further emphasizes the totus Christus as the “hermeneutical center” of the Psalms. Various psalms specifically reference union with Christ as analogous to the marriage union. Here Augustine affirms Christ and the Church as one person much like the Word and flesh form one person in Christ.154 Augustine says, “The Church was drawn from the human race, so that flesh united to Word might be the Head of the Church, and all the rest of us believers might be the limbs that belong to that Head.”155 The limbs of Christ remain linked to Christ by partaking the sacraments and following Christ’s example through a life of humility and love.156 In this way, the body of Christ and humanity receive a renewed nature through Christ’s perfect obedience.

152. Kimberly F. Baker, “Augustine on Action, Contemplation, and their Meeting Point in Christ” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 2007). 153. Williams, “Augustine’s Christology,” 182. 154. Augustine, “Exposition 1 of Psalm 101,” 47. 155. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 44,” 282. 156. Augustine, “Exposition 2 of Psalm 26,” 275; “Exposition of Psalm 33:5,” 26; Gregory of Nanzianzus, “Letter 101,” 297.

136

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Renewed Human Nature: Obedience Perfected through Christ’s Union with Humanity As portrayed throughout the Expositions of the Psalms, Augustine was concerned to represent the humanity of Christ alongside the divinity of Christ. He would not compromise on Christ’s divinity in relation to those Arian heresies that suggested Christ as created. And he would not compromise on Christ’s humanity in relation to those Apollinarian heresies that denied Christ a human soul along with his body. Instead, affirming the creed at Nicaea along with what would become the central tenants of Chalcedon, Augustine affirmed the dual natures of Christ’s person. In other words, Christ becomes like us in every way except sin, answering Gregory of Nanzianzus’s appeal that “what is assumed must be healed.” On the likeness of Christ, Augustine argues against those heresies that still deny his human nature, saying, Imagine if the almighty did not create the man, wherever he was formed, from the womb of his mother, but thrust him suddenly before our eyes! Imagine if he went through no ages from infancy to youth, if he took no food and did not sleep! Would he not confirm the opinion of that error, and would it not be believed that he did not in any way assume a true man, and would it not destroy what he did out of mercy if he did everything as a miracle? But now a mediator has appeared between God and human beings so that, uniting both natures in the unity of his person, he may raise up the ordinary to the extraordinary and temper the extraordinary to the ordinary.157

Christ lifts up the ordinary to extraordinary, enabling human nature to participate in the divine nature by a mediation made available through his person. Moving through the ages of infancy to youth, Christ knows what it means to age and change over time. He also knows the full gamut of suffering and union with the Father through prayer or contemplation that sustained his eternal mission through time. Because of the great exchange, Christ’s obedience now becomes our obedience. Our weak-willed tendency to turn away from God as our final Good is taken up in Christ’s person and work. Christ rectifies our disobedience with his obedience. He does so while enduring human emotions and experiencing psychological abandonment on our behalf, including those who are aging and near death. His person petitions our psychological fears and anxieties as uttered in his words at Gethsemane as well as the cross. He took up our psychological anxiety regarding death and feelings of forsakenness even in the aging experience. He redeems our will that was bent against God by realigning our human will to God in harmony again. In doing so, he reunites the possibility for spiritual fellowship and spiritual knowledge of God that was once available in the garden. Wisdom is no longer severed from knowledge for humanity, but builds on the Old Testament portrayal of wisdom that manifests itself in bodily form through the person of Christ.

157. Augustine, “Letter 137,” 217.

Contemplative Action

137

Thus, Christ becomes the pinnacle sign of wisdom or eternity’s truth in the material realm. Christ descended that we might ascend. His body is God’s communication of truth to us that restores knowledge of God in the form of wisdom. Much like Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, Christ came to restore knowledge of God and secure victory over human death.158 Likewise, Augustine’s internal, spiritual disease of the soul led to physical consequences as seen through aging and death. Thus, an internal, spiritual cure was made available in Christ that also led to renewed physical consequences made available through the resurrection. In doing so, Christ made available participation in the life of God as a way of renewing human nature. Participation in the Life of God: The Great Exchange In order to renew human nature, Christ took on flesh and obediently fulfilled a path to restore human creatures. Augustine’s use of the varying metaphors pertaining to the atonement help to illuminate different ways this exchange might be considered. As priest and sacrifice, Christ intercedes in a way that purifies human nature by removing the stain of sin through expiation. The body of Christ responds through sacrifice or virtuous acts of compassion toward the neighbor in need. As deliverer and liberator, Christ pays the debt for our sin and secures victory over the devil by justice and the reign of God. By paying with innocent blood, the unjust are now free from the “wages of sin” that lead to death. Death and mortality are conquered through Christ’s liberation. Furthermore, as physician and healer, Christ’s cure for the soul extends to cure for the body. Christ’s single death acts as a sacrament for our twofold death of body and soul.159 Those ensouled bodies once enlightened by spiritual knowledge in the garden have lost access to this direct “wisdom of God” once intimately known. The physical consequences of death and disease ensued, signifying the greater disease of the soul. Christ’s union between the Word with a human soul and body remedies our disordered will that fractures the soul and body. By enacting a perfect union of soul and body on humanity’s behalf, Christ endures and overcomes physical death. His divine and human natures work together in harmony to heal what was once headed for decay, aging, and death by offering a better body and ultimately, a better existence. In this sense, immortality takes on mortality that we might become immortal through resurrected bodies. While still awaiting resurrected bodies through outward decay, Augustine emphasizes how the inner person or soul might be “renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16).160 Here again Augustine emphasizes the soul’s resuscitation through repentance and faith, just as the body will once again experience resurrection.161

158. St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 29–30. 159. Augustine, The Trinity, 157–59. 160. Ibid., 156. 161. Ibid.

138

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Growth in renewal is particularly significant for the aging stage of life as the closest period to eternal Sabbath rest in which wisdom is accrued through time. Experience in participation or union with God is significant not only for those aging individuals, but also for those gifts and compassionate acts they might share with their younger neighbors through fellowship in Christ. Their particular social location that places them near the end of life affords them a position of wisdom given their heightened sense of finitude and fragility. The cure begins inward and moves outward.162 Healing of the inner person affects healing of the outer person. Bodily death and resurrection is a sign and sacrament of inner death and resurrection.163 Dying to self through repentance and faith as inward renewal eventually brings forth the outward renewal through bodily resurrection. Thus, Christ as physician and healer also personifies Christ in the Great Exchange. As Athanasius originally stated, “God became human that we might become God.”164 Christ’s willingness to assume human nature and bestow those benefits and attributes pertaining to his divine essence function much like the exchange seen through the imagery of Luther’s marriage union. Christ’s righteousness, immortality, and status as Sonship extend to our righteousness, immortality, and ability to be adopted as children of God. In this way, Christ welcomes his creatures whether young or old to participate in the life of God. Rowan Williams emphasizes the role of the Spirit for Augustine in aiding creatures as they participate in the life of God. The Spirit works by grace to bring creatures in union with Christ. Williams notes that Augustine ends The Trinity that “turns more and more into a meditation on the imparting of divine caritas through the Holy Spirit and thus a meditation on the human self within the communion of believers” (italics in original).165 For Augustine, the Trinity engages in the activity of “sapientia-filled love,” or wisdom married to love that invites us into the life of God.166 In other words, contemplation will be perfectly shared in eternity and love perfectly given. Knowledge and love work together. We participate in the life of God by also merging what we might learn of wisdom from contemplation in this material realm with the reality of active love toward the neighbor, including the aging neighbor. Christ’s humility becomes the key to understanding a life of wisdom and activity that we might follow. Sacrifice of Praise: Humility and Love for the Neighbor Christ’s humility and love reflect the bridging of contemplation and action in the form of wisdom and knowledge. Such congruence also reflects harmony between love and justice. The emphasis on humility and love corresponds with the sacrifices of praise emphasized in City of God X that empowers acts of compassion toward one’s neighbor. Loving

162. 163. 164. 165. 166.

Ibid., 158. Ibid., 159. Athanasius, On the Incarnation. Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 331. Ibid.

Contemplative Action

139

the neighbor in God, charitable acts of compassion encourage our meeting the neighbor’s need.167 As Williams says, Wisdom is identical with caritas, and so it is oriented always to the other’s good. The persona of Wisdom cannot therefore be isolated from its action as caritas; to say that Christ constantly acts in Wisdom’s person is not to assert that he always speaks or acts as divine Word simpliciter, as though the humanity were both separate and insignificant. The persona is Wisdom-in-action, Wisdom engaging in what is not by nature God so as to incorporate it into the divine life and make it capable of seeing what Wisdom sees, knowing what it knows, contemplating the absolute otherness of the creator as if it were located where eternal Wisdom is located, in the heart of the divine self-knowledge and self-love.168

In other words, wisdom is synonymous with caritas and invites the neighbor into participation in the life of God alongside the self. One cannot fully understand one’s anthropology—or purpose behind the aging experience—apart from eternal wisdom that fulfills human existence. But not only does wisdom seek good by inviting others into the life of God, but wisdom also embodies those acts of compassion that meet others’ needs, such as the aging. In doing so, one loves God in loving the neighbor.169 Again Williams quotes van Bavel, saying “We become responsible as a group for the presence of God’s love in the world. For our love of man, in the end, is the love of God himself: God loves the world through us.”170 In this sense, the totus Christus or body of Christ enacts wisdom and love of God through loving the aging neighbor in time. Love and justice correspond. Loving the neighbor becomes our sacrifice of praise that enacts the perfect order of love in response to Christ’s gracious humility on our behalf. Thus, the meaning of life in union with Christ is a life of compassion and service. Here, union with Christ is integral for virtue in the theology of St. Augustine, especially as it applies to aging individuals and their surrounding communities. The crux of this position will be further explored in Chapter 5.

167. 168. 169. 170.

Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love; Tanner, Christ the Key. Williams, “Augustine’s Christology,” 184. This will be further explored in Augustine’s virtues for the aging in Chapter 5. Father Tarcisius van Bavel in Rowan Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 332.

Chapter 4 AGING IN THE MIDDLE VOICE

Introduction Like Augustine before him, Karl Barth’s theology as witness and proclamation attests to Christ as the center and heart of human understanding. While Barth’s famous Church Dogmatics expounds a Trinitarian God in revelation, election, creation, and reconciliation, arguably Christ serves as the root and thematic thread throughout his four volumes of theological reflection on the activity of God and created reality. Adam Neder reads Church Dogmatics as organized around Participation in Christ while Gerald McKenny reads Dogmatics as organized around the Analogy of Grace, an analogy that is relational in essence.1 Both authors seem to locate the heart of Barth’s theology in the person and work of Christ in relation to the Divine Godhead and human creatures. Thus, understanding the meaning of aging and death in the human experience entails understanding the significance of the person and work of Christ in Barth’s theology for this stage of life. Much like Augustine, who brings knowledge and love, contemplation and action together in the person of Christ, so too does Barth locate activity and passivity in the person and work of Christ. Understanding active and passive agency has significant value for human agency in general, but particularly the aging stage of life. Analogous to the middle voice that is simultaneously active and passive tense in ancient Greek grammar, Barth illuminates Christ’s active and passive agency in both the Divine Godhead and His person in time.2 To understand the dialectical movement of Christ’s integral person, I first delineate the two natures of Christ’s person as divine and human in relation to Christ’s active and passive agency; second, describe the work of Christ as the movement between subject and object alongside W.  H. Vanstone’s Stature of Waiting to help illuminate Christ as one who gives and receives in relation to the aging experience; and finally, explicate union with Christ as a mixture of prayer and activity as seen through Barth’s

1. Adam Neder, Participation in Christ: An Entry into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009); McKenny, The Analogy of Grace. 2. Using the analogy of middle voice from the ancient Greek grammar was originally suggested by Jeffrey P. Bishop in our discussions on the active and passive agency of Christ.

142

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

interpretation of Sabbath rest, contemplation, and participation in its significance for aging individuals.

Barthian Christology and Aging To begin, I articulate Barth’s Christology in terms of the divine and human natures that relate to the active and passive agency of God’s movement toward humanity and humanity’s response to God. Ultimately, God elects, creates, reveals, and reconciles Himself to humanity with the aim of participation in Christ. God intends integral relationship or fellowship with humanity from eternity and pursues this end through time. Through this movement, Christ’s active and passive agency serves as the example for human agency and particularly aging individuals, as they image Christ through participation in Him. While central to his work as a whole, unearthing Barth’s Christology is no easy task.3 Perhaps George Hunsinger captures the heart of Barth’s Christology when summarizing the downward movement of the incarnation through the Christological title, Son of God as simultaneous to the upward movement of Christ’s exaltation through the title, Son of Man.4 In doing so, Hunsinger highlights an important theme that I find integral to the whole of Barth’s theology in relation to the aging experience, namely the active and passive agency of Christ. By active and passive agency, Barth’s theology builds on the Reformed Tradition—both in the active or divine initiation by God and the passive or human response by individuals.5 For the Reformed and Lutheran traditions, Christ accomplishes justification while believers receive justification. Nonetheless, Barth is emphatic that this active and passive, giving and receiving relationship is not without human action in response. In fact, for Barth, God’s “Being is One who acts” and individuals reciprocally respond as “beings who act” given that humanity images Christ. Paul Nimmo distinguishes between passive and active participation in the following way: passive participation pertains to all humanity as recipients of justification in their status as imagers of Christ while active participation pertains to those ethical agents who participate in the will of God through active response.6 “For Barth, ‘active

3. Even though each page is peppered with the term Jesus Christ, understanding the movement of his thought on the topic of Jesus Christ entails delving into texts that cut across the various sections composing the four volumes of Church Dogmatics. 4. George Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Christology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 137. See also George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). 5. Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 232. 6. Paul Nimmo, Being in Action (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 173.

Aging in the Middle Voice

143

participation is implied when [a person] is called to the service of the kingdom.’”7 Full human freedom is exercised when beings act in accordance with participation.8 Delineating between active and passive agency does not imply passive agency as analogous to “being acted upon” like a puppet (or moved like a stone), but instead receiving the work of God or the work of the other.9 In this sense, active and passive agency involves continual response and initiation between self and other, while the focus shifts between subject and object or giving and receiving. A secondary way for understanding active and passive agency relates to active and passive obedience displayed through Christ in His movement from Gethsemane to the cross.10 Both understandings of active and passive agency will be important for the purposes of aging in the human experience. Thus, in order to understand Barth’s Christology as it relates to aging, one must consider first, the person of Christ, which entails both natures as the Son of God and Son of Man in His active and passive agency; second, the work of Christ that displays Christ’s agency as subject and object; and finally, union with God as receiving, prayer, and participation in Christ. In sum, Barth’s theology highlights Christ’s active agency in the divine movement of God toward humanity and Christ’s passive agency in the human reception through gratitude that makes available our participation in God. Person of Christ: Active and Passive Agency Electing God: Incarnation as Active and Eternal Decree Understanding Barth’s approach to Christology includes recognizing his emphasis on Christ’s Divine nature as reflected in the title “Son of God” throughout Dogmatics. To do so, I begin by describing the Son as the electing God whose eternal decree wills the incarnation, thereby reflecting the coherence of God’s being and act; and second, expound the significance of the title “Son of God” as Christ enacts humility and obedience through the incarnation. Through these first two subsections, I interpret Barth’s consideration of the “Son of God” as both active agency and revelatory event with significance for aging individuals. Barth begins Dogmatics by describing revelation. For Barth, the Word of God is not a symbol to be discerned by human speculation, but an event God offers with the aim of reception.11 God primarily communicates to humanity through Christ as Word of God. For Barth, the Word (or Command) of God completes or fulfills creaturely purpose as opposed to contradicting creaturely ends.12 In God’s

7. CD III/4, 482 quoted in Nimmo, Being in Action, 174. 8. Nimmo, Being in Action, 174. 9. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 333–34. 10. McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 233. 11. CD I/1, 132–33. 12. See here Gerald McKenny’s discussion of Barth’s departure from “strong” voluntarism in the Analogy of Grace, 184–86. McKenny argues that Barth rejects strong

144

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

revelation as Word, Barth confirms the Word as Son of God in His divine nature as well as the unity between the three persons of the Trinity.13 Mirroring Augustine and most of traditional Christianity, Barth affirms the divinity of Christ in the title “Son of God.” Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection not only enact God’s reconciling work with humankind but also serve as the revelatory event by which God is made known and available to humanity. Paralleling Augustine, Christ as Word comes to restore knowledge (or wisdom) and love of God as seen through faith and obedience as well as gratitude and love. Moreover, Jesus Christ becomes the “focus and crown” for all fellowship between God and creation. Barth describes God’s being as act and love by asserting Christ as the height of human history that brings together the divine and human realms. Like Augustine, he says, “[The] possibilities of divine presence and action have a very definite center . . . their basis and their consummation, their meaning, their norm and their law in Jesus Christ. In the first place, the fulfilled union of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ is . . . the principle and basis of all divine immanence” (italics mine).14 In this way, Christ becomes the “key to the whole” in which creation has its origin and completion in Christ who calls creatures into relationship.15 Like Augustine’s emphasis, Christ embodies the union between divine and human realities in the existence of His person. Finally, the divine nature of the Son is fully explicit in Barth’s second volume on election in which he argues that Jesus Christ is both the “Electing God” and “elected man.” In this way, Christ embodies the middle voice or middle term as simultaneously active and passive agent. Barth appeals to Jn 1:1-2ff or logos theology in which he asserts that Christ exists in the beginning with God. There is “no other beginning apart from that of God within Himself.”16 God’s Word is the election and beginning of all existence apart from Himself. Barth says, In the beginning, before time and space as we know them . . . God anticipated and determined within Himself (of his knowing and willing) that the goal and meaning of all His dealings with the as yet non-existent universe should be the fact that in His Son He would be gracious towards man, uniting Himself with him.17

voluntarism based on Christ’s fulfillment of the covenant on God’s side that legitimizes the law as grounded and fulfilled in grace. 13. Barth primarily uses the term “modes” to describe the Father, Son, and Spirit of the Trinity rather than using the term “person,” while claiming his position diverges from the classic heresy known as modalism where Christ is one substance appearing in three forms or modes. 14. CD II/2, 317. 15. Ibid., 318. See also Tanner, Christ the Key; Tanner, “Creation and Providence.” 16. CD II/2, 94. 17. Ibid., 101–02.

Aging in the Middle Voice

145

Barth affirms the Son as coexistent with the Father in their determination to be for humanity. Together, the three persons of the Trinity choose to unite with humankind before time.18 Here, I make explicit the active and passive, giving and receiving, movement within the Triune relations. Within eternity, the Triune God as Father, Son, and Spirit elects or wills that the Son might become human. The active agency of the Godhead elects to send the Son into flesh form. For Barth, creation is the external basis of the covenant and the covenant is the internal basis of creation. God willed before the creation of time to fellowship and commune with humanity in His own person. Thus, Barth affirms not only the Son’s eternal divinity before becoming flesh in Christ, but also “electing God” and “elected human” as the two sides of the covenant grounded and fulfilled in the God-man, Jesus Christ.19 Barth affirms Jesus as both the subject and object of election, active and passive agent. Jesus is the middle voice. In this way, the incarnation is God’s eternal decree or God’s eternal “act.” God wills or actively chooses to become human before creating humanity. In this way, God desires not only reconciliation but also relationship through creation and revelation to humankind. Like Augustine, God’s Being and attributes are one. There is no potentiality in God. For Barth, God’s Being is His act in love and freedom. God willingly chooses to covenant and fellowship with humanity through divine election that explicitly chooses the incarnation before creation. The divine election of the Son is most clearly seen in Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation in IV/1 as the Son of God who goes into the far country on our behalf. Son of God: Active Obedience, Incarnation, and Humility Moving into his doctrine of reconciliation in IV/1 and IV/2, Barth describes Jesus Christ, “the Lord as Servant” in a way that coheres with both the Nicaean and Chalcedonian formulations by presenting Christ as both divine and human.20 In IV/1, Barth primarily focuses on the divine nature of Christ whose co-substance with the Father affirms Christ as “Son of God.” In §59 “Jesus Christ, Lord as Servant,” Barth describes God as limiting Himself in Christ by assuming human finitude and the consequences of sin. In this section, Barth details the significance of Christ’s becoming human in a way that highlights the importance of humility that accompanies Christ’s title as “servant.” Using New Testament imagery in the gospel accounts of Jesus, Barth affirms Christ as “Lord,” including both titles as “Son of Man” and “Son of God.”21

18. See also CD III/1; Tanner, “Creation and Providence.” 19. CD II/2, 103–06. 20. George Hunsinger describes Barth’s movement between his emphasis on the divine focus in the Alexandrian school and human focus in the Antiochene school as dialectical in a way that retains the tension between both sides of Christ’s person. As Hunsinger illuminates, humanity can only speak of one side of the dialectic at a time. Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Christology,” 130. 21. CD IV/1, 162.

146

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Both titles were necessary for affirming Christ’s reconciliatory work on the cross that brings together the creature and Creator. In this way, Christ is middle, not as mixture, but as both creature and Creator in simultaneity. The initial focus, however, remains on the divine Son of God who goes into the “far country” (or enters creation) on humanity’s behalf in IV/1. Christ as Son of God is one with the Father in the decision to create, covenant with Israel, and enter creation by divine election. This election includes “self-limitation” on the part of God’s particular faithfulness to an ‘unfaithful people.’”22 Citing Isaiah 53 as the “suffering servant” passage, Barth says, “For in the one Israelite Jesus it was God Himself who as the Son made Himself the object of this accusation and willed to confess Himself a sinner, and to be regarded and dealt with as such.”23 Here Barth cites Christ’s willingness to become friends with humanity and stand in solidarity with sin by dying on a cross between two thieves.24 In this way, God chooses “freedom which is no freedom,” entering the prison of sin that accompanies humanity’s contradiction against God (Heb. 12:3).25 Thus, God actively chooses the “obedience” of humility into the “far country” (incarnation) along with Christ’s “suffering” on his way to the cross (atonement). The two moments of Christ’s incarnation and atonement reveal the mystery of God’s action in time. However, Barth emphasizes that Christ’s divine nature does not change as a result of the incarnation. Instead, the Word becoming flesh is a divine activity that brings God glory in His willingness to humble himself for the sake of creation.26 In his most clear Chalcedonian statement yet, Barth describes the two natures of Christ’s identity, saying, But it is something very bold .  .  . to say .  .  . that God was .  .  . altogether in Christ . . . [that] His identity with this . . . man who was born like all of us in time, who lived and thought and spoke, who could be tempted and suffer and die. . . . It tells us that God for His part is God in His unity with this creature, this man, in His human and creaturely nature—and without ceasing to be God, without any alteration or diminution of His divine nature.27

While assuming human nature, the Word does not cease to be God. Through the incarnation, God limits Himself in the form of a servant and unites divinity with humanity in His person. By the incarnation, Christ also takes on human sin without “making common cause with it. He acts as Lord over this contradiction even as He subjects Himself to it. He frees the creature in becoming a creature. He overcomes the flesh in

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

CD IV/1, 170–71. Ibid., 172. Ibid. Ibid., 173. See citation of Gregory of Nyssa in ibid., 192. CD IV/1, 183.

Aging in the Middle Voice

147

becoming flesh. He reconciles the world with Himself as He is in Christ.”28 In this person, there is no “confusion, change, division, or separation of the natures,” sounding like Chalcedon.29 By humbling himself through the incarnation that ends in death on a cross, Jesus reveals a new ethical way through a life of humility. Likewise, Jesus’s teachings and followers embark on a path of humility in loving the neighbor and enemy in becoming children of God.30 Interestingly, Barth argues Christ’s obedience through humility appears not only in the Word’s willingness to take on human nature but also in the Son’s eternal obedience to the Father in the Triune Godhead. In his desire to maintain consistency between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, Barth argues that the Son exercises humility in God’s very being. Thus, we begin to see the “active agency” of Christ in Christ’s willingness to become human from eternity. Barth says, If, then, God is in Christ, if what the man Jesus does is God’s own work, this aspect of the self-emptying and self-humbling of Jesus Christ as an act of obedience cannot be alien to God. But in this case we have to see here the other and inner side of the mystery of the divine nature of Christ and therefore of the nature of the one true God—that He Himself is also able and free to render obedience.31

In this way, Barth argues that Christ is not the victim of divine caprice but a willing agent on the part of the Son’s “holy and righteous freedom.”32 God is the execution of both “divine order and divine obedience,” commander and commanded. He is both simultaneously in his person as the middle term. In this way, Barth reveals how Christ enacts both the active and passive agency of God and human, a being who acts and receives, commands and obeys. The movement between divine active and human passive agency does not denigrate the role of human response as active in itself. Human agency receives the divine initiative and responds in a form that is active (rather than solely being acted upon or moved like a stone). However, the electing and elected dynamic of the Trinity highlights the movement between giving and receiving in the Triune Godhead that is later reciprocated between divine-human and human-human relations as will be seen through the aging experience. Barth also guards against subordinationism and Arianism by opposing the idea that the Son was something less than the Father as affirmed at Nicaea.33 He also opposes modalism as well as Docetism by saying that Jesus, the Son, is

28. Ibid., 185. 29. “The Council of Chalcedon’s Definition of the Faith” in Richard A. Norris, ed., The Christological Controversies (Philadephia: Fortress Press, 1980), 159. 30. Ibid., 188–92. 31. Ibid., 193. 32. Ibid., 194. 33. Ibid., 196–97.

148

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

truly human rather than “appearing” human, cohering with Chalcedon.34 Here Barth defends Jesus as divine, or something greater than human, in his ability to reconcile the world with God. Simultaneously, he defends Jesus as creature in his ability to reconcile the world within our limitations of space and time. In his description of subordinationism, he aims to correct creaturely tendencies to assert inequalities when speaking of “humility” and “obedience.” Barth claims Christ the Son was obedient to the Father while maintaining complete unity and equality with the Father.35 He also describes the “one-ness” of the Son with the Father rather than three separate psychological persons (or separate centers of consciousness).36 The three act together as one Subject or agent, thereby reflecting divine simplicity alongside the plurality of relations in His multiplicity. Here one sees the giving and receiving of the relations through God’s being and act, command and obedience that reflects a dialectic of both active and passive agency within the Trinity. Finally, Barth claims Christ is the full mediator as God and human in the Son’s active obedience through both the incarnation and atonement. Christ’s obedience is faithful not only through the “virgin birth” but also to the “empty tomb.”37 Such perfect humility and obedience reveals the Son as divine. Barth says, The One who in this obedience is the perfect image of the ruling God is Himself—as distinct from every human and creaturely kind—God by nature, God in His relationship to Himself, i.e., God in His mode of being as the Son in relation to God in His mode of being as the Father, One with the Father, and of one essence.38

Thus, Barth explicitly asserts Christ’s divinity and active obedience as Son of God into the far country in IV/1 followed by Christ’s humanity and passivity in “the exaltation of the Son of Man” in IV/2. By the Son’s obedience and humility, Christ reveals the divine active agency that willingly suffers on the part of human sin and death. The movement between God’s active and passive agency is further explored in the work of Christ as subject and object in section two of this chapter. Christ’s passive agency holds much value for aging persons who experience loss and disabling conditions in Christ’s faithfulness through suffering. Christ’s passive agency that achieves reconciliation for the world is also Christ’s revelatory event.39 To more fully engage the other side of Barth’s dialectic that focuses on Christ’s humanity, I now turn to his account of the Son of Man as passive agent.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Ibid. Ibid., 202. Ibid., 205. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 209. Ibid., 210.

Aging in the Middle Voice

149

Jesus Christ as Elected Human: Passive Agent In CD II/2, Barth offers one of the tradition’s more nuanced claims on divine election: God eternally elected to become human before time. Reconfiguring the Reformed tradition’s supralapsarian position alongside double predestination as fulfilled in Christ, Barth advances the doctrine of election with a Christological center that reinterprets what it means to be human. In terms of the supralapsarian position, Barth claims God wills Christ to come before the creation of time or humanity.40 In terms of double predestination, Barth claims both rejection and election take place in the person of Christ. In doing so, Barth illuminates a new way to understand humanity as “elected human” that participates in the person of Christ. After detailing at length the active agency of the Divine as “electing God,” Barth moves to the other side of the equation in which he details Christ as the “elected man,” or passive agent. The same electing God who humbles Himself by becoming human in the form of a servant is also the elected man exalted through his obedience. Barth says, “What we have to consider in the elected man Jesus is, then, the destiny of human nature, its exaltation to fellowship with God, and the manner of its participation in this exaltation by the free grace of God . . . this man should be the cause and the instrument of our exaltation.”41 In other words, the “elected man” is most clearly “the destiny of human nature” aimed at participation in God. Adam Neder argues that the whole of Church Dogmatics might be interpreted as God’s desire for human participation in the life of God given the eternal Divine election to become human.42 God’s being is His act in election.43 God’s election includes the willingness to suffer as passive agent for humanity. Barth says, “Second, the election of Jesus is specifically His election to suffering and the basic act of grace.44 In the first sense, God wills union with humanity by the election of Christ as the “beginning of all God’s ways and works.” As elected man, God elects creation as the overflow of love and divine activity. However, electing Christ also involves rejecting Satan given humans choose the “impossible possibility” of evil or sin. Thus, as elected human, Christ wills to unify creation through perfect obedience and passive suffering that overcomes the power of evil.45 In doing so, God elects, rejects, and elects Christ again, thereby setting a precedent where one might understand God’s relation to humanity in full. God elects the world to participate through creating, reconciling, and redeeming humanity in a way that purifies what was once sin in order that we might become children of God. Through prayer, Jesus assents to the will of God

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

CD II/2, 127–45. Ibid., 118. Neder, Participation in Christ, xi–xv. CD II/2, 186–88. Ibid., 120. Ibid., 122.

150

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

in perfect obedience that crowns Jesus as the King and head of human creatures. Barth says, In this prayer He affirms the fact that He is the King who was appointed by God to be at the head and in the place of the elect as their Lord and Head. In this prayer He affirms that He Himself in His own person is the kingdom of God. This divine and human steadfastness (reflected in the resurrection and the prayer of Jesus) constitutes the meaning and purpose of the election of Jesus.46

Thus, Jesus enacts perfect obedience through his prayer and action on the cross that secures humanity’s status before God. By assuming not only the election but also the rejection before God as the “judge judged in our place,” aging creatures come to have their existence “in Him” as the “object of divine election or grace.”47 Existing “in Him,” creatures participate in God as their justification, sanctification, and glorification—themes that Barth elaborates at length in volumes IV/1–3 in his doctrine of reconciliation. The content of Christ’s elected, passive humanity includes God’s risk in relationship with humanity by choosing to be both “Elector and Elect.”48 “The eternal will of God in the election of Jesus Christ is His will to give Himself for the sake of man as created by Him and fallen [from] Him.”49 In this way, Christ encompasses both the “yes” and “no” of God, receiving created goodness and rejection through the impossibility of sin. In other words, “God wills to lose in order that [humanity] may gain. There is a sure and certain salvation for man, and a sure and certain risk for God.”50 More directly, Barth says that in electing Himself to become human, God chooses life for humanity and death for the man Jesus Christ. In choosing to become human, God gives up His impassibility to evil by entering the world of suffering and encountering the reality of that will (or “nothingness”) which opposes Him.51 God knows the risk entailed given humanity transgressed the divine command. Humanity “surrenders” and relinquishes the frontier of his existence in a way that dishonors the Creator. Barth says, It is the lost son of man who is partner of the electing God in this covenant . . . what is quite certain is that for God it means severe self-commitment. God does not merely give Himself up to the risk and menace, but He exposes Himself to the actual onslaught and grasp of evil. . . . He elects the cross of Golgatha as His

46. Ibid., 126. 47. Ibid., 127. 48. Ibid., 145. 49. Ibid., 161. 50. Ibid., 162. 51. This implies that Christ suffers in His person (both divine and human natures) but does not imply that God, the Father suffers.

Aging in the Middle Voice

151

kingly throne. He elects the tomb in the garden as the scene of His being as the living God.52

In other words, God exposes Himself to evil that culminates in the “cross of Golgatha as His kingly throne.” Through humility in becoming human as well as passively suffering on the cross, God exalts humankind to living fellowship with Himself. Through Christ’s exchange that takes on humanity and the consequences of sin, Christ exalts humanity above its sinless state through justification, sanctification, and glorification. Barth says, All God’s willing is primarily a determination of the love of the Father and the Son in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. . . . Man is the outward cause and object of this overflowing of the divine glory. . . . And in all its otherness . . . this being has been ordained to participation in His own glory. . . . It has been ordained to exist in the brightness of this glory and as the bearer of its image.53

God wills for creatures to share in His glory as image bearers that reflect the overflowing love of the Triune God through covenant relation and participation in Him. However, in order to bring creatures into participation and fellowship with God, Christ willingly takes on the cross as a passive agent that actively secures reconciliation with humanity. Barth says, The suffering borne on the cross of Golgatha by the son of man in unity with the Son of God . . . is a stage on the road, an unavoidable point of transition, to the glory of the resurrection, [and] ascension . . . But it is not the Son of God who is glorified . . . The glorification is of the Son of David. His is the justification, His the salvation from death, His the exaltation to fellowship with God.54 (italics mine)

Thus, the Son of David or the Son of Man perfectly obeyed and suffered by securing salvation and exaltation not only for His own self, but also as gift through His great exchange. As elector, God humbles Himself in the form of an active servant and becomes the passive, elected man that reciprocally responds through obedience, suffering, and exaltation as a sacrifice for sin. By choosing God on our behalf, Christ the man elects God through obedience that extends the God-human encounter to all creatures. Christ receives, responds, and gives to the community as the Body of Christ. Barth concludes this section by extending Christ’s work in time and history as the decision and encounter between God and humans for all time.55 Through

52. 53. 54. 55.

CD II/2, 164–65. Ibid., 169. Ibid., 173. Ibid., 175.

152

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

the Son of Man’s union with the Son of God, Christ establishes His kingdom on earth. The response to Christ’s union bringing together God and humanity is that of prayer and obedience or prayer and action.56 The two cannot be separated from one another. Counteracting claims of Docetism, Barth affirms that Christ was a true human or creature who acts, speaks, and prays. Christ does not act as lone agent—but one in willing and obedient, prayerful relation to God the Father. In this way, Christ as Son of Man perfectly establishes union with the Father, one who willingly receives God through active response. Thus, Christ is passive in his willingness to receive grace and active in his willingness to respond to grace. Barth closes by describing the eternal will of God temporalized in Christ as the human agent who freely chooses God as seen through the act of prayer. He says, God’s eternal will is man; man who is the wholehearted witness to God’s kingdom and enjoys as such a kingly freedom .  .  . is and becomes an individual, and autonomous, and in the sphere of creation a sovereign being, and as such the image of God. God’s eternal will is the act of prayer (in which confidence in self gives way before confidence in God). This act is the birth of a genuine human self-awareness, in which knowledge and action can and must be attempted.57 (italics mine)

Through prayer, Christ enacts true humanity in relation to God. Prayer is the act or “birth of a genuine self-awareness” where knowledge and action come together. Here Barth sounds much like Augustine where union with Christ brings about contemplation and action, or wisdom and knowledge that translate into virtuous acts in time. Prayer and activity or contemplation and action naturally coincide with one another. Likewise, Barth’s position of prayer before God, or union with Christ, is the end and purpose of creaturely living that results in obedience. By prayer, individuals are awakened to “elect God” in freedom and exist in relation with the Father. This establishes the purpose and meaning of humanity as elected for fellowship with God in Christ. In this way, Christ as the Son of Man establishes the reconciliatory relation through both the Son’s active and passive agency. Son of Man: Participation through Gratitude and Obedience Barth opens his section on the homecoming of the Son of Man in IV/2 by describing “true man” whose inward and outward existence stands in fellowship with God and others. Jesus Christ involves both the “going out into the far country” or divine humility as the Son of God (IV/1) and Christ’s “returning home” through human exaltation in the Son of Man (IV/2). The reconciliation of God with humanity involves both divine descent and human ascent, a twofold movement that pervades Barth’s Christology encapsulated in the hypostatic union. Evoking the parable of the Prodigal Son in IV/1, Barth describes the Son of God as Christ’s descent into the far country completed by ascent through the

56. Ibid., 177. 57. Ibid., 180.

Aging in the Middle Voice

153

homecoming of the Son of Man in IV/2. Recognizing a particular Christological interpretation to the narrative, Barth says Christ became “poor” for our sake like the poverty experienced by the lost son who returns home to the Father for unified fellowship, celebration, and reunion.58 While Christ is unlike the lost son in his sin, Christ is like the son in his journey from the father only to return again, thereby personifying the exitus/reditus theme common to Christian theology. Barth next delineates ways in which Christ is like humanity in his historical, creaturely life and unlike humanity in his exaltation through obedience in perfect union with his divine nature. In other words, Christ is not only the Son of God as priest, but also the Son of Man as Lord and King. Barth denies any form of Docetism in that Christ assumes an actual historical existence subject to an allotted time, body, flesh, and even vulnerability to the consequences of corrupted human nature.59 Thus, Jesus is like humanity in that he exists within history, time, and space, but unlike us because he is perfectly “grateful” as one in fellowship with God. Barth says, “Jesus is the man whose human being and thinking and willing and speaking and acting there takes place the grateful affirmation of the grace of God addressed to the human race and the whole created cosmos—an affirmation which we all owe but none of us makes.”60 In other words, Jesus keeps the covenant with God through perfect gratitude and obedience—gratitude for which the rest of creation fails to embody.61 Jesus is unlike human essence through his completion of the original covenant as “brother” who is exalted through reconciliation with God. In this way, Christ fulfills the divine act of election through his passive and active life of response that embodies these two movements much like the middle voice.62 His life becomes the exemplar of what it means to live responsive to the call of grace.63

58. CD IV/2, 21–24. 59. Ibid., 25. 60. Ibid., 30. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 31–36. 63. By exemplar or imitation, again, I refer to the “weak” form of participation. By participation, I intend to incorporate both strong and weak senses of the meaning as described by Kathryn Tanner. For Tanner, the perfect image of God resides in Christ while the strong sense of participation entails the presence of the Word and Spirit in human life. The strongest form of weak participation involves “‘imitation’ that comes from the reformation of human life” (by the presence of Word and Spirit). The weakest form of weak participation involves our status as human creatures that still maintains some image of God even if the image is in need of a fuller sense of divine presence in Christ the Key, 33–37. As for Barthian theology, we de facto exist by participation in Christ given the hypostatic union and Christ’s justification and sanctification on our behalf. Our awareness of this participation is “awakened” to revelation following God through the Divine command that composes human vocation.

154

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Barth claims one should “never lose astonishment” in Christ’s willingness to become human that actualizes God’s being in time through his humility and exaltation.64 Christ’s exaltation is grounded in his humility. He says, “The movement from below to above which takes place originally in this man does not compete with the movement of God from above to below. It takes place because and as the latter takes place. It takes place as the response of gratitude to the grace of God.”65 In other words, Christ’s human exaltation results from his grateful response to divine initiation. In this way, Barth continues the theme of Christ’s passive agency that receives and actively responds to the divine will in time. Furthermore, sounding much like Romans 5, Christ is the one man who represents “all” in his human essence.66 The historical use of the hypostatic union becomes the locus by which Barth interprets Christ’s human essence in union with the divine, a relation unlike any this-worldly analogy. Moreover, Barth seems to say the fundamental nexus of eternal and temporal, divine and human realities exists in the person of Christ, the hypostatic union itself.67 The hypostatic union, or person of Christ, becomes the interpretive lens for all subsequent analogies.68 Barth further describes the hypostatic union fulfilling the human community through the totus Christus or body of Christ. Here sounding much like Augustine’s totus Christus in which Christ is the head of the body (or Church) in historical time, Barth says the following: In God’s eternal counsel, in His epiphany, and finally in His revelation at the end of the age, He was and is and will be this totus Christus—Christ and Christians. And these two elements of His one being are not merely related to one another as He Himself as Son of God is related to His human nature. But, in this second form, His relationship to His body, the community, is the relationship of God and man as it takes place in this one being as Head and body. Thus the community of Jesus Christ can be that which the human nature of its Lord and Head is. It cannot and must not be more than this.69

The community of believers participate in God as the body of Christ through the hypostatic union. The totus Christus exists in union with Christ who is mediator, redeemer, intercessor, Shepherd, Head of the Vine, Lord and Judge of humanity.70 Assuming these titles, Christ serves as the subject while church or Christ followers serve as predicates and participants in Christ’s body.71

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

CD IV/2, 46. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 51–60. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 76.

Aging in the Middle Voice

155

The content of this union is Chalcedonian in which the humility and exaltation reflecting the two natures of Christ are not separate, but a single event in the person of Christ. Barth also guards against divinization in his interpretation as he perhaps wrongly construes the Lutheran understanding of participation and its “remote” influence by Eastern Christianity.72 For Barth, there is a specific ordering to the hypostatic union. Christ’s divinity leads and imparts grace to his humanity. Barth describes three traditional interpretations of this union: the communicatio idiomatum (communication of idioms or attributes), the communicatio gratiarum (communication of grace), and communicatio operationum (communication of operations).73 Barth attributes the communication of idioms to the Lutheran and Eastern tradition, finding them problematic in that they assign divine qualities to the human and human to the divine.74 In this sense, he would depart from the Augustinian interpretation of the Great Exchange with some nuance. Instead, Barth more readily accepts the communication or impartation of grace by Christ’s divinity to His humanity. He also more readily accepts the communication of operations in which both natures work together with a shared telos or end. In terms of the communication of operations, Barth says the divine nature is the principle cause of the human nature. He prefers this description as one that nuances Athanasius’s initial description, saying, “God becomes human in order that we may ‘become God’” to adopt instead, “God becomes human in order that we may ‘come to God.’”75 The latter interpretation side steps some of the concerns Barth continues to hold with Lutheran and more explicitly Eastern interpretations of divinization. He fears that Lutheran interpretations might end in the divinization of humanity apart from Christ not unlike the romantic anthropological appeals he sensed in nineteenth-century German idealism that emphasized a kind of Promethean autonomy.76 Thus, rather than turn to the term divinization, instead, Barth emphasizes participation in the person of Christ as fellowship with God. He says, “The humiliation of the Son by the assumption of human essence is His becoming man. But His exaltation as the Son of Man is not the divinization of His human essence. It means that, unchanged as such, it is set in perfect fellowship with the

72. For a deeper and more nuanced Lutheran perspective on participation in Christ, see Lisa Sowle Cahill, Global Justice, Christology, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 73. CD IV/2, 73. 74. Whether his interpretation is accurate is questionable. The communication of attributes exists precisely because of the hypostatic union and not apart from this union. The communication of attributes primarily referred to Jesus Christ so that divine and human qualities could describe Christ’s person as a whole. 75. CD IV/2, 106. 76. Ibid., 82.

156

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

divine essence” (italics mine).77 For Barth, participation is fellowship or union with the divine rather than becoming divine. He describes his interpretation of participation through a variety of means. For Barth, the primary mode of participation involves impartation, or divine giving and human reception. Barth says, In Him divine essence imparts itself to human, and human essence receives the impartation of divine. There is a complete openness on both sides, and therefore from above to below. There is a true and full and definitive giving and receiving. Jesus Christ is this impartation—divine and human essence in this relationship of real giving and receiving, God and man in the fellowship of this history.78 (italics mine)

Barth affirms impartation for Christ’s full humanity. He emphasizes Christ’s reception of grace as fulfilling human essence. By participating in union with God by grace, Christ determines human nature in a new way. Thus, Barth extends Christ’s union and reception of grace to the rest of humanity. He says, “The divine grace particularly addressed to Him as man, and therefore the particular determination of his human essence, is the determination on the basis of which, as very God and very man, He is gracious to us all .  .  . the divine grace addressed to all men.”79 In other words, the graciousness given and received by Christ is extended to all humanity, not only determining but also fulfilling fellowship with God as it was originally intended. Christ’s middle voice, his giving and receiving, active and passive agency, is one executed within an “allotted time,” with responsibility toward God and neighbor.80 Christ’s exaltation brings about true human freedom in “harmony with the divine will .  .  . that correspondence to the divine grace, that state of thankfulness.”81 By responding with thankfulness, Christ remains in union with the divine will through obedience that yields freedom.82 Barth describes not only Christ’s willingness to become human but also his willingness to take on the consequences of our corruption as an “alien guilt.” Christ realigns our corrupted nature by securing freedom from sin. Barth claims Christ reverses the Augustinian categories of our freedom and inability not to sin, saying, It is not really of necessity, but only in fact, that human nature wills to sin, and does sin, and therefore can sin. We are in self-contradiction in this capacity, in our posse peccare. It is not our genuine freedom, our liberum, but our servum arbitrium,

77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 89. Ibid., 91. Ibid., 92. Ibid.

Aging in the Middle Voice

157

that we choose evil. It means an alienation not only from God and our neighbor but also from ourselves. . . . Thus the man Jesus does not transcend the limits of the humanity common to Him and us. . . . The only difference is that He is it in genuine freedom. . . . It does not need deification, but it does need the exaltation of our nature by the unique grace of God’s becoming man, to bring about this sanctification, to introduce this living Son of Man in genuine freedom. . . . It is in this non peccare and non posse peccare that He confirms His brotherhood with us, the fellowship with our true human essence which we for our part continually break with our peccare and posse peccare and non posse non peccare.83

Like Augustine, we do not sin by “necessity,” yet willingly sin. By choosing sin, we enact our human contradiction that disorders our loves for the ultimate good. Our original ability not to sin becomes an inability not to sin. However, Christ reorders these disordered loves. By becoming our “Brother,” who does not sin (non peccare) and who is unable to sin (non posse peccare), Christ reverses the consequences of disordered loves. Christ’s response to grace also serves as our sanctification. He is distinguished from all other individuals by his perfect union that serves as mediator for humanity. As mediator, Christ acts in place of humans as both servant and king.84 He says, What this one man does within the limitations and conditions of His human essence is really done for God and really done for us. . . . The grace addressed to human essence in Jesus Christ is . . . the “for God and for us” of the eternal Son . . . the human essence of this eternal One causes its humanity to participate in the divine authority of His action.85

Like Augustine’s divine and human natures that work in harmony in the person of Christ, so too does Barth’s Christology envision a harmonious enactment of divine and human natures in the person of Christ. However, Barth again reiterates that such harmony does not deny the full and actual humanity of Christ. Instead, his humanity is fully empowered by grace. Christ’s action as Son of God and Son of Man exalts humanity into fellowship with the divine, revealing his person as “Emmanuel, God with us.”86 Barth says, And in the act of God in time which corresponds to this eternal decree, when the Son of God became this man, He ceased to all eternity to be God only, receiving and having and maintaining to all eternity human essence as well. Thus, the human essence of Jesus Christ, without becoming divine, in its very creatureliness, is placed at the side of the Creator.87

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

Ibid., 93. Ibid., 98. Ibid. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 101.

158

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

In this way, Karl Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation in IV/2 fulfills his initial claims on election in II/2. By God’s eternal decree, He willed humanity to fellowship with His being for all time. Humanity is exalted to participate or fellowship with God by reestablishing an analogy of relations involving The Divine Godhead—Christ’s divine and human essence—human essence.88 By assuming flesh, Christ actualizes his being in time, his existence as creature, and his fellowship with humanity. This actualization is precisely what Paul Dafydd Jones argues legitimizes “Christ’s agency,” beyond eternal Son only and includes Christ’s humanity as mutually participatory.89 Jones says, “The union of humanity and divinity . . . while unilaterally established . . . is neither unilaterally imposed nor unilaterally sustained. Each essence ‘takes part’ in the task of upholding the numerical simplicity of Christ’s person; ‘on both sides there is a true and genuine participation’” (IV/2, 62).90 Here Jones affirms participation as Barth’s “drive” to “actualize” Christ’s agency in both natures. As Adam Neder reiterates, Christ’s humanity reflects a genuine human response to divine initiation in the person of Christ. Neder says, Jesus Christ is a human being, an acting human agent, inasmuch as he is responsive to the actions of God. His human actions do not originate with his humanity but happen humanly as he responds to the actions of God. That is what Barth is affirming when he says that the man Jesus is a human subject. The one person Jesus Christ is the event of the confrontation of the Son of God and the Son of Man, the event of this history. Jesus Christ is . . . a fully obedient and therefore human subject. Nevertheless, his human actions do not originate independently, but always in response to the divine action toward him.91

Thus, Christ’s human agency responds to divine initiation actualized through time.92 God’s actualization in time continues in the living Christ encountered through the body of Christ today. For Barth, Christ’s resurrection and ascension become the point of revelation for the disciples then and believers now. Revelation in

88. Ibid. 89. In this sense both essences take part in enacting Christ’s agency. Christ suffers in his human and divine nature, but this does not necessarily mean that God, the Father suffers. 90. Paul Dafydd Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Continuum: T&T Clark, 2008), 133. 91. Neder, Participation in Christ, 70–71. 92. Christ’s person and work are not to be separated but held together as the actualization of Christ’s being in Jones, The Humanity of Christ, 247.

Aging in the Middle Voice

159

the Easter event embodies Christ’s humility and exaltation, giving and receiving activity with implications for the aging in the church.93 Likewise, Barth maintains the role of the church as one identifiable with the gift of the Holy Spirit, thereby defining it as a community of reception. Whether the apostles constituting the early church or leaders of the modern church, the community is identifiable as the body or image of Christ when receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit. Barth says, The Holy Spirit is also at work in the Church . . . to the extent that it hears His self-witness and is His echo and reflection, His body, His earthly-historical form of existence, His image, to which the men gathered and acting and thinking and speaking in it are conformed and integrated (Rom. 8:29); to the extent, then that it recognizes Him as His community . . . [and] corresponds to His being, to that extent its being and action.94 (italics mine)

For Barth, the Church is the image of Christ, the “earthly historical” body in time when conformed to the Holy Spirit. Such correspondence involves receiving the Spirit by conformity to the being and action of God. The community embodies Christ through their being (passive participation) and action (active participation) toward the neighbor and world. In this way, the Body of Christ inculcates the middle voice as passive and active participants in their love of God and neighbor. Finally, this receptive posture of faith and prayer, love and witness, gratitude and obedience in community and discipleship follows the Christ whose own humility and thankfulness led to his exaltation. Given the divine impartation of grace received by the Son of Man, He was exalted to participation in the life of God. Barth describes Jesus’s ascent to participation, saying, The ascension of Jesus Christ is the point of [the] history of revelation. . . . In His identity with the Son of God, when He was lifted up into heaven, He was not deified, or assumed into the Godhead (for this was unnecessary for Him as the Son of God and impossible for him as the Son of Man), but placed as man at the side of God, in direct fellowship with Him, in full participation in His glory.95

By Christ’s perfect obedience (acts) through a life of gratitude and reception (prayer), He was exalted to “the Father’s side” in participation with God. The Son of Man remains exalted, not divinized, but participating in perfect fellowship with the Triune God. Because of Christ’s fulfillment of human essence, reordering human nature in his person and example, a new destiny occurs for human and particularly aging individuals aimed at participation in God. Such participation involves human

93. CD IV/2, 135–40. 94. Ibid., 129–30. 95. Ibid., 153.

160

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

reception in response to divine giving. To better understand divine giving and human reception, active and passive agency, I now turn to Barth’s description of the work of Christ and the atonement in IV/1 and IV/2 through the lens of W. H. Vanstone’s The Stature of Waiting with its implications for the aging experience. Work of Christ: Giving and Receiving, and Active and Passive Agency as the Middle Voice Before turning to Barth’s description of the work of Christ, I first consider the contribution of W. H. Vanstone’s The Stature of Waiting that depicts the active and passive agency of Jesus in the biblical gospels as an interpretive lens for themes in Barth’s own theology. I find Vanstone’s work serves as an important primer for understanding the middle voice of the aging experience and Barthian Christology in light of “a God who waits.” I do this by considering first, W. H. Vanstone’s description of the movement from actively “handing over” to “being handed over” in the person of Jesus; second, Vanstone’s account of the “indignity of passion” and the “God who waits”; third, how the reality of “Subject to Object” relates to Jesus’s Gethsemane prayer and participation; and fourth, how the soul and body work together as active and passive agent for both Christ and aging individuals. From “Handing Over” to “Being Handed Over”: Action to Passion W. H. Vanstone’s small volume The Stature of Waiting considers the implication of Jesus’s agency following the Gethsemane scene in which Jesus is passively “being handed over” rather than actively “handing himself over” as portrayed in the Gospels of Mark and John. Vanstone focuses on the Greek verb paradidomi as more accurately translated “being handed over” rather than “betrayed” as commonly associated with Jesus’s relation with Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane.96 While Vanstone acknowledges the significance of Judas’s action, he also recognizes the ultimate actor in the narrative is not Judas. Instead, Jesus is the ultimate actor, though one who moves from the role of active agent who “hands over” to one who is passive or “being handed over.” In this way, Jesus fulfills the middle voice, which is simultaneously active and passive in form.97 In other words, Vanstone claims that the Gospel of Mark highlights the way Jesus moves from an active agent (with the use of “active” verbs) as one who teaches, heals, speaks, rebukes, calls to the crowd, and so on, to one who is “being handed over” (with the passive use of verbs) in which action now happens upon Jesus as “object.” Vanstone argues that Jesus’s “being handed over” takes place three times in the Gospel of Mark: the account with Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane; while standing in front of the Jewish leaders at Pilate’s tribunal; and finally, in the account where Pilate himself hands Jesus over to the crowd. Thus, Vanstone

96. W. H. Vanstone, The Stature of Waiting (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2006), 6–13. 97. Ibid., 14–15.

Aging in the Middle Voice

161

surmises that Judas’s deed was not primarily about “betrayal” per se, but about the “handing over” of Jesus to the vulnerability of another agent—that ultimately results in his own harm. Likewise, the other three accounts involve Jesus being handed over to the governing authorities that also ends in harm. However, Vanstone emphasizes that Jesus was not only “handed over” by these other actors but also willingly participated in being handed over, thereby personifying the middle voice. This is later accounted for by Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians saying “that the Lord Jesus, on the night which He was handed over, took bread and, having given thanks, broke it and said. . .”98 Here again does Vanstone emphasize the fact that Jesus is “being handed over” even if Judas is the one who seems to take much of the credit. Likewise, Vanstone argues that the Gospel of John parallels the movement in the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of John personifies the active movement of Christ as someone who still stands at the center of the narrative even if this action is being received as opposed to actively pursued. However, unlike the Gospel of Mark, the author of John does not use the passive form of the verb to convey the movement from active to passive agent. Instead, the author of John uses the contrasting images of “day” and “night” to imply the distinction between active “working” and passive “waiting.”99 Vanstone describes this movement from day to night, working to waiting as one that physically constrains Jesus’s own hands and body. Vanstone says, But in John’s Gospel, at the moment when Jesus is arrested in the Garden, He is bound there and then. The hands which previously had clawed and grasped at Him in vain are, at this moment, in a most physical and literal sense laid upon Him; and any careful reader becomes aware of a dramatic change in the situation. Jesus’ unfettered freedom is suddenly changed for bondage, His impalpability to human hands for the literal and physical hold of those hands upon Him. At the moment when Jesus is handed over He passes, according to John, from unfettered freedom to total constraint.100

Here Vanstone acknowledges that the Gospel of John reveals Jesus’s movement from action to passion as one from freedom to bondage that ends in constraint. Also, the Gospel of John uses literary images that convey irony such as Jesus who once claimed to bring “living water” now “thirsts” while hanging on the cross.101 The one who has authority and power over sin, sickness, and disease by ushering in a new kingdom is now subject to death and temporal governing authorities such as Pilate. Through the use of irony and symbol, the author of John continues to reveal the ways in which Jesus’s agency moves from one who acts as primary

98. 99. 100. 101.

Ibid., 16. Ibid., 27. Ibid. Ibid., 28.

162

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

subject to one who is acted upon as primary object. Thus, Vanstone argues that both the Gospels of Mark and John convey the “passion” of Christ as one in which the world now acts upon Jesus. Furthermore, Vanstone says that Jesus’s passion or suffering here is not so much the modern sense of the term suffering, which involves pain and terror (which in many ways the “Gethsemane—crucifix” narrative involves), but instead focuses on the “happenings” to Jesus in his exposure to those around him through vulnerability and risk. As Vanstone says, To be faithful to the Gospel record we must reserve the expression “the passion of Jesus” for that distinctive phase of His life into which He entered when He was handed over to wait upon and receive the decisions and deeds of men, to become an object in their hands. . . . He passes from doing to receiving . . . from working to waiting, from the role of subject to that of object and, in the proper sense of the phrase from action to passion.102

In other words, the Gospels of Mark and John reveal the passion narrative as one in which Jesus moves from subject to object, active to passive agency by receiving the world and activity of those around him. To better consider the implications of this receptive agency, I now consider Vanstone’s description of the indignity of passion in contrast to the God who waits. The Indignity of Passion and the “God Who Waits” Vanstone switches gears from focusing on the biblical narratives in the Gospels of Mark and John to the meaning of passive agency in the modern world. Vanstone highlights how one can quickly move from the status of active agent to patient given the impact of a traumatic car accident, injury, or disabling condition. The very term “patient” implies one who enters into a passive capacity in that the individual “becomes an object of decisions and care and treatment of others.”103 While the fragility of life places everyone in a state of vulnerability in relation to such passive dispositions, the modern world tends to ignore or even belittle this passive state by its focus and obsession on activity. Vanstone states that individuals recognize the movement toward dependency with old age and the probability of a kind of “second childhood.”104 Awareness of this mindset provokes anxiety amid persons experiencing old age, asking such questions as “What will become of us?”105 Individuals are more aware that their status in the world as old relies more on the circumstances and groups on which they depend rather than their day-to-day activities and experiences. Nonetheless, even with a greater awareness of dependence, much resistance abounds surrounding the loss of independence. Vanstone says,

102. 103. 104. 105.

Ibid., 31. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 37.

Aging in the Middle Voice

163

We compliment and congratulate very elderly people on being “still so active,” “still so independent” . . . that they are active and independent is, per se, good and admirable. And elderly people themselves find it . . . at least appropriate . . . to emphasize and exaggerate those in which “they manage for themselves” . . . That he is being helped, supported, and cared for is a matter . . . which should not be brought home too forcibly lest it should damage or impair his “self-respect.” It is conventional wisdom that the pension or benefit received in old age should never be represented as “assistance” but always as that to which the recipient is “entitled,” as that which he has earned or acquired by right.106

A focus on help and dependence should be minimized while activity and independence should be praised. Even pension and retirement is to be viewed as “entitlement” as opposed to “assistance.” Whereas there are strengths to maintaining activity, independence, and viewing retirement as achievement, the focus of Vanstone’s argument befits modern attitudes toward aging. At the root of these attitudes is a basic premise that to exist as a passive agent who receives rather than achieves one’s status means that one experiences “diminished dignity,” or one that is lacking in quality.107 Nonetheless, Vanstone claims we should question our public attitudes that undergird these basic assumptions.108 To do so, Vanstone explores what he calls “the Roots of Impatience.”109 In an interesting historical overview, Vanstone dispels the premise that “active agency” is essential to human nature. His first example highlights the lives of former aristocrats who valued the life of leisure and comfort as those relying on the service of others, particularly service of the lower classes. Vanstone says even women of a particular class valued themselves insofar as they were “looked after,” “treasured,” or “spoilt.”110 Ancient Greece valued the life of leisure for the pursuit of philosophy and contemplation rather than a life of activity and labor as seen in the works of Aristotle (depending on one’s interpretation of the concluding book of Nicomachean Ethics). Vanstone continues by describing an even greater example in which communities come together around individuals in need. Here Vanstone cites an example of a small village community who becomes more interdependent through sharing responsibilities because the community determined to care for a disabled mother’s needs—both around the house and with her children. The “needy” neighbor becomes the most valuable individual within the community by bringing people together who otherwise would not find a purpose for which to

106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

Ibid., 44. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 51. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 53.

164

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

associate. Likewise, Vanstone points to children with special needs who become the object of attention and affection within families and communities. More importantly, however, Vanstone highlights the way in which human creatures are unique not only in the fact that they exist as active agents, but also in the fact that they also exist as passive recipients. Bemoaning the role of the “rugged individual” or in this case, “castaway,” Vanstone says, The castaway would not be able to inspire or educate or welcome or console or respect; he would not be able, in a fully human sense, to serve or love. . . . Very often in everyday experience we encounter people whose aspirations to “care” or “teach” or “serve”—or, less admirably, to ‘command’ or ‘dominate’—are totally frustrated by the absence of anyone who is available and willing to be the object of such activities.111

In other words, passive agency is as valuable as active agency. The two movements are dependent on one another. He continues, saying, The frustration of such people—the “emptiness” which they experience in their lives—is evidence enough of the importance of man in his role as the object or recipient of the activities of others. Man’s capacity to be the object might be called his “passibility”; and the point of our argument is that the variety of man’s potential passibility seems no less remarkable than the variety of his potential activity.112

Creatures exist in relationships and relationships entail both active and passive participants, giving and receiving. In order to serve, teach, or love another, there must be a recipient or object of these activities. The capacity to become an object or “passible” is not bad in itself but quite good and even natural to human creatures. However, our culture dismisses “passivity,” typically attributing our modern emphasis on activity as a result of economic capitalism and the Protestant work ethic.113 Interestingly enough, Vanstone argues the primary blame for this modern bias lies deeper than the so-called Protestant work ethic and instead, results from the doctrine pertaining to God’s “impassibility.” Taking up the issue of God’s impassibility, Vanstone recognizes the ways in which God is viewed as “pure activity” throughout eternity without dependence, need, or exposure to another through risk.114 Here Vanstone comes back to the passion narrative in the Garden of Gethsemane in which Jesus moves from active agent to passive recipient of those agents working around him. In fact, Vanstone suggests that

111. 112. 113. 114.

Ibid., 60. Ibid. Ibid., 63–64. Ibid., 65.

Aging in the Middle Voice

165

the Garden of Gethsemane serves as the “transfiguration” moment in the Gospel of John in which the glory of God is revealed and the witnesses fall to the ground.115 Even the Roman Centurion comes to claim Jesus as the Son of God after watching him receive the world through suffering and passion in the Gospel of Mark.116 However, Vanstone wants to claim that Jesus’s passion is more than sui generis. Otherwise, his death would have “little connection” with our own experience.117 Through Jesus’s passion and willingness to become vulnerable to the world, he brings significance to a posture of receptivity. Christianity’s distinctive claim is its belief in a God or Creator who enters his own creation in vulnerability, risk, and service. The paradox is that the impassible God chooses to become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, surrendering God’s own freedom for constraint.118 The only explanation for such willingness to enter human flesh in vulnerability, risk, and service is that of love. From love, God chooses to enter humanity’s plight and become passive as a God who waits. Nonetheless, Vanstone’s work does not conclude with Jesus’s passion only in that Jesus’s passion is unique in its voluntary choice. Aged persons, disability, and vulnerabilities in the human condition are often not conditions of choice but those “happening to us” as recipients of time’s conditioning and the external world around us. Here Vanstone argues that Jesus’s status as “passive agent” shows us a new way to image God, beyond that of simple active agent. By Jesus’s own decision to become human and enter our material world, God legitimizes the worth of created reality. Unlike Stoicism or even Manichaeism that would devalue the external world, instead, the God who waits in Jesus enters our world and legitimizes its value in its varied dimensions. In sum, Jesus’s passive agency reveals the dignity of this world in that its value is worth “waiting” for in love. Vanstone argues that part of loving entails waiting—waiting on the other or waiting to receive the other. Even patients who experience waiting through aging and decline might receive value in simple acts of love, kindness, service, or a cup of cold water. By receiving the world in its goodness—whether receiving its beauty, its sights, sounds, or relationships—there is dignity in imaging a God who waits and a God who receives. Not surprisingly, Barth’s own theology that details both Christ’s downward and upward movement reflects the giving and receiving of God in relationship with his creatures, one that is particularly acute in the Gethsemane narrative. Subject to Object: Gethsemane Prayer and Participation Much like Vanstone’s small volume, Barth emphasizes the climatic Garden of Gethsemane scene in which Jesus changes from acting subject to receiving object of those persons and activities belonging to the world around him. Barth reflects on the change in the

115. 116. 117. 118.

Ibid., 75. Ibid., 71–72. Ibid., 76–77. Ibid., 93.

166

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Synoptic tradition that moves from Jesus’s agency displayed through his active ministry to the new receptive role in the garden. He says, But now there comes the great surprise of the second part of [the Gospels] from the description of the scene in Gethsemane . . . a self-contained whole. It is essentially shorter than the first, but it obviously presents the—strange—end toward which the earlier narratives hasten. Yet it cannot fail to be noticed formally by the unity of its subject-matter, and by the unbroken sequence of the events reported in it.119

Like Vanstone, Barth notes a scene change between the first and second half of the Synoptic Gospel narratives. At the Gethsemane prayer, the substance of Jesus’s actions move from subject to object. Barth says, And in substance it stands out by reason of the fact that we have now very few sayings of Jesus and no actions at all, although more than once there seems to have been a temptation to act (the twelve legions of angels in Mt. 26.53, and that He should “come down from the cross” in Mt. 27.42). Jesus no longer seems to be the subject but the object of what happens. His speech is almost exclusively that of silence and his work that of suffering.120 (italics mine)

By highlighting the change of movement between the first and second parts of the gospel tradition, Barth highlights the change in Jesus’s own agency from that of subject to object. Rather than speaking and acting, Jesus assumes the receptive response of silence and even suffering. And yet through suffering and silence, Jesus’s own life speaks perhaps greater volumes to the world around him.121 Barth continues, describing Jesus as the object or recipient of the actions made by those around him. He says, “What these chapters bring before us is an arrest, a hearing and prosecution in various courts, a torturing, and then an execution and burial.”122 Here we see the “reversal of roles” in which the persons deserving judgment given their own desire to self-legislate or self-rule end up judging the innocent party and the one deemed “least” worthy of such condemnation.123 The subject becomes object, the judge is judged in the place of others. Yet even in this reversal, involving the yielding of oneself to the whims of human actors, Jesus Christ remains the divine agent who wills himself to suffer on behalf of humanity. Barth says,

119. CD IV/1, 226. 120. Ibid. 121. I here acknowledge that Jesus was not completely silent, but his overall disposition changed from that of previous active teacher and healing minister to passive recipient of the world’s events around him. 122. CD IV/1, 226. 123. Ibid.

Aging in the Middle Voice

167

We have only to look at the Gospel passion-narrative. . . . The divine subject of the judgment on man as which Jesus appears in the first part of the evangelical record becomes the object of this judgment from the time of the episode in Gethsemane onwards. . . . Without ceasing to be action, as action in the strongest sense of the word, as the work of God on earth attaining its goal, His action becomes passion.124

In this way, Barth depicts how Jesus moves from subject to object who willingly suffers for humanity. Even in Jesus’s passion and his willingness to become object, he remains subject, inculcating the middle voice. He is simultaneously active and passive, subject and object. The passion of Jesus Christ remains a divine act. Moreover, Jesus’s greatest statement here is his own silence.125 His reception of surrounding circumstances becomes his greatest activity. In his personal restraint, we see Jesus allows himself to be “kissed by Judas and delivered into the hands of soldiers.”126 Barth describes this movement from action to passion, subject to object as yet another form of Christ’s humility. By humility, the servant enters not only the far country through the gift of his incarnation, but also suffers on behalf of humankind in his willingness to obey, exchange roles, and be “acted upon” as object.127 Barth emphasizes the freedom of this act in which the Savior of the world willingly takes on the suffering of humankind and displays the glory of God. He says, He gives Himself to be the humanly acting and suffering person in this occurrence. He Himself is the subject who in His own freedom becomes in this event the object acting or acted upon in it. It is not simply the humiliation and dishonoring of a creature, of a noble and relatively innocent man that we find here . . . the question whether in willing to let this happen to Him He has not renounced and lost Himself as God, whether in capitulating to the folly and wickedness of His creature He has not abdicated from His deity, whether He can really die and be dead? And it is a matter of the answer to this question: that in this humiliation God is supremely God, that in this death He is supremely alive, that He has maintained and revealed His deity in the passion of this man as His eternal Son.128

Here Barth conveys the way in which Jesus does not lose himself or the glory of his own divinity by becoming object and subjecting himself to the passion of humanity.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

Ibid. Ibid., 238. Ibid., 235. Ibid., 246. Ibid., 246–47.

168

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Instead, he presents the contrary. In becoming human and suffering on the part of humankind, Jesus reveals his divinity as a God who loves, a God who risks, and a God who values this world enough to die in its place. Moreover, rather than suggest “objectivity” and “reception” involves indignity, Jesus himself legitimizes and dignifies passive agency in a way that brings meaning to those aging individuals who move into a period of suffering and decline. The power and grace for such “inactive” agency comes from his prayer in the tumultuous garden experience. Reflecting on the horror of Jesus’s experience while praying in the garden, Barth claims the terror comes not solely from the physical suffering he must face, but from the knowledge that momentarily, the will of Satan or those evil forces and the will of God temporarily coincide. Experiencing his most difficult hour yet by facing the knowledge of what might lie ahead, Jesus turns to the Father in prayer. Barth says, One thing is clear. In the power of this prayer Jesus received, i.e., He renewed, confirmed and put into effect, His freedom to finish His work, to execute the divine judgment by undergoing it Himself, to punish the sin of the world by bearing it Himself, by taking it away from the world in His own person, in His death.129

Renewing his call with the Father by prayer, Jesus steps forward to fulfill work in saving the world through reconciliation in freedom. By communion with the Father that receives the strength or grace to fulfill his mission through prayer, Jesus moves forward into a life of “inactivity,” “objectivity,” and “reception” of those agents surrounding him. By prayer, Jesus participates in union with the Father and finishes the work set before him. Understanding this prayerful position as the calling for all persons and specifically aging persons in their unique call before God, I consider the meaning of “union with Christ” given its role in active receiving and prayer. However, before concluding with the integral role of prayer and action for union with Christ, I briefly consider how the soul and body together experience activity and passivity as subject and object in this world. Soul and Body Together as Active and Passive Agent In Barth’s section “Man as Soul and Body” in his Doctrine of Creation §46 III/2, he considers the relationship between soul and body in Christ as well as general human identity. Understanding the soul-body relation further illuminates both the reality of active and passive agency as well as the integral role of contemplation (or prayer) and action as constitutive of both human identity and ethical participation in Christ as disciples in time. In order to understand the impact of this relation, I consider first Christ’s soul and body in relation to the totus Christus; second, the human soul and body;

129. Ibid., 271.

Aging in the Middle Voice

169

third, the integral role between perception (or contemplation) and action in human agency; and finally, the status of agent as both active and passive in this world. First, given that Barth describes humanity in light of Christology, he begins his section on the relation of soul and body with the soul and body of Christ. For Barth, Jesus exists as a whole man comprised of both soul and body. He says, “He is one whole man, embodied soul and besouled body: the one in the other and never merely beside it; the one never without the other but only with it.”130 From the outset, Barth establishes the integral relationship between soul and body, declaring that one cannot exist without the other. Interestingly, Barth highlights that even in Jesus’s death and resurrection, the soul was not separated from the body, but the whole man was transformed into the resurrected Christ, including a soul and body. Through this action, Christ legitimizes the significance of the integral relationship between soul and body for human identity. Barth continues by describing the relationship between soul and body as analogous to the relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures. Barth says, “Soul and body are clearly related to one another in the man Jesus, as His being as Son and Word of God the Creator is related to His creaturely constitution as the soul and body of this man.”131 Sounding much like Augustine, Barth here affirms the analogous ordering of soul and body to the divine and human natures of Christ. While Barth does not completely associate soul with the spiritual and His body with the material, he uses the analogy to reveal the ordering of soul and body much like the ordering of divine and human in the person of Christ as well as the body or community of Christ. Again, like Augustine, Barth extends the analogy of ordered soul and body, divine and human natures in Christ to the community of believers as the totus Christus. Christ is head or soul while the church embodies Christ’s reality through their being and action in time. Barth says, “A Christ without His community would be a figment of the imagination, and even more so a community without Christ. The one divine act of election is the election of this head and this body. As Jesus’ soul and body are inseparably one, so are He and His people.”132 Thus, Barth argues the reality of divine election implies the reality of Christ’s community as body in time. Here Barth affirms the ordering of this head and body as teacher to disciple through the power of the Holy Spirit. Body and soul cannot be separated as the body or community of believers cannot be separated from union with its own soul, namely Christ as Head. The relation of soul and body, divine and human, head and body of Christ leads to Barth’s second point describing the ordered cosmos of soul and body in the human agent. For Barth, humanity exists in terms of an ordered soul and body, but our soul and body only exist by the gift of the Spirit. Here Barth introduces the role of the Spirit both as the giver of life and the giver of new life (in the form

130. CD III/2, 327. 131. Ibid., 341. 132. Ibid., 342.

170

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

of “awakening,” revelation, or regeneration). Barth claims that humans are by definition creatures made in covenant with God. Humanity lives on borrowed breath.133 They cannot exist apart from the gift of the Spirit animating both soul and body. For Barth, Spirit is the “principle” relation regarding fellowship between God and humans.134 The Spirit is foreign or alien to human nature and comes as a divine gift that animates human life with the aim of participation or fellowship with God for eternity. Barth says, Spirit in His fundamental significance is the element . . . of which man is actively and passively introduced as a partner in the covenant of grace, in which he is installed in his position as God’s partner in the particular stages and decisions of the history of this covenant and which he is equipped for his function as such, in order that in this position and function he himself may begin to speak and act—he himself, not of himself, but of the fact that God has first spoken to him and acted upon him.135 (italics mine)

In other words, the Spirit acts upon individuals both by giving life and renewing them with “new life” by which the community of believers participate in the activity of Christ throughout history. The Spirit animates the soul and body, reminding individuals that they exist with both a visible and invisible, outward and inward existence. Barth says, Since he is soul of his body, he is the earthly representation of that above and below of a world totality. That he is the soul of his body decides the fact that he cannot fall victim to this spatiality, visibility, and materiality even though he is bound to it, and that the boundary they impose on him is not a prison but a significant and ordered economy.136

Thus, persons cannot be reduced to either soul or body and are animated by the gift of the Spirit. This point is important for medical ethics in that a patient’s agency cannot be reduced to either soul or body. Both components are important for recognizing a patient’s existence as twofold. Neither is a patient merely a soul, touting his autonomous wishes that try to control the body apart from bodily circumstances. Physician-assisted suicide rejects not only disease, but also the body as contrarian to one’s individual identity and privileges autonomous self-rule. As Gerald McKenny

133. This is a phrase borrowed from David Kelsey in Miraslov Volf ’s systematic theology course at Yale Divinity School’s, Fall 2003. The idea comes from Genesis 2 where God breathes life (or the Hebrew word nephesh) into Adam or humanity. 134. CD III/2, 356. 135. Ibid., 357. 136. Ibid., 351.

Aging in the Middle Voice

171

acknowledges, the temptation of physician-assisted suicide is to separate the body from one’s identity rather than recognizing the body as part of the whole person even while sick and suffering.137 But neither is a patient merely a body, requiring technological medicine to sustain physical life at all costs in the form of vitalism. Instead, a patient is both soul and body animated by Spirit or breath rather than viewing the body as primarily autonomously owned. Thus, Barth’s anthropology is relevant to ethical values considered in end of life care for aging individuals and their communities. In a third point, the ordering of soul and body is important for contemplation and action, wisdom and knowledge much like Augustine. Here Barth describes the interconnectedness between soul and body that acknowledges the integral relation between perception and activity or contemplation and action. In this section, Barth establishes the inner unity, differentiation, and order between soul and body.138 Unlike God who is divine simplicity, individuals are composed of unified parts. The soul does not exist without the body or the body without the soul.139 To deny the value or existence of the soul results in materialism whereas to deny the value or existence of the body results in spiritualism. Together, body and soul compose one person or agent for human identity, yielding important implications for medical ethics. Barth continues by describing the particular roles or capacities by which the body and soul function together within human agency. Awareness, senses, and reflex primarily pertain to the body while thought and reflection belong to the soul. However, Barth does not over-simplify these functions entirely by reiterating that body and soul participate in “perception and action” together. Perception fully realizes reflective thought in congruence with sensory experience. Together, body and soul function through perception and action. Thinking and acting personify the unity of soul and body. He says, If my activity took place without my perception or stood wholly or partly in contradiction to it, then it would reveal that is was either not at all or only incompletely my real activity. All distinction between perception and action, all abstraction to the advantage and disadvantage of one or the other, all action and reaction between vita contemplativa and vita activa, between “intellectualism” and “voluntarism”—all these, so far as they succeed, can only lead to all kinds and forms of inhumanity. But the enterprise is impossible on both sides. The really human person is the one who both perceives and acts in each of his lifeacts.140 (italics mine)

137. 138. 139. 140.

McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition, 222. CD III/2, 369. Ibid., 371. Ibid., 407–08.

172

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

In other words, perception and action must coincide together in terms of human identity. One cannot be emphasized without the other. The implications of Barth’s soul-body, perception-action relation hold significant implications not only for the union of prayer and action for aging persons, but also in dialectical movement between active and passive agency in human identity. In addition, the union of soul and body, contemplation and action is important for seeing the integration of formal and final causes with efficient and material ends. Understanding formal and final purposes in the form of wisdom helps inform knowledge and practice in medical decisions. Together, soul and body, perception and action reflect a theological vision of the good life as participation in God for both Barth and Augustine. Finally, Barth closes his section on soul and body by describing persons as doers and sufferers. Together the soul and body coincide as one person who both acts and suffers, gives and receives. Disagreeing with philosophies that separate soul and body, like Augustine, Barth affirms their unity in action and passion. He says, They [body and soul] are the two moments of the one human activity, which as such do not merely accompany each other and cannot influence and condition one another as though there were on both sides an active and passive something. We do not have the body here and the soul there, but man himself as soul of his body is subject and object, active and passive.141

This same soul and body comes together as active and passive agent in one’s surrounding world. Together, soul and body thinks, desires, and wills as this subject or object in time.142 For Barth “the one man in this relation [body and soul] is both doer and sufferer.”143 Individuals are agents who give and receive, act and wait on the neighbor. Regarding Christ’s agency as the “real man,” Barth says, “But his being as a man is the whole of His action, suffering, and achievement. His being as a man is His work. In this His work He has a human nature; He is a person, the soul of a body, man among men and in humanity; He has time.”144 Thus, Christ’s work includes both his activity and passivity, giving and receiving as a full human person composed of both body and soul. Together, body and soul perceive, contemplate, and pray in fellowship with God and neighbor. To better understand the union between contemplation and action, I now turn to the role of Sabbath rest and prayer in its significance not only for humanity, but specifically the aging experience.

141. 142. 143. 144.

Ibid., 429. Ibid., 431. Ibid., 432. Ibid., 59.

Aging in the Middle Voice

173

Union with Christ: Sabbath Rest as Active Receiving and Prayer After seeing how soul and body compose human identity in which persons act as subjects and objects in history, I conclude with the role of prayer and action in Barth’s theology. Jesus’s life was one of prayer, both in his receptive humanity toward divine grace and in the darkest hours of his experience, which includes the implications of prayer for aging individuals in light of “Sabbath rest.” I explore this by describing, first, God and Sabbath rest; second, human work and rest as a posture of “active receiving”; third, the way in which theology itself is prayer and work; and finally, how our very existence is one of communion, prayer, and active participation in God. God and Sabbath Rest Returning to CD III/1, we see how Barth briefly describes the meaning of Sabbath rest in the creation narrative. The first creation ends in the divine act of rest. After completing six days of work, God rests. Through rest, God treasures humankind in its particularity. Rather than endlessly create through compulsion, God reveals his own freedom as one who limits his creative work. After creating humans, God celebrates the goodness of his creation with freedom, rest, and joy.145 In this way, God sets aside this day of rest not only for himself but also for humanity. Here Barth conveys the dignity and value in resting as well as activity. By resting, God reveals the importance of reprieve from work. Barth says, [One] does not strive in vain; his work cannot devour him but consists of steps toward this goal . . . , rest and joy of the workless Sabbath . . . gives perspective and depth, meaning and luster, to all his weeks, and therefore to his whole time, as well as to the work which he performs in his time.146

Through rest, humans are able to offer meaning to work pursued in their daily lives. Moreover, Barth describes the content of this rest. For Barth, God not only reveals Himself through his limited creation, but also His willingness to enter that same creation. God creates with the goal of covenant relationship.147 Again, he says, “Creation is the external basis of the covenant and the covenant is the internal basis of creation.”148 Given the doctrine of election, God creates with the end goal of participation. Barth says, The clear inference is that creation, and supremely man, rested with God on the seventh day and shared His freedom, rest and joy, even though it had not as yet

145. 146. 147. 148.

CD III/1, 212–14. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 218. Ibid.

174

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

any work behind it from which to cease, and its Sabbath freedom, rest and joy could only look back to God’s work and not its own. Its freedom, rest, and joy could be grounded only in those of God and consist only in its response to the invitation to participate in them.149

Thus, we see even in the beginning that God created with the intent toward participatory rest between the divine and human creatures. Here Barth affirms not only creation, but also the direction in which God creates with a “view to Christ.”150 Christ was both present in creation and elected to become human as the future peace for the divine-human relation.151 The Sabbath rest present in the creation narrative looks forward not only to the coming of Jesus, but also eternal rest aimed at the Eschaton, sounding much like Augustine. Barth says, The last day will be a Sabbath day, and man’s final time will be a time of rest for him, and indeed of rest in fellowship with the rest of God Himself, of participation in the freedom, rest, and joy of His true deity. That he for his part will be true man in this participation in God’s final rest is the promise in the strength of which he can do his work.152

Thus, even in the creation narrative, Barth and Augustine interpret the importance of eternal, Sabbath rest to be found in relationship with God. Barth says, “The first and divine observance of the Sabbath . . . is no more and no less than the meaning and intention of the covenant between God and man.”153 This covenant revealed at the beginning of time manifests itself in union with Christ or participation in God. Barth continues to describe the meaning of this Sabbath rest in III/4 as a response to God’s call, including those who are aging. Work and Rest as Active Receiving Barth moves from III/1 to III/4 describing the topic of Sabbath rest in relation to work. Barth first describes work as an activity within the circumference of God’s call, located in the wake of God’s providence. The center of this circumference, however, remains Jesus Christ and his call through election, justification, and sanctification.154 For Barth, work is a human activity whose meaning derives from covenant relation with Jesus Christ. Work itself is the “active affirmation of his existence as human creature.”155 While Barth acknowledges that work helps to bring one’s daily bread and physical needs, work

149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

Ibid., 216. Ibid., 221. Ibid. Ibid., 217. Ibid. CD III/4, 517. Ibid., 518.

Aging in the Middle Voice

175

finds its telos or significance in relation to Jesus Christ. In this sense, union with Christ is the formal and final purpose of the good life, relating to those questions posed by Bishop and McKenny.156 Decisions in medical ethics related to aging and end of life care might be made in reference to the final end of work and rest in God. The harm in work occurs when the means are reversed with the ends and possesses individuals.157 Like Augustine’s disordered loves, reversed ends and means confuse the role of work or medicine in its participation—rather than domination—of the good life. Instead, Barth reminds humanity that two forms of work exist: an external (or physical) work and an internal (or reflective) work. Such internal, reflective work offers dignity for those persons experiencing sickness or old age. Barth says, “Sickness and in many cases age, do not mean dismissal or banishment from the field of work but transfer to its other side, where it is no longer possible to work externally apart from dallying over trifles, but instead the inward work of reflection can be pursued the more intensively.”158 In this way, Barth affirms that work exists not only in external affairs, but also in internal reflection. While internal forms of work are often associated with scholarly careers or religious orders, internal reflection also represents transition to old age as a new form of “service.”159 Barth continues by describing how even the “useless old grannie” can more greatly participate in the “active affirmation of human existence” through internal reflection than many young people who externally work without meaning or purpose.160 Internal reflection can often be a more difficult or even exhausting form of work than “external” engagement. Persons moving into retirement should not view this transition as a time of empty idleness but perhaps even more challenging call as someone who reflects on the purpose of work and life’s meaning.161 Here Barth recognizes bodily changes that often accompany old age and slow individuals down from external work. While Barth may overlook dementia and other forms of cognitive challenges for many aging persons, these individuals still relate to God and neighbor despite diminished long-term memory or fully realized cognitive capacities. Barth himself connects internal reflective work with the role of Sabbath rest. Limiting work through Sabbath rest helps order and remind individuals of work’s meaning. Rest is necessary for accompanying work. Work pursued out of anxiety, stress, control, or possession reflects disordered love of work. Instead, rest exists

156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161.

Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse; McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition. CD III/4, 540; 548–50. Ibid., 549. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

176

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

as a “divinely ordained hygiene” that benefits its practitioners.162 Barth ties rest to reflection and contemplation. Contemplation or prayer leads to true rest.163 Contemplation begins the process whereby one detaches from the world. After pausing for self-reflection, the individual opens herself to receive God. Rest involves action and reception. Rest is not empty idleness. God speaks through the Word, communicating to individuals who receive rest as an act of love. “Even in the midst of time [persons] receive eternal rest.”164 Thus, a sense of eternal Sabbath rest is available not just for the future but also for the here and now. Barth continues describing Sabbath rest as “actively” receiving God. One does not approach God as contemplation of some abstract object or empty space, but receives the Word as active Subject. In this way, rest is not passivity without substance, but personifies giving and receiving in a covenant relationship with the eternal God. Barth says, “Receiving in this case is active receiving, since the man who receives eternal rest can never cease to make petition and supplication. Yet this does not mean a relapse into work or new restlessness. For this active receiving is man’s participation in the rest, the real resting from his work, which is available for the people of God” (italics mine).165 Aging individuals enter a new phase of life that begins participation in Sabbath rest. Even in retirement, aging persons are still giving and receiving in relationship with God and their surrounding communities. Rest is an invitation to participation in God as active receiving. Through rest, aging individuals receive the grace and empowerment of God much like Jesus in his prayer at Gethsemane. The gift of rest empowers work as active and passive agents in time. To more readily see rest as prayerful reception, I turn to a final section in Barth’s short volume Evangelical Theology. Evangelical Theology: Prayer and Work Barth’s small volume Evangelical Theology compiles his lectures offered during his sole tour across the United States. Here Barth describes theology as a lived practice within what seems to be a “receiving” community. The community of faith is a response to the initiation of a living God. No better topic describes this than prayer, to which Barth turns toward the end of this small volume. In his selection on prayer, Barth describes the work of theology like a window or skylight vertically opened to the heavens.166 Rather than persist in theology

162. Ibid., 553. 163. Contemplation exists as the transition from self-reflection to reflection. Contemplation cannot end with self-reflection alone. To do so implies that self-reflection involves finding more self-improvement measures to achieve. In sum, the individual becomes like a “squirrel in the cage,” attempting to improve by adding more work to his load. In CD III/4, 562–63. 164. Ibid., 563. 165. Ibid., 564. 166. Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 161.

Aging in the Middle Voice

177

that theorizes and projects its ideas onto an object deemed to be “God,” instead, Barth claims theology begins and ends in prayer. Moving away from what Barth describes as the problem of modern theology depicted as a squirrel circling in its cage, Barth proposes a posture of reception toward a God who reveals, orders, and speaks. Here Sabbath rest or prayer becomes practice. The practice of Sabbath rest is a gift whereby humans receive meaning through prayer. Barth says, The circular movement must be interrupted; a Sabbath day must be inserted and celebrated. The purpose of the Sabbath is not to eliminate the working days or to divest them of their proper tasks, but rather to obtain for them precisely the light from above which they lack. . . . At such a moment he can and should turn exclusively toward the object of theology, himself, to God. But what else is such a turning to God than the turning of prayer? For in prayer a man temporarily turns away from his own efforts. This move is necessary precisely for the sake of the duration and continuation of our own work.167

Sabbath rest and prayer provide a necessary interruption from the tasks of daily life in which individuals are called to stop, reflect, and open themselves to the gift and newness of the divine life. Persons interrupt their routine not to belittle or demean work, but to enliven work with fresh meaning from the Spirit. In this way, Barth affirms how perception (prayer) and activity come together. By halting one’s routine, an individual is more open to receive a fresh perspective that offers newness and vitality to the work of theology as well as faithful Christian living. Through prayer, Barth affirms that God speaks and acts throughout history and time. He says, “Theological work must recognize and demonstrate that the Word of this One is no neutral announcement, but rather the critical moment of history and the communion between God and man.”168 God speaks and acts in an active covenant relationship that the community receives by communion with Christ. A life of prayer is a life of active response and reception by grace. Here Barth associates his understanding of theology with Anselm, not only for his famous “faith seeking understanding,” but also for writing theology as prayer.169 Anselm’s famous Proslogion is a theological work of prayer. Theology itself reflects the call to union with Christ and participation with God through reception or prayer. Barth links theology as prayer with the Christological reading of Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, “Because it has to be ever renewed, ever original, ever ready to be judged by God himself and by God alone, theology must be an act of prayer. The work of theology is done when nothing else is

167. Ibid., 162. 168. Ibid., 163–64. 169. Ibid., 164.

178

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

accomplished but the humble confession, ‘Not as I will, but as thou willest!’”170 As disciples, believers receive through prayer and act in a way that imitates the person of Christ. Paul Nimmo emphasizes the communal dimension of prayer, saying, In prayer, the trusting community encounters God and becomes “an active partner in the covenant which he has established.” If the community does not pray, Barth cautions, “it does not work, its whole action being hollow and futile”; however, as it does pray, it takes responsibility for the world around, “representing our Lord among them and them before our Lord.”171

Prayer and work are not only connected but serve as a communal act in love toward the world. Barth also emphasizes the integral role of prayer for invoking the kingdom of God on earth throughout his ethics of reconciliation posthumously published as On Christian Life.172 Prayer and work as communion with Christ proves integral to the moral life, as will be seen among aging individuals and their surrounding communities in Chapter 5. Barth closes his section on prayer by recognizing the power of a God who reveals. God reveals Himself to hearts and minds by opening deaf ears and unveiling blind eyes.173 Here the material realm is opened to the immaterial. Revelation and reconciliation, understanding and communion, involve the double response of humans. Individuals ask and receive, pray and respond. The prayer of theology is much like the praying life of Christian discipleship throughout the human life span, including aging. To live in relationship with God is to live in prayerful communion composed of giving and receiving. More precisely, communion and reception involves a double entreaty that constitutes human existence whether behaving as a passive or active agent. Prayer and communion are important for aging persons as they experience more rest than work and prepare for eternal Sabbath rest. To conclude, I now consider human existence and particularly the aging experience as one of union through reception and activity. Conclusion: Existence and Aging as Union, Prayer, and Participation To conclude Barth’s Christology and its meaning for the aging experience entails delving deeply into his system involving the downward and upward movement of God in relation to humanity. For Barth, God became human so that we might “come to God.”174 Individuals find communion with the Triune God who creates, reconciles, and redeems in covenant fellowship with humanity. God calls humanity and particularly aging individuals to participation or union with Christ. Human

170. 171. 172. 173. 174.

Ibid., 167. Nimmo, Being in Action, 160 citing CD IV/3, 883–84. Barth, On Christian Life, xi, 234. Barth, Evangelical Theology, 169. CD IV/2, 106.

Aging in the Middle Voice

179

existence is such that it receives and responds to this God who summons followers in his own person. The Son of God displays eternal obedience and humility in his choice to become human before the world’s beginning. God’s revelation and active agency is God’s movement toward humanity. As human, Jesus invites us to a life of gratitude and obedience. Jesus not only exalts humanity, but also exemplifies meaning for the good life. Reconciling the world to God, Jesus displays the upward movement of humanity in Christ. The atonement also demonstrates giving and receiving, active and passive agency. According to W. H. Vanstone, Jesus moves from active to passive agent in the gospel narratives, or one who “hands over,” to one who is “handed over.” Jesus’s very willingness to move from active to passive agent reveals much significance for individuals experiencing old age. While not pursued voluntarily, old age still maintains dignity in its passive reality of response. By receiving the world and responding to those around them in dependency, older persons or those experiencing disabilities reflect the beauty of interdependent relationships and challenge our illusion of unbridled autonomy in the medical community. Humanity does not experience a freedom without boundaries. Agents are always in a dialectic of giving and receiving as seen in the Triune nature of God, Christology, and interdependent relationships in time. Aging individuals have the unique opportunity to receive and give to others with grace. By receiving grace and the world around them, aging individuals exist in union with God and others as examples to those younger persons with whom they remain in community. Barth’s own theology reflects much of Vanstone’s interpretation in his description of the active and passive movement of the Passion narrative. Jesus willingly becomes a passive agent who receives the actions of the world and even suffers on its behalf. However, even in Jesus’s most difficult moments, he reveals the importance of remaining in union with the Father through prayer as seen in the Garden of Gethsemane. Following Jesus, the life of receptive prayer and action is one that is to be inculcated in the everyday life of believers and aging individuals. Prayer empowered Jesus’s active obedience. The body-soul relation involves the integral relation between contemplation and action or prayer and activity for human identity. The aging stage of life may entail more internal reflection and reception—but such reflection is still participation in Christ and one’s surrounding community with full agency. Finally, the life of prayer and activity for believers and particularly those in the aging stage of life mirrors the strand in Augustine regarding the role of Sabbath rest. God instituted Sabbath rest for His own benefit as well as that of creation. God delights in creation and offers meaning through the role of Sabbath rest. Sabbath rest becomes an important practice for halting regular work and activity in order to receive God in covenant relationship. By pausing for Sabbath rest, individuals cease mundane activity and receive renewed meaning with vitality. Moreover, Barth says Sabbath rest and reception through prayer is not only one of the highest callings, but is particularly potent during the aging stage of life. This does not mean aging individuals are not still agents—or even active

180

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

agents. However, it does legitimize the worth of passive agency when individuals experience reception of God and others as their primary being and action. Sabbath rest is reception and petition through prayer as displayed in Evangelical Theology. Prayer and action is both an individual and communal concern. By remaining open to the vertical dimension much like a skylight to divine illumination, the community finds what it means to exist in communion with God. As lives that are opened to God and lived faithfully in a posture of receptiveness and prayer, individuals participate in the divine life. Participating in God by union with Christ in the power of the Spirit, individuals and communities find purpose in what it means to be human and more particularly, in what it means to age faithfully. The integral movement between contemplation and action as it relates to aging and the virtuous life is further explored in Chapter 5, to which I now turn.

Chapter 5 THE VIRTUES OF AGING

Introduction Describing Augustinian virtue and Barthian vocation in its relation to the aging experience involves understanding the central role of Christology and union with Christ for the aging. Both authors describe the role of aging and death as sign of lament and loss, but also as sign of possibility, hope, and even preparation for Sabbath rest when grounded in Christ. A rich, theologically informed perspective on aging might turn to Christology in its ability to help transform the human experience through union with God. By turning to Christ, persons learn a new way to be human, and thus a new way to walk through the aging experience. For both Augustinian and Barthian theologies, Christ perfectly brings together contemplation and action, receiving and giving in the union of Christ’s divine and human natures. Consequently, union with Christ’s person not only helps to complete human nature, but also serves as the mode or foundation for a Christologically centered virtue theory. Virtue theory, while explicit within Augustine and denied by Barth, is valuable when considering the aging experience given its integral relationship to time and the possibilities for growth and maturation through habits cultivated over time. Given both aging and virtue’s fundamental relation to time, movement, and development, they are helpful correlates pertaining to human experience and moral theory. Both Augustine and Barth rely on a kind of virtue theory in their description of aging—Augustine in his seven stages and Barth in his three stages of life. While neither description of aging is formally tied to virtue theory in their framework, they both rely on increased “wisdom” through time and the possibility for intensified purpose in one’s relationship with God. In other words, possibilities for virtue or vice implicitly function in their accounts of aging. For these reasons, I constructively build upon their nascent accounts in harmony with their themes on union with Christ. In fact, I argue it is precisely the union between God and humanity in Christ that animates the heart of virtue by drawing individuals into participation with God and fellow humans. Virtue is set in a context of relationships, pertaining to God, individuals, neighbors, and communities. In order to describe the essence of virtuous aging within the framework of these two figures, I describe, first, an

182

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

analysis of Augustinian virtue theory; second, an examination of Barthian vocation; third, enumerate a list of possible virtues for the aging; and, finally, conclude with a list of possible virtues for the communities surrounding aging individuals.

Augustinian Virtue as Union with Christ Augustine’s relation to virtue mirrors his perspective on the relation of faith and reason, nature and grace, and philosophy and theology more broadly. While there may be evidence of virtue existing among other early Christian fathers, such as John Chrysostom, Augustine, perhaps, codified the notion for generations of Western Christianity to follow.1 Later Thomas Aquinas would refer to Augustine as the doctor of grace, informing his notion of theological or infused virtues along with Aristotle’s philosophical influence on natural virtue theory.2 The importance and scope of Augustine’s virtue theory for theology cannot be underestimated. In order to understand Augustine’s legacy on virtue and the particular ways in which it might help reframe the meaning of the aging experience, I describe first, the supposed content of Augustinian virtue theory; second, the role of Christology for interpreting Augustinian virtue theory; third, union with Christ in its possibilities for virtue; and finally, the manner of virtuous living as involving both contemplation and action. Content of Augustinian Virtue Theory Relation to Philosophical and Theological Virtue Theory Understanding the content of Augustinian virtue theory entails understanding Augustine in relation to alternative virtue theories. Augustine himself was greatly influenced by those prevailing philosophical virtue theories of his day, including the Platonists and Stoics. For both the Platonists and Stoics, happiness was defined in accordance with virtue itself. One found happiness in living a virtuous life rather than pursuing virtue for the sake of happiness (or eudaimonism) as seen in the philosophy of Aristotle.3 However, in Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, philosopher James

1. John Chrysostom, Homily 15 and 18 from The Preaching of Chrysostom: Homilies on the Sermon on the Mount, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967). For readings of Jesus and Paul in light of virtue theory, see James F. Keenan and Daniel Harrington, Jesus and Virtue Ethics (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); James F. Keenan and Daniel Harrington, Paul and Virtue Ethics (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). 2. Aquinas, Summa Theologica. 3. “Plato,” “Aristotle,” and “Seneca” in Steven M. Cahn and Christine Vitrano, Happiness: Classical and Contemporary Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3–34; 41–49.

The Virtues of Aging

183

Wetzel cites the many ways in which Augustine is both initially drawn to Platonic and Stoic philosophies while also departing from these views in subtle ways.4 As stated in the Confessions, Augustine was initially drawn to Neoplatonism for its explanation of the problem of evil as privation as opposed to the dualistic philosophy of Manichaeism. In addition, the transcendent notion of the eternal good that informs temporal reality was a perspective that Augustine presumably adopted as his own. Nonetheless, Wetzel cites the ways in which Augustine ultimately departs from Neoplatonic thinking given its view on the supremacy of reason.5 Instead, Augustine introduces the concept of the will as the locus in which one achieves or rejects virtue. Disagreeing with the Pelagians who separated desire from choice, Augustine notes the gravity of emotions in their capacity to lead the will toward good or evil.6 Here reflecting his initial fascination and ultimate departure from Stoicism, Augustine comes to understand the power of human emotions in their ability to sway one’s reasoning toward or against enacting virtue.7 However, unlike the Stoics, he did not deny the use of emotions as part of the moral life. According to Robert Dodaro, the Stoics, along with the other pagan philosophies, use virtue in order to repress human emotions largely formed from timor mortis or “fear of death.”8 However, such virtue provides a false sense of security by repressing emotions as seen in his famous account of Aulus Gellius as the Stoic sage in Attic Nights who fears the incurring storm while sailing at sea.9 While the Stoic philosophers describe this reaction as involuntary “phantasms,” Augustine, however, interprets the inability of reason alone to “repress” or “guide” emotions for the sake of virtue. This repression leaves Stoicism bankrupt, much like his final view of Platonic theory in its emphasis on reason to guide the moral life.10 Instead, Augustine replaces Peripatetic external goods (or fortune) that benefit virtue in Stoic philosophy with the role of divine agency or grace.11 Also, Augustine shifts the locus of virtue from the role of reason to the human will in accordance with ordered desire. By placing one’s desires, emotions, or loves on a good object (such as God), one is led to act virtuously, displaying the reality of an ordered will. For Augustine, grace is ultimately necessary for initiating and changing our disordered desires and thus, disordered wills in opposition to Pelagian

4. James Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 5. Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, 6. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Ibid., 45–55. 8. Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society, 30–31. 9. Augustine, City of God, 345–48 ; Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, 51–52. 10. Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, 50–55. 11. Ibid., 55.

184

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

virtue. Thus, a converted will led by grace enables persons to receive and enact virtue in accordance with love of God.12 In this way, Wetzel argues that Augustine portrays the “limits of virtue” by simultaneously departing from pagan philosophies that conclude virtue to be the meaning of human life as well as Pelagian theology that affirms humans could achieve virtue on their own merit.13 Instead, grace initiates and transforms the reasoning and will’s capacity to be directed toward love of God, the goal of virtue, which offers the fullness of human happiness. To better understand the distinctiveness of Augustine’s virtue theory, I return to his famous order of love as the definition of human virtue. Order of Love as the Mode of Virtue For Augustine, virtue is best described in terms of its final end or telos that involves love of God. God is the summum bonum, Supreme good, or ultimate goal of a virtuous life. Love permeates Augustine’s major works by which he defines the meaning of life. He frames his famous City of God in terms of “two loves” that “built two cities,” and his famous Confessions in terms of the restless heart searching for solace in God’s eternal love.14 Augustine advances his notion of virtue in relation to philosophy and theology as one wholly defined by love. In his early work On Free Will, Augustine begins to develop his notion of happiness in relation to the ultimate or eternal good. Here he describes the will as determinative for the happy or unhappy life.15 Augustine depicts unhappiness as desire (or lust) after temporal goods. Augustine says, Thus some men make evil use of these things, and others make good use. And the man who makes evil use clings to them with love and is entangled by them (that is, he becomes subject to those things which ought to be subject to him) . . . but the man who uses these rightly proves that they are indeed goods, though not for him.16

Here Augustine departs from Manichaean dualisms that pose material realities as evil and spiritual realities as good. Instead, Augustine argues temporal “things” are neither good nor bad, but may be “used” for good or evil ends determined by a good or evil will. Attaching oneself to a good in a disordered way results from an evil will, thus reflecting a disordered desire for the temporal good above eternal realities. Such disordered love is seen through the misuse of temporal goods such as alcohol, food, sex, money, or even prestige. However, Augustine somewhat

12. Jose Oroz Reta, “Conversion,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 239–42; Augustine, Confessions. 13. Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, 16. 14. Augustine, City of God, 593; Augustine, Confessions. 15. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, 25–28. 16. Ibid., 32.

The Virtues of Aging

185

controversially includes persons, such as self and neighbor in the order of love. In On Christian Teaching, Augustine describes his famous order of love in detail. This order involves love of God, neighbor, self, and body. As discussed previously in Chapter 1, Augustine describes the order of love in terms of “use” and “enjoy.” He says, “To enjoy something is to hold fast to it in love for its own sake. To use something is to apply whatever it may be to the purpose of obtaining what you love.”17 Only God can be loved or enjoyed for His own sake whereas all other things, including persons, are to be loved in relation to this final good. In Augustine’s cosmology, only God is the eternal, transcendent good. To place one’s rest in anything subordinate as the highest good involves trust in that which is transitory or subject to change. Instead, the human heart longs for something unchangeable and eternal in which to place one’s ultimate rest.18 Augustine’s various interpretations of Genesis reflect a vision in which humanity is created in union with the eternal God in the famous Garden of Eden. Humanity is destined for union with God and participation in eternal Sabbath rest. However, this movement of union with the eternal good is interrupted when humanity (typified by Adam and Eve) falls from union with God in their turn toward the self and mutable goods above love for God. This turn toward the material, mutable world lends itself to dissatisfaction and a splintered will that no longer orients itself toward the ultimate end of God. Rather than seek enjoyment in God, humanity turns toward temporal objects in their aim to “enjoy” rather than “use” these objects in relation to love of God. For Augustine, even the neighbor or friend can become problematic when placed above love of God. Instead, Augustine argues individuals are to be loved on account of love for God. To “enjoy” a “thing” is to believe this “thing” constitutes the happy life.19 No temporal or transitory “thing” can take this placeholder, including the neighbor or loved one. Augustine is emphatic that four things are to be loved in a way that prioritizes love of God above neighbor, self, and the material world. Augustine acknowledges it is relatively easy to love one’s self, but loving the neighbor may prove more difficult. The love commands include loving one’s enemy, which requires more arduous moral courage. By loving the enemy, one affirms their created goodness to be “loved on God’s account.”20 Given the call to love neighbor on account of God, Augustine confirms that the pinnacle of human existence is to “share in the loving of God, which constitutes the ‘happy life.’”21 Augustine says we are solely to “enjoy God,” though we can enjoy one another in God.22 Enjoying another “in” God entails “use” versus “enjoy,” through a love ordered at the final good in God. Augustine typifies this love for

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 9. Augustine, Confessions, 3. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 16–17. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 25–26.

186

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

the ultimate good as participation in God resulting in the beatific vision. Temporal loves relate to this final end. “Three” temporal forms of love for the pilgrim’s journey include “faith, hope, and love” that later become the theological virtues adopted by Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition.23 The virtues of faith and hope are directed toward our eternal end for the journey in time. But only love endures. In this way, Augustine describes the way in which all virtue, whether theological or natural, relates to the order of love.24 In On the Morals of the Catholic Church, Augustine explores the meaning of love in its various forms. Augustine again defines happiness as enjoyment of God and virtue as “perfection” for the soul.25 He also departs from Platonic and Stoic philosophy that seeks after virtue as its end. Instead, Augustine says, “We must allow that the soul follows after something else in order that virtue may be produced in itself. . . . This something else then . . . after which the soul becomes possessed of virtue and wisdom, is . . . God.”26 The soul attains virtue by ordering its love toward God most fully seen in union with Christ. Augustine again appropriates the “four natural virtues” associated with Plato and Aristotle for the purposes of love. Defining virtue as love of God, Augustine describes the natural virtues—temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence—as forms of this love. He says, That temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it. The object of this love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony.27

All virtue, whether natural or theological, is subsumed in ultimate love for the eternal God guided by wisdom. After defining Augustine’s basic virtue theory as the order of love, I now turn to his Christology that offers more concrete substance to the meaning of this love. Role of Christology for Augustinian Virtue The climax of Augustine’s virtue theory on love may be found in the person and work of Christ. George Lavere defines virtue for Augustine as “the means by which moral order is established in human actions, directing them to their appropriate

23. Ibid., 28–29. 24. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 29. 25. Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church in Basic Writings of St Augustine, vol. 1, ed. Whitney J. Oates (New York: Random House, 1948), 323. 26. Ibid., 324. 27. Ibid., 332.

The Virtues of Aging

187

final end.”28 He elaborates on this definition in terms of Christ. The goal of moral action is love for God, or more specifically union—and even contemplation in Augustine’s schema. Augustine gives more content to the final end as contemplation in On the Morals of the Catholic Church, The Trinity, and various passages in his Expositions of the Psalms. Shortly following his initial description of the natural virtues as forms of love in On the Morals of the Catholic Church, Augustine cites the “manner” of moral life according to virtue.29 Augustine says, “And as the apostle says that the Son of God is the virtue of God and the wisdom of God—virtue being understood to refer to action, and wisdom to teaching.”30 This manner of virtue is fulfilled in the Son of God as wisdom and virtue. Augustine describes the extent of virtue by saying, “Wisdom,” he says, “teaches sobriety, and justice, and virtue.” Sobriety refers, I think, to the knowledge of the truth, or to teaching; justice and virtue to work and action. And I know nothing comparable to these two things, that is, to efficiency in action and sobriety in contemplation, which the virtue of God and the wisdom of God, that is the Son of God, gives to them that love Him, when the same prophet goes on to show their value; for it is thus stated: “Wisdom teaches sobriety, and justice, and virtue, than which nothing is more useful in life to man.”31

In other words, wisdom teaches “sobriety” or “knowledge of the truth” along with justice and virtue. Knowledge of the truth and wisdom correlate with contemplation  whereas justice and virtue correlate with action. The pinnacle of contemplation and action is found in Christ as the Son of God. Christ imparts wisdom for both contemplation and action to those who love God through the Son. This theme is only strengthened in Augustine’s later work on The Trinity. As described in Chapter 3, Augustine delineates the distinction between two kinds of knowledge, that is, sapientia or wisdom pertaining to eternal reality and scientia as knowledge pertaining to temporal reality. Virtue belongs to scientia or knowledge that informs action by pursuing the good and avoiding evil in time.32 The goal of virtue is the “happy life” as eternal communion with God. For this reason, scientia or virtue seems emboldened when it functions in union with sapientia or wisdom. The fullness of this union may be found in Augustine’s depiction of the person of Christ. In Book XIV, Augustine comes to identify sapientia and scientia with Christ’s divine and human natures. In Christ, the fullness of wisdom and

28. George Lavere, “Virtue,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 871. 29. Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church 332. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 333. 32. Augustine, The Trinity, 337.

188

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

knowledge comes together in which divine wisdom directs human action as perfected virtue in time. Lewis Ayres finds the turning point of The Trinity hinges on Christ’s person as the culmination of wisdom and knowledge that restores the broken image of humanity.33 Christ enacts virtue while maintaining union with the Father. Through this union, Christ remains in tune to wisdom or sapientia. Unlike sinful humanity’s experience of fractured wisdom and knowledge, Christ restores their union again through his person and work. In a later passage, Augustine describes wisdom and knowledge as analogous to the inner and outer person. Wisdom is the internal meaning behind an action while knowledge displays external personification through action. In an interesting analogy, Augustine likens virtue to language, which differs across culture and wisdom to the meaning imbedded in language that is universal.34 The actions may appear similar, though their meaning, motivation, or rationale differs. Seeing such analogies between wisdom and knowledge, contemplation and action, entails significance for understanding contemporary appropriations of Augustine’s virtue theory. It also entails locating the significance of Christology for an Augustinian virtue theory. Relying on Augustine’s Expositions on the Psalms, George Lavere continues the emphasis on Christology as the heart of virtue, saying, In Christ, the virtue of God and the wisdom of God, the fullness of virtue is realized concretely and made accessible to the world as a unified whole incorporating the totality of virtue (en. Ps. 83:11). . . . It is in the person of Christ, manifested in his teachings and example, that the meaning and proper order of virtue clearly emerge.35

Lavere points to Christ as both the wisdom of God and the fullness of virtue in time. This is seen by his example through lived history in both Christ’s teachings and life. Moreover, Augustine’s particular Christological interpretation of the Psalms points to the inculcation of virtue within time. Christ personifies virtue for humanity in at least three ways. First, we see Christ’s humility in his willingness to become human and endure the cross. With love, Christ personifies the centrality of humility for understanding oneself as creature before God. In humility, Christ maintains union with the Father and a desire to follow the divine will in time. Second, Christ perfectly fulfills human obedience to the divine will in his journey through time. In this obedience, Christ perfects human nature by correcting our wills that are bent toward sin. He maintains perfect communion with the Father and a willingness to enact the divine will through virtue, ministry, and the saving work of the cross. Christ’s union of divine and human natures is analogous to the

33. Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De Trinitate XIII,” 111–39. 34. Augustine, The Trinity, 369. 35. Lavere, “Virtue,” 873.

The Virtues of Aging

189

union of human soul and body.36 The divine nature directs the person of Christ much like the soul directs the body. Moreover, Christ takes up the psychological anguish and emotions experienced through human suffering as forsakenness in his cries to the Father at Gethsemane and the cross.37 By petitioning to the Father on behalf of human pain, the totus Christus or body of Christ is represented in His prayer and compassion. Third and finally, Christ’s sacrifice for the neighbor—through both his ministry and work on the cross—enacts the virtues of justice and love in time. Christ’s sacrifice of praise involves loving and just acts toward the neighbor.38 Love and justice involves specific acts that meet both the neighbor’s need and loves the enemy. John Cavadini like Tarcisius van Bavel affirm that by acting with love and justice, individuals participate in the body of Christ (totus Christus) and represent His presence in the world.39 To better understand the presence of Christ as the totus Christus, I now turn to “Union with Christ” as the foundation for virtue. Union with Christ for Virtue Augustine’s order of love for virtue theory culminates not only with the person and work of Christ, but also with participation in God as members of Christ’s body in time. For Augustine, moral actions are set in a context of ordered loves aimed at loving God or self as the final good. Love moves the soul to will and act. As Rowan Williams says, desire is basic to human persons, a drive that takes individuals out of themselves.40 Desire is what opens us to the world and others. However, such desire can never rest in finite objects but solely in an eternal object. Williams says, Thus our last end is the contemplation of that which in no way depends on us or is defined in terms of us (we, rather are defined in terms of it); and so we cannot for this end use other objects of love in a self-interested way. To “use” the love of neighbor or the love we have for our own bodies .  .  . is simply to allow the capacity for gratuitous or self-forgetful dilectio opened up in these and other such loves to be opened still further. The language of uti is designed to warn against an attitude towards any finite person or object that terminates their meaning in their capacity to satisfy my desire, that treats them as the end of desire, conceiving my meaning in terms of them and theirs in terms of me.41

36. Augustine, “Letter 137,” 218. 37. Williams, “Augustine and the Psalms.” 38. Augustine, City of God, 376–80; Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 244–45. 39. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine”; van Bavel in Rowan Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on De Trinitate,” in Collectanea Augustiniana, ed. Bernard Bruning, Mathijs Lamberigts, and J. van Houtem (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), 317–332. 40. Williams, “Language, Reality, and Desire in Augustine’s De Doctrina,” Journal of Literature & Theology 3, no. 2 (July 1989): 138–50. 41. Ibid.

190

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

While desire itself is natural, desire cannot rest in temporal or finite objects alone. As Augustine opens his Confessions, the heart is restless without rest in God. To place one’s desire and end in temporal objects (including persons) is to confuse the means with the end. The end of desire is intended to draw one away from self-love as primary and into love of God. By enjoying God as the final desire, one finds happiness in the eternal, thereby establishing the proper “order of love” for those objects in time. Tarsicius van Bavel cites this reason as the “eschatological point of view.”42 He says, Love unites us with God as our eternal, everlasting good. Only God as summum bonum can guarantee true happiness, for only here the human being has not to fear the loss of the beloved. This happens according to the principle that a human being becomes what he or she loves: who loves the earth will become earth, who loves the eternal God will share in God’s eternity.43 (ep. Jo. 2.14)

In other words, love unites us with the loved object. To love earth is to become earth and to love God is to share in God. To love a finite object as one’s end is to become finite, whereas to love God as the final end of desire or love is to share in the life of the eternal God. Augustine describes this in more detail in his section on the psychological analogies of The Trinity in Book IX in which he likens the Trinitarian God to the image of “lover,” “loved object,” and the “love” shared between two lovers.44 The lover and loved object are united by love, much like God the Father and Son are united by the Holy Spirit. Drawing on this theme, van Bavel suggests that love consists in willing to become “one” with the object which it loves.45 He further articulates how love distinguishes one individual from another in that “a person is what he or she loves,” drawing from Augustine’s Homily on the First Epistle of John.46 Van Bavel describes the way individuals become more like God the more they love. Van Bavel says, Love is the most eminent commandment, for love unites us with the object of our love in a stronger way than faith and hope. . . . But through love our likeness to God is growing and love brings us nearer to him, although we will not become

42. Tarcisius J. van Bavel, “Love,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 511. 43. Ibid.; See also Augustine, “Second Homily,” in Homilies on the First Epistle of John, eds. Daniel E. Doyle and Thomas Martin, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press), 2008. 44. Augustine, The Trinity, 272–77. 45. van Bavel, “Love,” 509. 46. Ibid.

The Virtues of Aging

191

what he is (mor.1.11.18). Yet, the greater our likeness to God, the more our love will increase, and the more clearly we will perceive God, for God is love.47

Loving God brings individuals closer to the likeness of God, which increases love for God and neighbor. Thus, union with Christ enables persons to partially experience participation in the Triune God here while assisting ordered loves toward self and other in time. Dodaro describes Christ as the mediator of virtue. Humanity gains virtue by “uniting with Christ’s voice.” Dodaro says, Augustine suggests that, as a consequence of the exchange of characteristics between his natures, Christ vicariously experiences the darkness and pain of human sinfulness, while he also communicates to human beings the virtue which is proper to him as a sinless human being. Key to Augustine’s representation of Christ’s mediation of virtue is the image of a dialogue between Christ, the head, and his “members.” Against those religious and philosophical accounts of virtue which emphasize the autonomy of human reason as the seat of virtue, Augustine contrasts the image of Christ mediating virtue to his members by uniting his “voice” with theirs. This mediated virtue is “true virtue,” as Augustine conceives it. It can be achieved by those individuals who renounce the presumption that they can produce their own virtue, and who faithfully and humbly seek it in God’s grace through Christ. Augustine thus insists that faith and humility are the initial virtues required by human beings who desire to live justly.48 (italics mine)

In this passage, Dodaro captures how Christ’s dual natures communicate the great exchange between divine and human persons. Christ takes on the sorrows and difficulties of human experience while communicating His own virtue to humanity at large. For Dodaro, union with Christ involves listening to His voice as the key to the moral life seen in the specific virtues of faith and humility. Dodaro sees faith and humility as humanity’s basic posture before God. Inculcating faith and humility in union with the mediator of virtue empowers one to live a just life—for self and society. In Augustine’s schema, virtues, including faith, humility, and justice are always tied to love directed at God and neighbor. To better understand how union with Christ results in actions that love the neighbor, I now turn to the “manner of virtuous living” as contemplation and action. Manner of Virtuous Living—Contemplation and Action Remaining in union with Christ involves contemplation, much like the union seen between the person of Christ and God the Father. By praying to God and remaining

47. Ibid., 510. 48. Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine, 216–17.

192

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

in communion, Christ inculcates both wisdom and knowledge. Christ perfectly merges wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia), contemplation and action, or prayerful union and virtue in time. In this way, Christ reorders our disordered loves in order to turn the heart back to communion with God. As described in his commentaries on Genesis, “ensouled bodies” were created with the purpose of union with God. Christ’s coming into time reestablishes this severed union and the ability to commune again with God through the Spirit. However, Augustine gives more content to love than solely contemplation and spiritual union with God. Love for God also includes motion—not merely stasis or rest. Van Bavel describes Augustine’s emphasis on actions by saying, “Love alone differentiates human beings, for only love differentiates human actions. We are to observe not what people say, but their deeds and their heart.”49 In other words, love involves action. Love is an activity. The understanding that “faith is active in love” is further seen through the “concrete deeds of love, such as righteousness and peace.”50 Cavadini further describes the way in which love manifests itself in justice. Cavadini says, “Justice is not in the first place a virtue acquired by separating ourselves from the body in order to be joined to God, as though in a walled-off garden . . . rather, it is an ordering or integration of the whole person that Christ’s body represented.”51 Justice involves ordering oneself and the whole body of Christ together. Human identity is found in union with God as “signs” and “bearers” of the body of Christ, enacting justice, compassion, and other acts of love.52 Kimberly Baker reiterates the union of contemplation and action in the divine and human natures of Christ. While she argues that Augustine’s mature work entails action in the present life and contemplation in the eternal, beatific vision, individuals may participate in glimpses of this vision insofar as they “encounter” the sacramental presence of Christ here as the totus Christus.53 Uniting with God as the body of Christ, believers catch a glimpse of eternal contemplation. In addition, by maintaining union with Christ, persons enact incarnational virtue as seen through acts of justice, love, and service in time. Furthermore, serving the neighbor unites not only believers with God through imitating Christ, but also relationships through God’s “presence” in the neighbor.54 In one of his most persuasive descriptions of neighbor love, Tarcisius J. van Bavel says, In order to come to the love of God, we must begin by loving our neighbors. Although love of God comes first in the order of commanding, love of neighbor comes first in the order of performing (s. 265.8.9; Jo. ev. tr. 17.8). In this way

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

van Bavel, “Love,” 509. Ibid., 511. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine,” 245. Ibid. Baker, “Augustine on Action, Contemplation, and Their Meeting Point in Christ,” 6. van Bavel, “Love,” 512.

The Virtues of Aging

193

there is a temporary primacy of love of neighbor; that is, in our life on earth authentic love of neighbor is the first realization of our love of God. This is not a denial of the absolute difference between God and the human being. . . . Rather, it is the conviction that we have to participate in God’s love for all human beings. If we refuse to do so, we do not love God.55

Loving the neighbor takes on temporal primacy given the presence of God resides in the neighbor. To love others is to “participate” in God’s love for humanity. Throughout many of his sermons, Augustine reiterates the importance of caring for physical needs as well as spiritual needs. Drawing from Mt. 25:40, Augustine reminds parishioners that when they love and serve those in need, they love and serve Christ Himself.56 By feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and welcoming the stranger, persons love Christ in the neighbor. Eric Gregory’s own Christological interpretation of loving God in the neighbor includes caring for those in need as seen in Augustine’s use of Matthew 25.57 Such neighbor love looks like the virtuous actions of justice, generosity, mercy, and love. Tarcisius J. van Bavel emphasizes how Augustine’s description of neighbor love is even found in his early work On the Morals of the Catholic Church that describes loving the neighbor’s body as well as her soul. Van Bavel addresses the particular care for the “body” that entails “anything that preserves or restores the health of the body: clothing and shelter, liberation of the oppressed, burying the dead; anything that protects the body against threats caused by hunger and thirst, cold and heat, or any injury inflicted from without.”58 Anticipating what would become spiritual and corporeal works of mercy in the Catholic faith, neighbor love entails virtuous action. By loving the neighbor through acts of justice, generosity, mercy, and compassion, individuals come to participate in love for God. By loving the neighbor in Christ, persons see a glimpse of union with God intended for  the Eschaton through contemplation and action. Augustine himself lauded Mary, the sister of Martha, for participating in contemplation (by anticipating the Eschaton) while also seeing the validity of Martha’s activity.59 Both elements are important for ensouled bodies in time. Thus, the significance of Augustine’s ordered love and Christological focus cannot be understated for virtue theory and its practical meaning for those in the aging experience. But before turning to the applied virtue section that describes specific virtues for the aging, I next consider Barthian vocation as participation in Christ in its similarities and divergences from Augustinian-Thomistic virtue

55. Ibid. 56. Augustine, “Sermon 239.7,” in Essential Sermons, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007), 298. 57. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 348. 58. van Bavel, “Love,” 513. 59. Augustine, The Trinity, 83.

194

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

theory. In the end, I hope to offer a constructive virtue theory based on participation in light of both authors for aging persons and their surrounding communities.

Barthian Vocation as Union with Christ Locating Barth within virtue theory proves to be somewhat problematic given his internal commitments that contradict traditional Augustinian-Thomistic virtue ethics. His descriptive account of ethics in the form of Divine command in II/2 and III/4 emphasizes God as a Divine Commander in which persons obey by hearing the command issued from above. This emphasis lends itself to interpretations that focus on the right as opposed to the good in which individuals obey God through right willing as opposed to inculcating habits, dispositions, and affections whereby individuals grow in love of God over time. However, in Barth’s Doctrine of Creation III/4, he describes “vocation” as the life calling where individuals hear the Divine Command and in IV/3, he directly accounts for vocation as union with Christ. McKenny’s Analogy of Grace illuminates Barth’s Divine command by recognizing the relational dimension grounding his ethics.60 In addition, Adam Neder argues the center of Dogmatics is participation in Christ. Given these interpretations, I argue the heart of Barth’s moral theory is participation through vocation enacted by prayer and obedience following the Divine Command. For Barth, ethics in the form of commands is always preceded by the gospel. In fact, Barth argues both justification and sanctification are found in Christ, placing Christ at the center of moral theology and extending the ethical call to persons through an “analogy of grace.”61 Reading McKenny’s interpretation of Barth’s Divine command in light of Neder’s Participation in Christ and Nimmo’s Being in Action offers insight into how Barth may share similar features to virtue theory while also maintaining some significant differences through his account of vocation. To better understand how Barthian vocation might hinge on union with Christ, I consider (1) the content of Barthian vocation in terms of moral agency; (2) the role of Christology for vocation; (3) union with Christ for vocation; and finally, (4) the manner of vocational living that involves receiving and acting. Status of Ethical Agent: Vocation in Its Differentiation and Similarity to Virtue Understanding the ethics of Karl Barth in relation to virtue may seem peculiar and somewhat challenging given his explicit commitments. Barth writes at length, describing ethics as a Divine command in which persons hear the Word of God and respond through obedience. He warns against forms of ethics in which humanity—rather than God—determines right and wrong. He argues

60. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace. 61. Ibid.

The Virtues of Aging

195

explicitly against casuistry, natural law ethics, and applications of Scripture that “domesticate” ethics in the form of timeless rules. Instead, Barth’s primary concern is that God remains the author of right and wrong and that humanity responds, primarily through obedience. However, interpreting Barth’s moral theory in terms of vocation that centers on Christ and participation in the Divine-human relationship opens up the possibility for reading Barth in a new way. His anthropology and overarching telos framing Church Dogmatics in terms of union with Christ may lend itself to an interpretation that proves more compatible with Augustine’s virtue theory than initially conceived. Thus, I here offer a constructive reading of Barth that may find overlap and convergence with Augustine’s virtue when grounded in Christ and union with the Divine through vocation. While throughout, I acknowledge discrepancies between Karl Barth and traditional Thomistic virtue theory, I find Augustine more readily complements Barth given his pre-ontological discussion of virtue that focuses on love and union with Christ. Also, newer interpretations of Barth in the works of McKenny, Neder, and Nimmo that emphasize moral agency as covenant relationship with Christ or participation prove salient. Like these authors, I consider the agent’s status as grounded in Christ for Barth’s moral theology. In Barth’s Doctrine of Creation, he argues that vocation is one’s whole life before God while the specific “call” involves listening to the Divine Command in the particular moment. In this way, Barth legitimates the whole life span as one of vocation that entails gratitude, prayer, and obedience. Nimmo describes this same vocation in terms of faith, prayer, and obedience.62 Later in IV/3, Barth specifically describes vocation as union with Christ. Here the movement of participation in Christ that is implicit throughout Dogmatics becomes explicit. Nimmo says, To complete this actualistic construal of the Christian life, Barth writes of vocation as the event in which the ethical agent is called by Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. For Barth, as with justification and the sanctification of the ethical agent, her vocation is already true in the work of reconciliation effected in the history of Jesus Christ. The goal of this event is that she might become and thereafter remain a Christian, a child of God, in union with Christ.63

For Barth, the content of Christian discipleship is one of vocation rooted in justification and sanctification. Through vocation, one responds to God’s grace in “faith, prayer, and obedience.” Thus, one could argue that vocation includes the Divine Command in which vocation is a more holistic term.

62. Nimmo, Being in Action, 137–50. 63. Ibid., 167.

196

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

The uniqueness of Barth’s ethical theory64 as presented in terms of Divine command is that Jesus Christ is the Divine lawgiver who not only issues the command, but also fulfills the command. Jesus Christ secures not only justification, but also sanctification. Morality is not something to be achieved by persons, but something to be received and lived out as response to the encounter between God and humanity. McKenny here distinguishes Barth’s ethics from St. Thomas Aquinas’s virtue theory inculcating infused grace by saying, It is clear that the difference between the Thomist and the Barthian positions cannot be captured by a simple contrast between continuity and discontinuity of our moral activity with the ultimate good. Rather, it is the difference between a notion of grace working in us to bring about a perfection of our natural capacities which they are incapable of accomplishing, on the one hand, and a notion of grace as bringing about our good apart from our activity and summoning us, from the site of its actualization, to active participation in it, on the other hand.65

Both Thomas Aquinas and Barth might emphasize participation in Christ, but there is a distinction in the locus of participation that focuses more on the developmental work “in” the human person (Thomas) or more on the work accomplished “for” the human person that invites response (Barth). However, it is important to note that from Thomas’s perspective, Christ heals as well as perfects those capacities used by grace.66 For Thomas, there is an ontological change in nature while for Barth there is no change in nature, but a divine summons to participation. McKenny highlights Barth’s subtle distinction from Thomas by describing morality apart from our capacities (imputed righteousness) rather than cooperating with our capacities (infused righteousness). Here marking the distinction between Catholic and Protestant approaches to morality, Thomas says that grace infuses the agent in which actions are

64. I here include a caveat: while I openly use the term ethical “theory” in terms of this chapter, Barth himself avoided language such as “theory.” To him, theories domesticate God. Ethics do not involve “theories,” but an encounter between God and individuals demanding a response. 65. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace, 28. It is important to note that Thomas Aquinas’s virtue theory also focuses on “elevating grace” that offers persons a supernatural end that draws them beyond their natural capacities. In this sense, Aquinas is like Barth in his emphasis on participation. The theological virtues draw persons into the life of God and are infused solely by God. See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II Q. 61–63, 846–57. However, for the purposes of this chapter, there remains a subtle distinction in the locus of moral activity, which for Aquinas exists within the human person due to an ontological change in nature. For Barth, the person is not changed but awakened and called to respond to the moral source beyond the individual. 66. Stephen J. Pope, “Overview of the Ethics of Aquinas,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown, 2002), 34–36.

The Virtues of Aging

197

perfected over time. Instead, Barth, representing a more Protestant interpretation, acknowledges imputed grace as alien righteousness given from above. McKenny describes how persons are called to participate in this righteousness or virtue from the site of its actualization rather than being perfected in their own capacities. The distinction is that for Barth, morality is the call to enact what you already are in Christ as child of God—as opposed to “becoming” what you are through progress or growth in grace. In an over simplified version, Catholic understandings emphasize a co-mixture of justification and sanctification as Christ and humanity working together, while traditional Reformed Protestant versions separate justification and sanctification as the work of Christ and humanity, respectively.67 Barth builds on the Reformed Tradition by locating both justification and sanctification in the work of Christ alone. All three versions emphasize grace, participation, and faith, though the focus on which agent achieves the work seems to vary with nuance.68 For Barth, the site of this actualization resides in the person of Christ who endures and actualizes this temporal life with his own human perfection. As Nimmo emphasizes, God is the “Being in Action.”69 Barth establishes God as the true Being in Action in II/2 in which God’s acts are synonymous with His being. God’s being is His act, as seen through His choice to covenant with humanity from eternity.70 The Incarnation is an eternal decree whereby God’s being of love is synonymous with God’s action of love. Likewise, just as God’s being is known through His acts—such as love—so too is our being (as child of God) known through our acts—that obey, serve, and love. In this way, Barth’s sense of moral agency merges with Augustinian-Thomistic virtue theory through its synthesis of being and doing or contemplation and action.71

67. However, as noted earlier, this also could be a matter of Barth’s interpretation of the Reformers and their understanding of “Christian Freedom” and sanctification as noted in Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion III.1–6, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 833–38. Conversation with Scott M. Manetsch, July 7, 2017. 68. Interestingly, one could argue that there is distinction between the terms for Catholic and Protestant morality in terms of infused or imputed righteousness. However, the consequence is often the same resulting in “cooperative grace” on the Catholic side and “response” on the Protestant side. Yet given the distinction in terms, persons sometimes experience the weight or locus of response differently in that Catholics err on moral guilt while Protestants err on lawlessness or non-responsibility. Perhaps it is fair to say that this issue is kind of like the divine-human union in Christ—mysterious and difficult to hold both sides together without some tension in our comprehension of these matters. 69. Nimmo, Being in Action. 70. CD II/2. 71. However, while God’s Being is perfectly enacted, our being that mirrors God through acts still has the capacity to obey or disobey. Similar to Augustine’s view in that there is no potential in God, but only actualization, there is still potential in humanity rather than pure actualization in our response to God. While Barth would be hesitant to

198

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Furthermore, Nimmo argues that the ethical action of human beings mirrors the ethical action of God.72 Both are beings in action. The “actualistic” component is that God acts in time and history in a way that is dynamic or ongoing. Likewise, persons receive and respond to the Divine Command that reflects the “newness” or dynamism intrinsic to the living relationship between God and humans. Nimmo says, The deeply actualistic conception of Christology is analogically replicated in Barth’s theological anthropology. In the history of the ethical agent, then, grace is not something that can be infused or stored, let alone merited: instead, it must be received afresh in every new moment. Barth writes that grace is something that “takes place afresh each day, like the food given to the Israelites in the wilderness.” In Barth’s theological anthropology and theological ethics, then, there can be no mention of infused grace or [traditional] virtue.73

Barth’s actualistic ontology and ethics maintains continual openness to the new and dynamic activity of God through self-revelation and command that differs from Thomistic virtue. However, Barth also has some room for what appears to be “hints” of growth or development for the moral agent. As noted in the section in which Barth specifically addresses aging in III/4, aging individuals have some familiarity and wisdom both from being near death and through what appears to be “wisdom accrued over time” that might be shared with both young and middle-aged persons.74 Likewise, Nimmo also acknowledges some possibility for repetition in how one responds to God through sanctification granted in Christ. Nimmo says, Within the history of the Christian life in which she encounters God, there seems to be demanded of the ethical agent as a being in action a creaturely habitus of right practice—of openness and obedience to the command of God. In this way, as [Robin] Lovin notes, obedient action would be a “pattern of living responsibly within the order which God is creating in the human world.” Faithfulness in following Jesus Christ in this creaturely habitus of right practice and responsible living is not static but dynamic, and thus leaves room for progress (and also for regress) in the history of the life of the ethical agent.75 (italics in original)

In this way, one can read possibilities for seeing some growth or continuity between hearing the divine command in the past, present, and future. In this sense, hearing

suggest human nature “grows,” his framework holds open the possibility that we grow in our “awareness” of the moral life through Christ’s call. 72. Nimmo, Being in Action, 162. 73. Ibid. 74. CD III/4. 75. Nimmo, Being in Action, 165–66

The Virtues of Aging

199

and responding to the command might become one’s habit—but still requires attentiveness to the ongoing call over time rather than relying on past actions. In this way, Barth emphasizes the “again and again” in terms of the newness individuals regularly encounter in the daily dying and rising of the Christian life.76 However, as Hunsinger says, even in the repetition, there is a deepening or growth in the awareness of participation through this repetition.77 While various authors such as Nigel Biggar and William Werpehowski note some continuity to human action in its response to the Divine command over time, perhaps Hunsinger best suggests “process” should be controlled by “participation.”78 He says, The idea of “process” would thus be controlled by the idea of “participation.” Any process by which it might be said that a person “is being saved” (cf. II Cor. 2.15), for example, or by which salvation is being “worked out” (cf. Phil. 2.12), would be determined by that person’s prior participation in “salvation” as the finished work of Christ (through koinonia with Christ, who just is our salvation) (cf. IV/2, 377). Strictly speaking, what would be seen as existing in a process of becoming would not be one’s “salvation” as a goal yet to be attained by degrees, but one’s “existential appropriation” of the salvation that has already been given and received by faith. “Become what you are!” (by grace through faith) would be the watchword.79

In this way, Hunsinger emphasizes the unique Protestant approach in which one receives and responds to grace in the framework of “Become what you are!” Here the work of justification and sanctification is achieved in Christ and experienced as vocation that results in fellowship or participation in Christ’s eternal reality. Vocation is participation or awakening to Christ’s eternal reality.80 In this sense, Hunsinger hints that Barth’s theology could include “growth” when pertaining to one’s existential awareness of salvation. Christ achieves both justification and sanctification; persons are called to participate in this perfection from the “site of its actualization.” The “process” of growth in moral agency exists in the awareness of our created, salvific, and final end as participation in Christ. But before turning to the telos of participation for Barth, I next consider the role of Christology for achieving Barthian vocation.

76. Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace, 274; Nimmo, Being in Action, 167. 77. While Augustine does not write of actualism or dynamism in God or human activity, he does emphasize the Christian life as one of ongoing repentance and faith, dying and rising that involves growth through time—though perfection is delayed until the Eschaton. 78. See Biggar, “Barth’s Trinitarian Ethic”; William Werpehowski, “Narrative and Ethics in Barth,” Theology Today 43 no. 3 (1986): 334–53. 79. Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 275 n. 32 quoted in Nimmo, Being in Action, 166 n. 35. 80. Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace, 275, n. 32.

200

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Role of Christology for Barthian Vocation Understanding the role of Christology for Barthian vocation involves understanding the central role Christology plays in the whole of Church Dogmatics. Quite simply, the whole of Dogmatics might be described as God’s movement toward humanity and humanity’s movement toward God concretized in the person of Christ, most acutely seen through the hypostatic union. Since I/1, Barth establishes how God reveals Himself through reconciliation. As stated in II/2, God’s being cannot be separated from His acts. God wills from eternity that He should fellowship with humanity. The incarnation is willed in eternity and Christ’s coming in time is the manifestation of divine love. Thus, God creates and redeems in order to fellowship with humanity. In this way, the Trinitarian God elects and is elected to fulfill this covenant fellowship in Christ. In IV/1 and IV/2 of Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation, the dual movement takes place through the “Servant going into the far country” in IV/1 and “the Homecoming of the Son of Man” in IV/2. Here, the doctrine of reconciliation follows the descent of the Son of God through humility and ascent of the Son of Man through exaltation in the person of Christ. In Christ the perfect union of divine and human fellowship exists as willed from the beginning of time. Moreover, Barth emphasizes the full humanity of Christ that achieves perfect obedience to the divine will in IV/2. What Christ achieves as perfect obedience to the divine will is tied to his reception and communion with the Father through the Spirit. As Nimmo states, Christ lives in perfect dependence on the Spirit.81 Living in dependence on the Spirit, Christ receives the gift of grace in his human nature. For Barth, the primary way in which humans participate in the divine Godhead is through the impartation of grace. Barth says, In Him divine essence imparts itself to human, and human essence receives the impartation of divine. There is a complete openness on both sides, and therefore from above to below. There is a true and full and definitive giving and receiving [through]  .  .  . Jesus Christ .  .  . this impartation—divine and human essence in this relationship of real giving and receiving, God and man in the fellowship of this history.82

Thus, Jesus is the fullness of divine and human natures participating in union together enlivened by divine impartation and human receiving. Such impartation is the meaning of “participation” for Barth. God imparts Himself while humans receive. There is no exchange of attributes (here departing from the traditional communicatio idomatum), but instead a communication of grace (communicatio gratiarum) and a communication of operations (communicatio

81. Nimmo, Being in Action. 82. CD IV/2, 74.

The Virtues of Aging

201

operationum).83 Here persons receive both the grace imparted by God and the operations accomplished by Christ as their own. What Christ achieves through his humility, gratitude, and obedience as Son of God is imputed to humanity, making us “children” of God. Achieving both justification and sanctification for persons, Christ attains the moral life and fulfills the divine command in a way that humanity fails. In this way, Christ fulfills the perfect freedom (libertas) willed and intended for humanity since creation. However, humanity chooses evil, living in contradiction against original freedom. In doing so, they transgress the divine command and ultimately union with God. However, Christ’s being and action in time redeems the contradiction of sin and imparts this gift to human persons as the “Real Man,” constituting human identity. By perfectly responding to grace in union with the Father through the Spirit, Jesus achieves the full status of human identity, completing, perfecting, and imparting such grace to the rest of humanity. The human life subsequently becomes one of “vocation” fulfilling one’s particular allotted time, whether this allotted time belongs to the call of Jesus or the aging individual enduring today. Moreover, Christ’s union with the Father through the Spirit that receives grace and enacts his vocation, including humility, obedience, service, love, faithfulness, hope, and gratitude, fulfills a new way to be human. Jesus’s union with the Father through the Spirit is most acutely seen through his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane where he remains in congruence with the divine will as well as his prayer on behalf of the disciples’ unity accounted for in John 17. Through prayer, Christ maintains union with the Father through the Spirit that empowers his reception and work in time. Thus, Christ’s being is his act. Christ enacts love and mercy on a cross. Finally, Christ is exalted to fellowship with the Father in his human nature. Barth says, “The glorification is of the Son of David. His is the justification, His the salvation from death, His the exaltation to fellowship with God.”84 Christ’s humility and service achieves salvation for humankind. This perfect achievement merits his exaltation and is subsequently extended to humanity on their behalf. In this way, Barth explains, “God becomes human that we might come to God.”85 Fearing what he believed to be the negative consequences of German romantic idealism, Barth hesitates endorsing a theology that hints at the divinization or the “idealization” of human nature.86 Instead, Barth describes the relationship of participation as one of “fellowship.” He says, “But his exaltation of the Son of man is not the divinization of human essence. It means that, unchanged as such, it is set in perfect fellowship with the divine essence.”87 Thus, in perfect fellowship with the divine will, Christ not only fulfills our human nature by receiving and responding

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

CD IV/2, 73. CD II/2, 173. CD IV/2, 106. Ibid., 82. Ibid., 72.

202

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

to grace, but also teaches us a new way to be human through participation in God. In order to further understand this participation, I now consider Barth’s own appropriation of union with Christ in IV/3. Union with Christ as Vocation Barth arrives at the most explicit description of the purpose of vocation, which he entitles “union with Christ” in IV/3. In this way, Barth fulfills his account of the moral life as one constituted by union with Christ through justification and sanctification. Given this status, Barth proposes the Christian life of response is one of “vocation” or discipleship. Vocation might be defined as the call to discipleship in light of Christ securing justification and sanctification for humanity, which finds its existence and telos in “union with Christ.” Thus, one might argue that morality is ultimately defined by participation or fellowship with the divine life. This participation exists behind Barth’s Divine command theory. Vocation is the existential status that entails active listening, receiving, and participating in this relation, whereas the divine command appears to be the specific call one hears in the particular moment. At points throughout the volume on Barth’s Doctrine of Creation, he describes the role of vocation as seen in his account of the aging stages of life. As Barth approaches the end of his divine command theory in the doctrine of creation, he describes one’s moral existence as vocation. Vocation entails the whole of one’s life before God existing in covenant relation with Christ through the presumable analogy of relations. In IV/3, vocation finds its central location. Vocation is the existence of a Christian with an identity anchored in covenant relation, fellowship, or presumable participation in God.88 In other words, vocation is the existential participation in one’s constituted reality as Christian. The purpose or telos of vocation, Barth says, resides in “union with Christ,” a concept he most explicitly introduces in §71 of IV/3.2. Barth here emphasizes how union with Christ is in many ways an extension of the incarnation celebrated at Christmas as well as the Lord’s Supper.89 Both Christ’s coming as human flesh through the incarnation and his gift as the “bread of life” reflect Christ’s willingness to unite himself with human flesh. Thus, union with Christ extends from the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures to the Christian community. Barth is conscientious to describe how neither side of the union loses its particularity and identity, but instead gains its identity through this established relationship. This union involves total self-giving on both sides of the equation. Barth says, In this self-giving Christ and the Christian become and are a single totality, a fluid and differentiated but genuine and solid unity, in which He is with His

88. CD IV/3.2, 522–26. 89. Ibid., 543.

The Virtues of Aging

203

people, the Lamb on the throne with the one who recognizes in Him his Lord and King, the Head with the members of His body, the Prophet, Teacher, and Master with His disciples, the eternal Son of God . . . His adopted brother . . . [now] called . . . child of God.90

The union personifies God and his people, the Head and his body, the Teacher with his disciples that result in the “adopted” children of God through Christ as brother. Using the language of vocation as “self-gift” Barth sounds much like his own account of the virtue of “love,” which he describes as agape or mutual selfgiving.91 In this sense, the hypostatic union personifies a union of love, here again resembling Augustine. Barth builds most of his conception on union with Christ from Pauline and Johannine New Testament passages, emphasizing such things as “abiding in Christ” (Jn 14–15) or “having the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:12).92 He also draws largely from the Reformers, particularly Luther and Calvin. While Barth appreciates Luther’s marriage analogy for union with Christ as important for imputed righteousness, he believes Calvin’s theology takes this union a step further.93 Whereas Luther perhaps emphasizes the freedom of the Christian that hesitates moving in the explicit direction of sanctification, Calvin borrows “union with Christ” from Bernard of Clairvaux to emphasize the sanctification of persons that might rule and direct their actions. In this way, Barth hopes to build on the Reformers, particularly Calvin, where union with Christ directs one’s actions—even if he frames these actions in terms of “vocation” as opposed to “sanctification.”94 Barth further describes the union as one that works both from above and below. Both Christ dwells in persons, but persons also fully participate in response to Christ. In this way, persons are not mere “automatons” but enact human freedom through response to God. By actively “abiding in Christ,” individuals come to understand their identities as constituted and associated with Christ. This is what it means to live “eccentrically.” As Nimmo says, “the ethical agent finds her true center to be outside herself . . . the ethical life of the agent is ‘hid

90. CD IV/3.2, 540. 91. CD IV/2, §68. 92. CD IV/3.2, 543. 93. Ibid., 549–54. The Finnish School now interprets the active role of participation in Luther. For contemporary retrievals of Lutheran “union with Christ,” see Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, eds. Braaten, Jenson, and Cahill, Global Justice, Christology, and Christian Ethics. For contemporary retrievals of union with Christ in Calvin, see The Calvin Handbook, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 365–71. 94. See Hunsinger, “A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Calvin and Barth,” 68–89. Also, in an interesting note, Barth claims perhaps the Western church would have remained more unified had union with Christ remained central for the Reformers as well as those from whom they departed.

204

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

with Christ in God.’”95 By existing with one’s center outside oneself, one truly participates in the God who is for humanity as well as one’s fellow humans as the Body of Christ. In this way, persons fulfill their identity as “predicates” to the “Subject” Jesus without losing their freedom as creatures. Instead, they fulfill their freedom as creatures. The “encounter” between the two parties exists in such a way that neither party loses their identity. Both maintain their “particularity” while abiding “in” the other in a way that closes the “distance between Christ and Christians.”96 Here again, the union parallels the hypostatic union in which Jesus responds, depends, and receives grace from the Father. By continually relying and depending on the Father through the power of the Spirit, Jesus enacts his vocation throughout time. Likewise, for the Christian, Christ “speaks, acts, and rules,” in a way that freely gives of Himself while the Christian freely responds with gratitude through obedience.97 This obedience results in “acts” that reflect this relationship in time. Barth says, He takes himself seriously as the man he is and recognizes himself to be in Jesus Christ instead of immediately forgetting his true self (who and what he is in Christ), like the man who looks at himself in a mirror and then goes on his way (Jas 1.23). It consists in the fact that he begins to act on this basis, i.e., on the basis of Jesus Christ and as the man He is in Him.98

Such acts reflect Christ’s identity as well as the Church’s identity. In order to explore these acts, I now consider the “manner of vocational living” through a Barthian emphasis on union with Christ. Manner of Vocational Living: Receiving and Acting After describing the ethical agent as a “being in action,” Christ fulfilling vocation, and union with Christ as the moral life, I now consider the manner or way one embodies Barthian vocation. I begin by describing the method involved in Barth’s account of participation and then consider possible ways this method functions within his own account of the theological virtues. To begin I consider the way in which Nimmo’s description of moral agency as “beings in action” mirrors the being and act of God. The history of the world is the history of the activity of Jesus Christ; persons exist in history as they exist in relation to Jesus Christ.99 Moreover, the “acutalistic” view of history that sees the dynamic involvement of Christ in history and time—through the incarnation,

95. Nimmo, Being in Action, 97. 96. CD IV/3.2, 547. 97. Ibid., 547–48. 98. Ibid., 544. 99. Nimmo, Being in Action, 94; Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 109.

The Virtues of Aging

205

reconciliation, and revelation—stands as the center and meaning of human history. Nimmo describes the mirror relation between Christ’s being and act and human beings who act in the following way: In Barth’s particularistic ontology, the being of Jesus Christ as a human is identical to His work, “the whole of His action, suffering, and achievement.” In other words, for Barth, Jesus Christ “is what He is in these actions, in this history.” Consequently, Barth posits a corresponding actualistic ontology for the ethical agent, writing that “To exist as a man means to act”: in correspondence with the being of Jesus Christ, then, the ethical agent “is active, engaged in movement.” Barth states of the creature that “Its being is its activity.”100

Thus, to exist as an ethical agent is to be one who acts in direct correspondence to the God who acts, whether this agency is active or passive through life and the aging experience. Nimmo continues by describing the “profound actualism” as “perpetual newness” behind Barth’s understanding of agency. Nimmo says, “While the ethical agent is purely receptive in terms of the movement from God to herself in the gracious act of election, in responding she is ‘purely spontaneous in the movement to God.’”101 In this sense, one’s being is constituted by receiving the gospel. Responding to one’s existence in Christ results in activity. In other words, “action” or “law” follows “gospel.” Gospel informs law as being informs action.102 Nimmo builds on this notion of “actualistic response” as the “way” of ethical action. Christ’s person constitutes moral agents; moral action entails receiving and responding to Christ.103 Not only might this method be called “receiving and action,” but also “gospel and law,” “grace and obedience.”104 As constituted by “justification and sanctification” in Jesus Christ, one responds through vocation as discipleship. This movement of receiving and action can be seen through Barth’s own approach to the theological virtues in volumes IV/1–3 in his doctrine of reconciliation. To begin, Barth describes faith, love, and hope in his final three volumes on the doctrine of reconciliation. Each of the three theological virtues is set in a context of lived Christian community. Faith relates to the object Jesus Christ who constitutes the believer, much like his description of union with Him.105 Faith constitutes both the individual and the community along with their acts as oriented to Christ. The

100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

Nimmo, Being in Action, 95. Ibid., 96. Ibid. Ibid., 137. Ibid., 145. CD IV/2, 740–57.

206

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

acts of faith involve receiving an encounter with Christ that responds in obedience and confession within a faith community.106 Next, Barth describes the theological virtue of love as related to faith in that its center is found in Jesus Christ. He describes faith and love as two inseparable concepts. Ultimately, love is self-giving.107 The basis of love is found in God’s prior love, for which individuals respond with gratitude. God’s Being is His act in that “God is” means that “God loves.”108 Like Augustine, love is action for Barth as well. Thus, love is both received and enacted. The characteristics of love include spontaneity, freedom, and self-giving impartation. Joy is often a by-product.109 Moreover, love for God implies love for neighbor. Love for the neighbor springs out of love for God. In an interesting section, Barth argues that love is not a “generalizable” or generic love, but one directed at actual persons in time, thereby personifying “proximity.”110 He also describes the Spirit’s empowerment of the community with love. Love determines the state of the community and works for the common good of all through its gifts.111 Barth concludes his section on love by saying that love alone counts, conquers, and endures.112 Love that endures finds its fulfillment by participating in God. Thus, like Augustine, Barth places love as the highest of the virtues. Third, Barth describes Christian hope as derived from Christ. Hope exists because Christ has begun, but not finished revelation by proclaiming the gospel through salvation history. Hope is the posture of endurance as one looks forward to the coming “parousia.”113 Hope stands directly in the time known as “in-between” or the “already, not yet” reality that awaits the final consummation in Christ’s return. However, hope is not solely eschatological in its desire for otherworldly perfection, but also pertains to the penultimate reality in the here and now.114 Living in hope is not an escape from reality, but living in the fullest reality. Barth says, “It is in the life in hope awakened by the power of the Holy Spirit that he really comes to himself and may be himself. The man born of God or the Spirit, called to service and living in hope, is the man who is no longer self-alienated, and therefore he is real man.”115 In this way, persons living in hope remain in continued communion with God and neighbor. Remaining in union with Christ through the

106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

Ibid., 740–79. Ibid., 727–51. Ibid., 755. Ibid., 784–89. Ibid., 802–03. Ibid., 806–24. Ibid., 824–40. Ibid., 911. Ibid., 928–42. Ibid., 942.

The Virtues of Aging

207

Spirit and prayer empowers individuals to “serve” the Lord through acts toward one’s neighbor and community in time.116 By receiving and acting in ways that pertain to the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, persons respond to Christ as their being in action. Christ constitutes their identity through union or participation in him. The actions are an outflow of this participation. Again, Nimmo describes at least three primary actions involved in the moral life as vocation. This vocation entails “faith” (including love), “obedience,” and “prayer.” Faith enacts gratitude and repentance that personifies humility.117 Also, faith, gratitude, and repentance are necessarily tied to loving obedience through works.118 For Barth, faith cannot exist without love, but is fulfilled in love. This obedience is demonstrated through the ethical encounter between God and human persons in the issuing and response to the divine command. Finally, the existence of faith and obedience through love necessarily corresponds to prayer. For Barth, existence is constituted by union with Christ. The reality and telos of this moral theory are aimed at participation in God. Such participation finds its manifestation through prayer. Prayer is the existence of persons before God in open communion with the Father and Son through the Spirit. By remaining in prayer, persons inculcate what it means to live in union with Christ through life experiences, including health and old age. Prayer also necessarily involves Christian hope. Nimmo says, Barth posits a strong connection between the event of prayer and the activity of Christian hope. . . . Hope . . . consists in the fact that members of the community “pray together that He will answer and be responsible for them”. . . . In this hope, Christians must offer prayers “with the unconditional expectation that their calling . . . is not just heard but is also answered.”119

Thus, prayer is set in terms of the individual and community in relation to Christ. Prayer is the receptive component of union with Christ while love, obedience, and service to the neighbor enact this union toward persons who are aging and their surrounding communities. Thus, I now turn to specific virtues for aging persons resulting from Augustinian virtue and Barthian vocation that builds on union with Christ.

Practical Virtues Having considered the possibilities for Augustinian virtue and Barthian vocation, I now turn to specific ways to construct an Augustinian- and Barthian-informed

116. 117. 118. 119.

CD IV/3, 941. Nimmo, Being in Action, 139. Ibid., 141. Ibid., 149–50.

208

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

virtue theory focused on union with Christ in relation to practical realities facing the aging experience. Setting these virtues in the context of Augustinian and Barthian participation, I construct the richness of their vertical and horizontal dimensions for practical living among the aged.120 For both Augustine and Barth, love of God or union with Christ is preeminent in pursuing the life of virtue. For Augustine, true virtue is associated with true religion while for Barth, true morality is morality that coheres with the divine command in the revealed Word of God.121 Nonetheless, both authors leave room for “natural virtue” or “human moral existence” regardless of direct religious knowledge at points. This is best seen in Augustine’s account of the philosophical virtues of temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice, and Barth’s consideration of “little lights” or “I-Thou relations” involving persons who enact a humane morality.122 In fact, at points, Barth claims that non-believers enact more humane morality through I-Thou relations (as seen in the example of Ludwig Feuerbach) than Christians at various points.123 Thus, I do not completely relegate virtue to “theological virtue” in opposition to natural virtue. But instead, recognize a gradation of virtues based on human loves that find their supremacy in love of God or a theological center. Or perhaps to use more Barthian categories, morality might be “annexed” insofar as the morality coheres with possibilities for participation in Christ (or coherence with the Word of God). Thus, even with room for some general or natural morality in light of creation, the climax of morality for both authors resides in Christology. In Christ, the moral human life is accomplished and exemplified in union with the Father. In this sense, the heart of morality for both authors relies on participation in Christ that receives and thus responds or imitates through action. Here I build on Jesse Couvenhaven’s description of Augustine’s ethics as “not something we can achieve, but a correlate of the love we are to receive.”124

120. Since the mid-twentieth century, moral theology has seen a return to virtue in theological ethics by the influence of Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas along with Thomistic retrievals of virtue by James F. Keenan, Stephen J. Pope, and Jean Porter to name a few. See Jean Porter, “Virtue,” in The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, eds. Gilbert Meilaender and William Werpehowski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 205–19. 121. See here McKenny, Analogy of Grace sections on the relation between philosophy and theology. 122. Augustine, On Morals of the Catholic Church; CD III/2 §45. 123. CD III/2 §45. 124. Jesse Couenhoven, “Saint Augustine,” The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Hugh LaFolette (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013). In this way, the ethics posed here also correlates with the ethics of Jonathan Edwards as receptive to the Spirit and grounded in Christ’s incarnate embodiment of the virtues. See Elizabeth Agnew Cochran, Receptive Human Virtues: A New Reading of Jonathan Edward’s Ethics (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 2011.

The Virtues of Aging

209

Maintaining participation in Christ recognizes and imitates the heart of divine giving and human receiving achieved in the person of Christ. Maintaining union with the Father through prayer and reception, Jesus enacts the perfect moral life toward God and neighbor with humility, gratitude, sacrifice, and justice—not to mention faith, hope, and love. Christ brings together wisdom and knowledge in the form of virtuous activity for Augustine and reception and giving in the form of vocation for Barth. Because of this dual emphasis on the vertical and horizontal dimensions in which persons maintain union with Christ through reception (or contemplation) and enact virtue in time through outward actions (or giving), I now describe those virtues pertinent to aging in terms of these two movements. First, I consider specific virtues for those who experience aging in light of Augustinian and Barthian contributions to the moral life. For the aging, these include humility, gratitude, generosity, wisdom, prudence, fortitude, and hope. Second, I consider virtues for community members surrounding aging individuals. These virtues include respect, friendship, justice, mercy, and love. Given the virtue theory posed here, each virtue entails both a receptive and contemplative dynamic along with an active or practical dynamic toward self and neighbor. The virtues move between a dialectic of contemplation and receiving in terms of the direct vertical relation on the one hand, and action and giving in terms of the horizontal relations within the given community on the other. Thus, I begin with those virtues specific to the aging experience. Virtues for the Aging At least seven virtues remain prevalent throughout Augustine’s and Barth’s theologies: humility, gratitude, generosity, wisdom, prudence, fortitude, and hope in its possibilities for the aging experience. (1) Quite arguably, humility is the central virtue for Augustine alongside love in his many works. To understand oneself as creature is to begin with the basic premise of humility before the Creator. Otherwise, one is tempted to make oneself or this life as an end to itself. Humility is the very avenue by which persons are called to order their loves. Without humility, pride ensues along with a disordering of loves toward temporary goods.125 By maintaining humility as the heart of virtue, persons understand God to be the summum bonum or ultimate end of happiness. By placing one’s ultimate desire and happiness in God, individuals humbly order their loves in accord with this final end. Likewise, Barth’s theology takes account of humility more implicitly in its adherence to the Divine Command. In order to hear the command offered from a loving God, a posture of humility must be present. Without humility, one is tempted to act in terms of Promethean autonomy, or a false sense of security in

125. As Jean Porter says, Augustine often defines virtue in contradiction to vice. Humility is a virtue in distinction to pride as vice in “Virtue,” The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, 209.

210

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

which the individual determines right and wrong as opposed to receiving morality from a divine source. Humility personifies what it means to be a creature in covenant relation with God who responds to God’s call by grace. Thus, in turning to the person experiencing old age, humility will remain paramount for situating the person as creature before God and the individual within a set of communal relations. In some ways, Barth personifies the virtue of humility in his account of intergenerational relations in III/4 in their interdependence and need for one another. Nonetheless, the virtue of humility could be expanded with meaning for aging persons in his theology. In humility, persons learn their true identity as relational creatures apart from false pride or individuality that personifies one as the sum total of his existence. However, advocating humility against Promethean autonomy should not entail self-denigrating or oppressive views of one’s existence. In this sense, humility should not befall women more than men. Valerie Saiving Goldstein critiques Reinhold Niebuhr’s view of pride as the masculine form of sin. Instead, she argues that selflessness without purpose or trifling existence might be the ultimate feminine sin.126 Humility should not mean self-denigration, but a properly viewed self in light of God’s love. Thus, humility is the posture of every creature—male and female—before God that remains other-centered while including proper self-love. Leon Kass capitalizes on natural reason to argue for what seems to be the virtue of humility in his account “the virtues of mortality” against transhumanist arguments that seek ongoing biological existence.127 There is beauty in pursuing virtue as part of this fragile, mortal life. Humility recognizes the good to be found in the limitation of finitude much like the claims of Barth. The good of the species recognizes limits and perpetuates itself through reproduction. Aging persons are perhaps more acutely aware of mortality, which serves the overall human community of this reminder. Life is a relatively brief gift that should be valued as such. Turning in a more theological direction, Charles Pinches also notes that limited reality becomes one’s calling.128 For Christians, living within set limitations acknowledges our creaturely status before God. Lisa Fullam gives more substance to the meaning of humility from a Thomistic perspective, saying, “The core of humility is self-knowledge acquired by turning one’s attention outside oneself. We learn who we are and we learn ‘our place’ by other-centeredness, a kind of cultivated moral attentiveness.”129

126. See Valerie Saiving Goldstein, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” The Journal of Religion 40 no. 2 (April 1960): 100–12. 127. Leon Kass, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000), 265–68. 128. Charles Pinches, “The Virtues of Aging,” in Growing Old in Christ, eds. Stanley Hauerwas, Carole Bailey Stoneking, Keith G. Meador, and David Cloutier (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 212. 129. Lisa Fullam, The Virtue of Humility: A Thomistic Apologetic (Lewiston, NY: EdwinMellen Press, 2009), 1.

The Virtues of Aging

211

Psychologist June Price Tangney agrees with this basic definition, describing humility as the opposite of low self-assessment that instead offers an accurate self-assessment. By recognizing the self in relationship and community, humble individuals are able to healthily value the contribution of others while appropriately recognizing the mistakes, imperfections, and limitations of the self.130 In this sense, the wisdom of theology and psychology coheres regarding the virtue of humility. And while the virtue of humility holds significance for all persons, it holds perhaps particular meaning for persons enduring the aging experience. As Edward Vacek claims aging persons ought to avoid the dual vices of “humiliation” or “denial” that might accompany aging.131 Instead, the humble person reasonably accepts and acknowledges personal limitations pertaining to health, physical, and sometimes even mental capacities in their change over time. William F. May emphasizes the specific role of humility for the elderly. Recognizing the change that moves from giving to receiving the world around them, May says, It can be considerably more uncomfortable to receive than to give. The virtue of humility, necessary to receivers in human life, does not come easily, especially to Americans, who take pride in their independence and their giving. Yet the progressive loss of friends, job, bodily prowess, and energy, the passing look on the face of the young that tells us we are old, these experiences assault one’s dignity; they humiliate. All the care in the world will not overcome the sting of humiliation; only humility can.132 (italics mine)

Recognizing the challenges of change and societal perspectives that denigrate the aging experience, May says aging individuals should turn to what it means to be “human,” “humus,” or of the “earth.”133 At its linguistic root, “human” implies “from the earth,” correlating with humility. Turning away from an independent selffocus prevalent within the American spirit and turning to the “other,”—whether receiving care from the neighbor or one’s relationship with God—humility plays an integral role for the aging experience. Humility reminds the individual that she is created for relationship with God and neighbor. By fostering a posture of humility in relation to God and fellow neighbor, persons inculcate a vertical dimension to virtue that recognizes limitations in the temporal sphere. While the virtue of humility is one that can be “naturally” cultivated according to human reason, the fullest meaning is cultivated with a transcendent dimension by contemplation and reception while

130. June Price Tangney, “Humility,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology, eds. C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 413. 131. Edward Collins Vacek, “Vices and Virtues of Old-Age Retirement,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 30 no. 1 (2010): 171–72. 132. William F. May, The Patient’s Ordeal (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 133. 133. Ibid.

212

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

displaying practical actions in the horizontal or temporal sphere. By humility, one knows when best to act and when best to “lay down.” This might be seen through humility that knows limits when facing decisions around retirement, health care, or relinquishing certain youthful privileges such as driving or determining one’s life plans. (2) A second virtue that might complement and counterbalance humility is found in the virtue of gratitude. Much like humility, gratitude is central to Augustine, though particularly acute for a Barthian morality. For Augustine, the creature is grateful in relation to Christ as the Mediator and great exchange. Christ’s humility displayed through the incarnation and cross holds great import for a posture of gratitude. By remaining grateful, persons are open to receiving the fullness of God’s grace and love displayed through Christ’s humility and those benefits received by remaining in union with Him. Likewise, Barth’s theology emphasizes gratitude. For Barth, his entire understanding of morality as divine command is contingent upon gratitude. In gratefulness, individuals respond to God through obedience. Gratitude and love is the reminder that one stands in covenant relation with God through Christ. By receiving and remaining in union with Christ, persons gratefully respond to this grace through obedience and service to others. Gratitude draws one out of the self and into life with others, both God and neighbor. In many ways, gratitude finds correlation with humility. Yet, while humility may emphasize limits for the elderly, gratitude emphasizes positive possibilities for giving to others. Moral theologians Gilbert Meilaender and James F. Keenan address the virtue of gratitude in detail. For Meilaender, gratitude is both an obligation and an expression of freedom.134 Meilaender acknowledges that “obligatory gratitude” is better than “ingratitude,” though the motivation of freedom and love is the goal. Here Meilaender recognizes the changes involved in emotions, as persons are both animal and spiritual creatures. Given life’s many changes, aging persons may not always feel grateful. However, Meilaender claims gratitude as an obligation helps see individuals through the reality of wavering emotions that come with passing moods and feelings.135 Likewise, James F. Keenan acknowledges the challenges relevant to gratitude. Here Keenan recognizes those “miserable” emotions that often accompany physical frailty such as exhaustion. When the body is weak, it is easy to spiral into what Keenan calls the “dark side,” often resulting in “self-pity, anger, righteousness . . . aggressive or passive” behavior.136 Dwelling on the dark side results in misery. Instead, Keenan urges individuals to seek satisfaction. He says, “Gratitude can enter into the dry spirits of an unhappy person who suspends for a moment his

134. Gilbert Meilaender, The Theory and Practice of Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 152–63. 135. Ibid., 158. 136. James F. Keenan, Virtues for Ordinary Christians (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1996), 119–20.

The Virtues of Aging

213

misery and looks at his lot with a desire not for what is missing, but a sense of quiet satisfaction with where one is.”137 In this sense, gratitude looks to the positive aspects remaining without dwelling on the negative dimensions. As Keenan says, “happiness is dependent upon gratitude and gratitude upon satisfaction.” Gratitude is only more recently being researched in the area of psychology and social science. Recognizing that gratitude is a virtue prevalent within all world religions, psychologists note the possible emotional and social benefits that accompany its practice. As an emotional response, gratitude is seen as a sense of receiving, wander, and appreciation for life from something outside the self, whether in relationships, nature, or a transcendent being such as God.138 Psychologists such as Robert Emmons and Charles Shelton describe gratitude as (1) set within an interpersonal context and (2) a perceived reception of benevolence or well-meaning from the partner or other.139 In other words, gratitude is often associated with pro-social behavior with its enemy or vice culminating in narcissism.140 Instead, gratitude often recognizes the interdependence of creatures and relationships. Gratitude is also often accompanied by a sense of gift beyond payment as in the receipt of a sacrificial gift (as seen in a religious context given by God). In more recent studies on the “Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness,” Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough describe the benefits of gratitude for emotional and general happiness or well-being. Individuals who self-describe as grateful are more social and able to place less value on material goods.141 Emmons and Shelton acknowledged the possibility for gratitude even within adverse circumstances as persons who look for “redemptive sequences” or possibilities to be grateful in the midst of bad circumstances. These persons did not express naïve optimism, but a sense of realistic gratitude in the midst of adversity.142 In this sense, gratitude remains an integral virtue for aging persons. Not only does the heart of gratitude imply a deep sense of relationship as accounted for in an Augustinian and Barthian sense of participation in its receptiveness to grace, but also in relation to others. By existing as social creatures in a dynamic of relations, aging persons still hold an important role within the community—as both givers and recipients. In fact, gratitude helps to animate other virtues, such as generosity to which I now turn. (3) As grateful receivers, aging persons might enact monetary giving, service, teaching, and general generosity to younger generations. The heart of Augustinian

137. Ibid., 122. 138. Robert A. Emmons and Charles M. Shelton, “Gratitude and the Science of Positive Psychology,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology, eds. C.R. Snyder and J. Shane Lopez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 459–60. 139. Ibid., 461. 140. Ibid., 463. 141. Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, “Highlights from the Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness,” http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/ 142. Emmons and Shelton, “Gratitude and the Science of Positive Psychology,” 467–68.

214

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

and Barthian gratitude that resides in union with Christ should translate into generous action toward one’s neighbor and surrounding community. As the Gospel of Luke says, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.”143 Awareness of the good and generous gift of Christ’s salvation, lovingkindness, humility, wisdom, talents, and resources should provoke aging persons to share with others from their assets, whether such resources include money, time, or gifts such as wisdom. Given their age and life experiences, aging persons are uniquely positioned to share from their experiences and sometimes wealth (though this is not always the case). Aristotle cites the virtue of liberality in regards to money as desirable.144 When one has more than enough resources accumulated over time, appropriate giving should aim at the mean between extremes befitting the person’s circumstance. Aristotle encourages persons to seek the mean in giving as opposed to hoarding wealth in a spirit of stinginess that errs on illiberality or even prodigality. Here Aristotle specifically acknowledges the deficiency in giving and excess in receiving as a severe vice. Aristotle believes illiberality is worse than prodigality given its commonness, specifically among those of “old age.”145 In juxtaposition to illiberality, liberality provides the proper view of money as something to be used rather than loved for its own sake. This perspective aligns well with Augustine’s order of love. For Augustine, all things are to be used in relation to love of God. Money and wealth in particular are objects of use. Aging persons who have benefited in material gain should be generous out of a spirit of gratitude for the many gifts they have received from God and others throughout their lifetime. Likewise, the virtue of generosity transcends material concerns alone and also entails immaterial gifts such as time and wisdom. Many aged individuals are not in a position of material excess, but they too can participate in generosity through the gift of time and experience. By sharing wisdom accrued through life experiences, aging persons live with an other-focus that engages their particular gifts for the sake of the neighbor and community. Through generosity, the giving of one’s talents and time, aging persons personify the magnanimous virtue in their ability to share with others from their abundance. Thus, generosity is social by definition and lived within a community of relations. Many young persons would benefit from the voluntary use of aging persons’ time and talents whether directed toward educational pursuits or general life experiences. In this way, generosity is uniquely tied to the virtue of wisdom in its value not just for the aging, but also for individuals in community with the aging. (4) After surveying the important role of humility, gratitude, and generosity for aging persons, I now turn to the virtue of wisdom. Wisdom is tied to understanding

143. Lk. 12:48 NRSV. 144. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, translated by J. A. K. Thomson (London: Penguin Books, 1955), 82. 145. Ibid., 87–89.

The Virtues of Aging

215

or knowledge of God for Augustine. Wisdom or sapientia comes from union with Christ that informs and orders life in time. Wisdom is intended to relate to knowledge or scientia.146 Moreover, Augustine cites the development of wisdom over time. By describing persons in terms of seven stages, Augustine recognizes the wisdom that accrues through life experience and the proximate nearness to eternal Sabbath rest at the end of life. Thus, aged persons hold an important role for mentoring and teaching about the meaning of life to the young. Likewise, in Barth’s theology, wisdom plays an implicit role in the development of aging individuals given their proximity to death. Aging persons are those who do not live solely in the past or future, but embrace today with readiness and willingness to participate in the covenant relation with God. Wisdom does not allow persons to make light use of their time, but to seize the present moment as an opportunity to love God and fellow neighbor, thereby embodying both contemplation and action. Psychologists have taken a particular interest in the virtue of wisdom for the experience of aging. More recent work has looked for the positive aspects of aging, particularly found in wisdom. Wisdom itself is understood to be “discourse about the good life . . . knowledge about the essence of the human condition and the ways and means of planning, managing, and understanding a good life.”147 Wisdom involves “the fundamental pragmatics of life” that recognize “social and situational influences and duties” as well as “knowledge and skills about the finitude of life and the inherent limits of human knowledge.”148 In addition, wisdom contributes to the social and common good with consideration for the well-being of others. In this way, aging persons contribute to the common good by sharing their accrued wisdom with the young.149 Wisdom that concerns these “fundamental pragmatics of life” corresponds well with the definition of wisdom as prudence. (5) Perhaps interpreting Augustine’s categories of sapientia and scientia as well as Aristotle’s distinction between wisdom and prudence, Thomas Aquinas delineates between speculative and practical reason. Whereas sapientia or wisdom serves as the eschatological link between God and time, prudence serves temporal wisdom and action for the here and now. My aim is to draw wisdom and prudence, speculative and practical knowledge in the form of contemplation and action more closely together throughout this work. However, for the purposes of this chapter, I here delineate the specific qualities belonging to a “participationinformed” prudence. For Augustine, virtue—including prudence—directs persons in the order of love. Prudence is virtuous insofar as it empowers activities aimed at love of God,

146. Augustine, The Trinity, 337–38. 147. Paul B. Baltes, Judith Gluck, and Ute Kunzmann, “Wisdom,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology, eds. C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 329, 331. 148. Ibid., 331. 149. Ibid., 341.

216

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

neighbor, and self in an ordered way. Likewise, Barth’s understanding of the Divine command is reception of the Word of God that translates into action in time. For Barth, prudence is not about deliberation but about prayer that responds through the appropriate action in the present call to follow Christ. For Aristotle, prudence concerns deliberating well a particular situation or set of circumstances in which the wise person enacts knowledge of both universals and particulars.150 Prudence involves aiming at the goal of happiness while keeping the means toward this end in mind. James Keenan acknowledges this same theme originating in Aristotle as pertinent to Aquinas. He says, “Prudence always sets the means for attaining the end. Aquinas wanted us to know that prudence is always seeking to make future possibilities become concrete. It is the virtue that leads us forward.”151 Keenan further describes prudence as the ability to “plan,” “pay attention to detail,” and “imagine future alternatives.”152 In other words, prudence is the enactment of wisdom in time. Prudence brings together the nexus of eschatological and temporal realities in its ability to see the end while acting in the moment. Keenan continues by claiming prudence involves at least three qualities: (1) knowing “who we are as individuals,” (2) knowing “where our limits and strengths lie,” and (3) the ability to see “the virtues where we need to grow.”153 Identifying these three qualities is uniquely tied to loving God, which corresponds to appropriate self-love in light of this end. Interestingly, the correlation between prudence with humility and gratitude becomes pertinent in the aging person’s ability to recognize limits and possibilities. Knowing one’s limits and possibilities requires healthy selfknowledge in relation to God and others. Prudence also involves what William F. May describes as “openness” to the past, present, and future.154 Such openness calls one to be honest with the past, alert and attentive to the present, while maintaining readiness for the future with hope.155 Given this reality, wisdom is uniquely tied to the role of memory for the aged and its service to the greater community. Here, memory might serve as a subset of wisdom for the aging in their contribution to the common good. For Augustine, wisdom and prudence is also seemingly tied to memory in its capacity to reflect on the past, project into the future, and act in the present. Memory is closely linked to identity. Memory is the only capacity to conceive of time as a whole.156 In this sense, memory exceeds physical capacities that limit bodies to the present moment and allows persons to imagine past and future realities. Given this capacity, aging persons can reflect on the whole. Perceiving

150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 150–51; 157–59. Keenan, Virtues for Ordinary Christians, 78. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 81. May, The Patient’s Ordeal, 138. Ibid. Augustine, Confessions, 179–80.

The Virtues of Aging

217

the whole involves relating to God who holds the “scattered” traces of ourselves in unity.157 Knowledge of God leads to knowledge of self. Communing with God in contemplation assists memory as seen in his own prayerful reflections in the Confessions that transforms his identity and leads to loving action. Barth, on the other hand, does not write explicitly about memory but does incorporate the “wisdom” of aging persons given their identification with the past. Aging persons do not solely dwell or live in the past, but one of their intergenerational responsibilities includes their ability to share past experiences with the young and middle aged. Memory here serves a communal role for the purposes of the common good. In Barth’s own day, he lived through the atrocities of Nazi Germany and verbally resisted their agenda through the “Barmen Declaration” drafted by the Confessing Church. Barth’s own discussion of euthanasia within Church Dogmatics acknowledges the atrocities suffered under Nazi Germany and argues that society has no right to “declare that certain sick people are unfit to live and therefore to resolve and execute their annihilation.”158 For Barth, there is no exception to involuntary euthanasia given his historical experience under the Third Reich. In this way, his use of historical memory serves the common good. Given this example, aging persons who endure historical realities have much to offer their broader communities through the role of historical memory. Memory ties persons to the past, present, and supplies imaginative possibilities for the future. James Keenan describes the role that memory plays for the virtue of gratitude. He says, “Memory is the most affective dimension of all our thought processes. No other thinking activity is as filled with images, persons, relationships, or feelings. . . . Grateful memories nurture the happy spirit and uplift the heart.”159 Likewise, dwelling on negative memories can lead to miserable responses. In this way, Keenan acknowledges the power of memory for individual virtue. However, this power also extends to the broader community in the possibilities for enacting gratitude or general misery within communal relationships. Thus, the role of memory is closely tied to wisdom that aging persons might share with their broader communities. By sharing wisdom through the role of individual and communal memory, aging persons might reflect endurance through both the hills and valleys posed in life’s challenges. Awareness of life’s more difficult circumstances brings forward the pertinence of fortitude and hope for the aging. (6) The virtue of fortitude proves to be of utmost importance for the aging. For Augustine, the natural virtues such as fortitude are forms of love. In On the Morals of the Catholic Church, Augustine describes both temperance and fortitude as coming from love of God. Temperance helps persons not to love objects too

157. Augustine, City of God, 403. 158. CD III/4, 423. 159. Keenan, Virtues for Ordinary Christians, 121.

218

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

much while fortitude helps persons to “bear the loss” of temporal goods.160 Here, Augustine describes how persons should be willing to bear all things for the sake of loving God. Rather than view fortitude solely in terms of courage or bravery, Augustine here describes fortitude in terms of endurance through time. This endurance knows when not to fear bodily loss (as in the case of the martyrs) when loving God.161 Thomas Aquinas builds on Augustine’s prior description of fortitude in his account of the cardinal virtues along with influence from Aristotle. For Thomas, fortitude prevents reason from withdrawing action from perceived danger or the irascible passions.162 Instead, fortitude is the act of facing fear or loss of some temporal (bodily) good with courage. For many reasons, fortitude is an important virtue for those enduring the aging experience. Aging involves much change— to body in terms of physical and mental capacities—as well as change in one’s surrounding community. Change can be challenging, whether the change occurs in one’s identity from young to old or whether one encounters the loss of loved ones—either by death or geographical move. Thus, the virtue of fortitude will prove to be of particular importance for attaching oneself to something unchanging in the midst of life’s adjustments. For Augustine, union with Christ is the ultimate vision of love. By receiving and attaching oneself to Christ in love, one orders or endures these changes with more flexibility. And while Barth does not write directly about fortitude, perhaps he suggests some implicit form of fortitude in his account of the aging experience as another opportunity to give to the community. Barth even states aging may perhaps hold the greatest possibility or opportunity for utilizing one’s talents. Such prudence or discernment in the use of gifts requires courage to continue contributing in a way that is fitting to one’s surrounding community. William F. May writes explicitly about the virtue of courage for the aging experience. In fact, he lists courage as the primary virtue of importance for this phase of life. May draws insight from Thomas Aquinas in his account of courage for aging persons, saying, Courage ranks first on the list of virtues. Westerners too often restrict this virtue to the battlefield. But the soldier’s prospect of death is uncertain; his separation from his loved ones but temporary. Not so for the aged who face the certainty of imminent death and whose losses are anything but temporary. That firmness may show itself far from the battlefield. An eighty-year-old unmarried woman faces resolutely her declining years; a widower suddenly takes his first steps alone after fifty years of marriage; an aged mother finds her children too busy to have her around.163

160. 161. 162. 163.

Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church, 339. Ibid., 339–40. Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II Q. 61, 847. May, The Patient’s Ordeal, 132.

The Virtues of Aging

219

Here, May offers an account in which the aged experience great and actual loss as opposed to the solider who faces only the “prospect” of loss. Citing particular examples of loss including the loss of a spouse or children who are too busy, May describes the importance of fortitude for enduring through these more challenging circumstances. According to its definition, courage is not the absence of fear, but facing one’s fears for the sake of a greater good. This sense of fortitude enables seniors to “simplify” and even “detach” from unnecessary worldly goods as they move toward the end of their journey in time.164 In addition, this endurance includes both active attacks (perhaps acute pain) and more passive endurance as seen through a courageous posture of waiting. By waiting in love, individuals exhibit patience in the midst of illness and chronic disease. This patience still maintains dignity as seen through Barth’s own account of Christ who patiently endured or received the world while walking to the cross. While aging individuals do not actively seek suffering, in a rich theological sense, Christ brings dignity to the “passive” dimensions of life. While waiting, aging persons may receive the presence and love of God in the midst of their suffering. Maintaining union with Christ through prayer and receiving love from ongoing relationships, aging individuals may garner a sense of meaning for this particular phase of life. By receiving grace and enacting love, aging persons help to bring meaning and endure through life’s more arduous circumstances—endurance that looks and leads to hope. (7) Seventh and finally, I turn to hope. Perhaps the virtue of fortitude naturally coheres or complements the virtue of hope. Hope is the realistic virtue for the pilgrim in time. For Augustine, hope looks forward to one’s object that remains beyond reach. Hope is driven by love with the anticipation of being fully united to Christ in the beatific vision. In this sense, hope builds on faith in what is unseen and moves with endurance toward the goal set before the particular individual. Likewise, hope is set in a communal context for Barth as persons anticipate full union with God in the Eschaton while enduring through time with hope. In this sense, hope is set precisely in the already/not yet reality that recognizes the kingdom has been inaugurated while awaiting its final consummation. Such hope necessarily involves fortitude as endurance and courage amid life’s change. Hope anticipates the ultimate Sabbath rest in an Augustinian sense where one will experience eternal union with Christ in perfection and desire will no longer be splintered concerning subordinate temporal goods in a disordered way. Instead, the fullness of desire will be achieved in perfect love and union with God. Also, the body will no longer experience suffering, but find perfect union between the soul and body’s existence. Likewise, hope anticipates this final union for Barth as well. However, hope also incorporates penultimate or temporal goods during the already/not yet

164. Vacek, “Vices and Virtues of Old Age Retirement,” 173–74; May, The Patient’s Ordeal, 134.

220

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

existence of Christians. Hope is realistic in that it does not reflect artificial hope, but recognizes the struggle of hope in a difficult world fraught with conflict. In this sense, hope is specifically rooted in the cross and looks toward resurrection. As James F. Keenan says, “Christian hope is deeply realistic because it is rooted in the cross. As such, Christian hope never lets us dream of imaginary worlds: Christian hope rejects utopianism and any other pipe dream. Christian hope is, rather, the virtue for a very real journey.”165 Hope can take on interesting dynamics in relation to the aging experience. Hope ultimately looks forward to perfect union with Christ when pain will be no more. But hope also estimates manageable goals for self and neighbor in time. While psychologists have described the role of hope in terms of positive, attainable goals, for the purposes of aging, emphasizing its “social” dimension proves salient. One study says, “Researchers . . . have found that higher levels of hope are related to more perceived social support, more social competence and less loneliness. Furthermore, high-hope individuals have an enhanced ability to take the perspectives of others. They appear to truly enjoy their interactions with others and are interested in their goals and the goals of others around them.”166 This fits well with Christopher Vogt’s study on the art of dying well in which hope unites both the caregiver and the one experiencing care. Quite simply, hope is a social virtue.167 Thus, hope maintains a particular social dimension that assists elderly persons in attaining manageable goals in a context of communal relations. In addition, they may find hope in engaging intergenerational relationships that surround them. Because of this, I now turn to those virtues for community members surrounding the aged. Virtues for the Community Surrounding the Aging Understanding virtues that relate to the aging experience involves not only considering those characteristics integral to persons who are aging. It also entails a consideration of those persons in community and care for aging persons. Thus, I now consider those virtues pertaining to the aged’s community. They include (but are not limited to) respect, friendship, justice, mercy, and love. (1) Defining the virtue of respect proves to be an interesting concept in contemporary context. Within bioethical literature, the term “respect” is often associated with the principle of respecting one’s autonomy. While some moral theologians hold “principles” in tension with virtue theory, perhaps a more nuanced perspective recognizes the interdependency of virtue with principles.

165. James F. Keenan, Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Texts from the Catholic Tradition, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward, 2004), 162. 166. C. R. Snyder, Kevin L. Rand, and David R. Sigmon, “Hope Theory,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology, eds. C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 266. 167. Vogt, Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well.

The Virtues of Aging

221

Tom Beauchamp and James F. Childress identify virtue in terms of the “act or habit of acting in accordance with moral principles, obligations, or ideals.”168 Because of their view on the interdependence of principles and virtue, they liken the principle “respect for autonomy” with the virtue, “respectfulness.”169 Generally, the principle of autonomy is associated with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative to “treat everyone as an end and not as a means only” that came to be associated with “deontological ethics.”170 This deontological principle generated into the short-term phrase “respect for persons” within bioethics.171 Deontology as an ethical theory is often viewed in juxtaposition with virtue theory given its focus on rules and obligations. However, for the purposes of this chapter, I do not separate the role of deontological and virtue ethics, but integrate the two together. A virtuous person, will by definition, “respect” or acknowledge the agency of the person before her so long as it does not conflict with her own convictions. In a theological context beginning with Augustine, “respect” might be associated with the love command toward the neighbor. By loving the neighbor, one respects the agency and wishes of the person for which one stands in relation. Respecting aging persons first involves recognizing the dignity granted to these persons as spiritual individuals in relation to God. Even when the body is failing, these persons maintain dignity as ensouled bodies that are to be cared for with dignity. Likewise, Barth does not explicitly use the term “respect” but generates an implicit “respect-oriented” posture in his sensitivity to personal freedom. Barth writes about freedom that most fulfills humanity when acting in covenant relationship with God. Respect entails acknowledging that older persons still have something to contribute to the community through their individual agency. Respect also entails sensitivity to their individuality when considering particular desires for care and pain management near death. In this sense, respect might incorporate wisdom from Margaret Farley’s Compassionate Respect that aims to integrate both beneficence and care along with respect for autonomy.172 From a feminist perspective, compassionate respect entails listening to an individual’s life narrative in order to address personal goals. By entering the narrative of the person, communities might best care for aging individuals with both compassion and respect. In her paper on “Compassionate Care” for the aging near death, Farley emphasizes respecting the person’s life as a whole to help forge meaning. Creating

168. Tom Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 27. 169. Ibid., 39. 170. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd edition, translated by James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993). 171. Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 57–60. 172. Margaret A. Farley, Compassionate Respect (New York: Paulist Press, 2002).

222

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

meaning for a whole life includes respecting the “end” or death that accompanies life. She says, In order to understand [the definitiveness of death], we might consider the meaning of human time. Time for us is not like a calendar, or a clock; it is not like space, in that one part is outside another. Our time is within us . . . Our life in time is not as if it were a roll of film, which we can stop, look at only one frame, and think we understand its meaning. Human time is like a melody— which cannot be known or understood if only one note is heard. Our lives in time become wholes, and only when they are complete can their meaning be complete.173

Respecting the aging person entails respecting the life narrative as a whole. By recognizing one’s narrative context as well as the importance of the closing journey that completes the narrative, surrounding community members may recognize the dignity and personal agency pertinent to the aging individual. (2) Because aging persons are dignified individuals worthy of respect, friendship with the elderly poses a natural development and gift to younger generations. While Augustine embodied friendships throughout his life and wrote of the significance of participating in a community of friends, the virtue of friendship is one that Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas make explicit.174 Aquinas’s image of “friendship with God” most captures his understanding of the beatific vision or the original happiness posed by Augustine as the end and order of love. Also, while Barth does not speak directly to the subject of friendship, his description of I-Thou relations emphasizes the importance of living in community with others. To be an “I” is necessarily to exist with a “Thou.”175 To exist as the singular individual is inhumane. Aristotle views friendship as integral to the moral life and human community. He describes friendship as necessary in that no one would choose to live without friends.176 Beneficence is to be directed toward friends but friends also endure difficulties together. While friendships unite persons in common, there are three kinds of friendships that compose Aristotle’s focus: those friendships built on utility, pleasure, and shared goodness.177 Utility and pleasure are not bad forms of friendship in themselves, but are lesser forms of friendship given their impermanence. Aristotle explicitly says friendships based on utility are more

173. Margaret A. Farley, “Compassionate Care: The Fostering of Hope.” Paper presented at Stella Maris Annual S. Louis Mary Battle, RSM, Lecture, November 24, 2003. 174. Augustine surrounded himself with friends who accompanied him in his philosophical and theological quests as seen in his companions throughout the “Cassiciacum Dialogues” and the Confessions. 175. CD III/4, 274. 176. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 200–01. 177. Ibid., 203–06.

The Virtues of Aging

223

frequent among the elderly and middle aged who “pursue their own advantage.”178 Likewise, friendships based on pleasure are impermanent and generally subject to change given that “tastes alter” over time.179 Aristotle finds these relationships more prevalent among the young. The highest or “perfect” form of friendship, however, consists of those friendships based on shared goodness.180 These friendships share in a sense of final happiness. Each friend loves the other for her own sake and not for use or “some incidental quality.”181 However, while Aristotle claims these forms of friendships are the highest, such friendships can change when persons change. If the goodness of the person changes due to time or experience, then the friendship itself might change. In terms of aging, long-term friendships that share the “good” over a period of time may represent one of the greatest human goods. However, as mentioned above, Aristotle also acknowledges that friendships can change over time, particularly when one member of the friendship changes in quality or goodness. The latter reality holds little hope for what Aristotle calls persons who are “old and sour” with little ability to make new friends.182 However, Gilbert Meilaender writes about the importance of fidelity for completing friendship. Meilaender describes the difference between natural friendship as prescribed by Aristotle involving preference and reciprocity as opposed to Christian fidelity or agape that sustains relationships with eternal, committed love.183 In this sense, Meilaender supports the notion that natural love is emboldened by grace or faithfulness found in agape as ordered love. Thus, the friend is not solely a friend but also a neighbor. In this way, Meilaender supports the Augustinian and Barthian sense of virtue as received as well as enacted. The highest form of friendship is friendship with God and friendship shared in God’s love. The eschatological vision is a vision of mutual love and faithfulness shared between friends much like the inner-Trinitarian life.184 Likewise, James Keenan supports fidelity and friendship as the heart of the moral life. Keenan cites fidelity as the first of his revised four cardinal virtues in that individuals are made for relationships. Borrowing from Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, Keenan says persons have two major moral goals, “to be just and to be faithful.”185 Here we are to be “faithful through relationships so as not to become isolated and unable to meet the other as friend instead of task.”186

178. Ibid., 204. 179. Ibid., 205. 180. Ibid. 181. Ibid. 182. Ibid., 208. 183. Gilbert Meilaender, Friendship (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 60–61; 65–67. 184. Ibid., 65–67. 185. Keenan, Virtues for Ordinary Christians, 60. 186. Ibid.

224

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Maintaining friendships with aging persons is incumbent upon communities so that the young benefit from the good of older persons in their experience, historical memory, and wisdom. Likewise, aging persons benefit from friendships with younger and middle-aged persons given the possibilities for encouragement, support, and fresh perspective. True friendship involves not seeing the other person as a “task,” but valuing the person as good in her particularity and dignity as child of God. Finally, fidelity bolsters friendship given its source in God as the author and finisher of perfect faithfulness. Grounded and aimed at eternity, Christian friendship recognizes the good shared in God. In this sense, friendships between the young and old are unequal in that they represent different stages of life and share diverse gifts. However, they are equal in that both share in the goodness of God regardless of the stage in which one is located. The young learn not only wisdom and life experience from the old, but also how faithfully to journey through life’s struggles that encourage young people to extend justice and mercy to those aging persons in their latter days. (3) Turning to the virtue of justice may seem like a natural correlate to the virtue of respect. To respect aging persons is to respect their particular narrative and individuality—as well as their particular needs. Traditionally, the ancients, including Plato and Aristotle, define virtuous persons according to justice. A just person is one who orders the soul according to right reason much like a just city orders the polis according to right reason and virtue.187 For the ancients, particularly Plato, the definition of justice is “to each one her due.”188 Justice becomes associated with a kind of distributive and commutative exchange between right relations. Interestingly, Augustine does not write on justice in the form of systematic political relations like his later successor, Thomas Aquinas. For Augustine, justice primarily pertains to God’s justice or righteousness freely given humanity through the atonement. Dodaro says the fullness of justice is attained by Christ and attributed to persons associated with spiritual justification.189 Justice that pertains to political justice, on the other hand, relates to the order of love. For Augustine, one cannot be just without loving God and neighbor according to their due. There is no such thing as a perfect state for Augustine.190 A society is only as good as its love—for both God and neighbor.191 Likewise, justice appears to be an important lacuna in the work of Karl Barth. Barth most directly discusses justice when describing Christ’s justification of humanity through his perfect obedience. While Barth does not explicitly discuss justice,192 the closest hint comes from his “Lecture Fragments” now entitled

187. Plato, Republic, 2nd. ed. Translated by G.M.A. Grube (Indianopolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992), 31, 33. 188. Ibid., 6. 189. Robert Dodaro, “Justice,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Raids: Eerdmans, 1999), 482–83. 190. Augustine, City of God, 881–83. 191. Ibid., 890–91. 192. Barth does give some indication of systemic social injustice in his account of capital punishment in CD III/4, 443–56.

The Virtues of Aging

225

The Christian Life. These lecture fragments compose parts of what would have contributed to Church Dogmatics IV/4 had he finished the volume. Within these lectures, Barth speaks of “The Lordless Powers” as chthonic forces of creation (such as economics, technology, politics, and fashion) that rule and oppress persons because of what appears to be disordered loves.193 In order to revolt against these lordless powers, persons are called to pray for the “kingdom coming” and enact “just laws” or just acts that embody the kingdom in time.194 Barth’s strength is that he emphasizes the importance of acting against forces of injustice while his weakness is that he often leaves the reader without specific content regarding acts of justice. While one might draw on the importance of vertical and horizontal relations of justice and love, turning to other sources on justice may prove to be beneficial for discussing the importance of distributive and commutative resources for aging persons. Contemporary understandings of justice incorporate respect for each person. Justice should not only consider “one’s due” according to an Aristotelian or Thomistic sense, but also awareness of varying needs according to difference.195 Such difference might take into account diversity of resources by incorporating Catholic social teaching on preferential option for the poor.196 Preferential option for the poor should be sensitive to healthcare access.197 Likewise, justice might incorporate awareness of gender dynamics that often contribute to disparities in resources and disproportionate gender representation in care giving for the elderly.198 Recognizing these important differences at play, justice in a communal and social context would aim to love and enact justice toward the neighbor by accounting for these differences. (4) Describing the virtue of justice perhaps naturally points to the virtue of mercy. Augustine’s theology incorporates works of mercy in his account of Matthew 25 that cares for Christ in the neighbor. Such care is attentive to the reality of the neighbor’s needs, including hunger, nakedness, illness, disease, or homelessness. In this sense, mercy is a natural result of Augustine’s theology that cares and enacts works of love toward the neighbor. Mercy involves care for the sick, dying, widow, and aging. For Augustine, mercy involves both a spiritual and

193. Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics Volume IV/4 Lecture Fragments, §78, translated by Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 205–71. 194. Ibid., 260–71. 195. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge Press, Belknap, 1971). See also Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 196. Erin Brigham, See, Judge, Act (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic 2013), 98–113. 197. U.S. Bishops, “Resolution on Health Care Reform,” Origins 23, no. 7 (1993), accessed August 31, 2016 http://originsplus.catholicnews.com; Cahill, Theological Bioethics. 198. Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields, Women Take Care (Gainesville, FL: Triad Publishing Co., 1987).

226

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

corporeal dimension.199 This understanding of mercy mirrors his basic theological framework incorporating contemplation and action. To care for the neighbor is to love the neighbor in God, caring for both their spiritual and corporeal needs. While Barth includes a section on service and love for the neighbor, little attention is given to traditional works of mercy. Perhaps one of the strongest contemporary advocates for the virtue of mercy, however, derives from the work of James F. Keenan. Keenan defines mercy as “the willingness to enter into the chaos of others.”200 Keenan draws from the Good Samaritan narrative in the New Testament that recognizes Christ as the Good Samaritan who shows compassion and enters the suffering of wounded humanity.201 The story of the Good Samaritan tells the full story of the gospel and calls the Christian community to go and do likewise.202 Christ enters the spiritual and physical suffering of the human condition and attends to our reality with mercy and compassion. In a poignant description, Keenan says, The creation is an act of mercy that brings order into the chaos of the universe. The Incarnation is God’s entry into the chaos of human existence. And the redemption is bringing us out of the chaos of our slavery to sin. Every action of God is aimed at rescuing us.203

Thus, to experience mercy is to experience the work of God. While Keenan defines mercy as a specific “Catholic” activity given the emphasis on works, Protestants have much to learn from these works of mercy. To receive mercy from Christ is necessarily to participate in Christ’s body and enact corporeal and spiritual “works” of mercy in time. Enacting works of mercy for the neighbor also shows love for Christ (Matthew 25). Catholics recognize these works as a “condition for salvation.”204 While Protestants do not consider these acts as meritorious for salvation, the acts are still outward expressions of the salvific mercy received. There is much for Protestants to learn from Catholics in the arena of merciful practices. The Catholic Church has a rich history of merciful acts beginning in the early church in its care for widows, orphans, and the aged that extends throughout the middle ages and into the contemporary era in the establishment of “hospitals” by confraternities and religious orders of care.205

199. Allan D. Fitzgerald, “Works of Mercy,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 557–61. 200. James F. Keenan, The Works of Mercy, 2nd ed. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 4. 201. Ibid., 2–3. 202. Ibid. 203. Ibid., 4. 204. Ibid., 3. 205. Ibid., 10–13.

The Virtues of Aging

227

According to Keenan, the Catholic works of mercy are divided into seven corporeal and seven spiritual acts of mercy. Given those traditionally listed works of mercy, at least four works might pertain to the experiences of the aged. Two corporeal works that tend to the bodily realities of those aging persons might be “visiting the sick” and “burying the dead.”206 Visiting the sick historically finds its roots in the healing passages within the gospels and includes caring for those persons who are ailing through love and compassion. Both the practice of hospitals and nursing emerged from Catholic acts of mercy. Creating homes for the aged began as early as the middle ages and continues into the contemporary era.207 Today aging persons might flourish in religious homes of care that brings a kind of dignity to their latter years. Likewise, practicing corporeal works of mercy toward the aging might also entail burying the dead. The early Christians practiced caring for the bodies of the dead in ways that recognized their dignity and the hope of resurrected life. Aging persons who are near death may find comfort in knowing that their communities will care for their bodies with respect and love. Caring for the aging might also entail two spiritual works of mercy, including “comfort the afflicted” and “prayer.” Comforting the afflicted entails caring for those who have experienced some loss, whether “losing one’s hearing” or “losing one’s spouse.”208 As Keenan says, “Affliction comes from loss. . . . Comforting is always an act of acknowledging, not so much the loss, but the self-understanding of the afflicted one. To comfort means to respond with an active listening to the one who wants to express her or his affliction.”209 Aging persons are those who experience a great deal of loss, whether personal capacities, personal loved ones, or sense of place in the world. To care and enact mercy toward aging persons entails those spiritual acts of mercy such as comforting the afflicted. Finally, the virtue of mercy entails “prayer” when caring for the aging. Not surprisingly, mercy—like the other virtues—involves both contemplation and action. Here mercy ends with prayer that draws the self into union both with God and other. Keenan notes there are three forms of prayer, such as effective prayer, unitive prayer, and transformative prayer. Each of these forms of prayer unites and changes the giver as well as the receiver. As Keenan concludes, “By being merciful we enter as Christ did into the world of another’s suffering and we become transformed by their suffering, by our encounter with them, and by the presence of Christ who hears and responds to us in our need.”210 By practicing mercy, there exists a kind of reciprocity between the aged and their communities of care as those who give and receive.

206. 207. 208. 209. 210.

Ibid., 39–50. Ibid., 45–50. Ibid., 82. Ibid., 82–83. Ibid., 88–89.

228

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

(5) Fifth and finally, Augustinian and Barthian participation entails love. As stated throughout, love is the beginning and end of virtue for both Augustine and Barth. God originates and creates out of His loving abundance, sustains creation by grace, and moves His children toward eternal participation in the Triune life as the telos of enduring love. For Augustine, humans are loving creatures by definition. Unfortunately, human loves are often disordered. In Christ, persons are unified with the final object of their love that helps reorder love toward others. Through contemplation, persons enact works of love. Love is the supreme virtue incorporating respect, friendship, justice, and works of mercy toward the aging neighbor. Likewise, Barth describes persons as “beings in action,” mirroring the covenant relation with God as the ultimate being in act. Most clearly, this Being in act personifies love as a God who creates and enters into creation. Individuals are intended to participate in God through union with Christ. Participating in Christ entails receiving grace and enacting love toward the aging neighbor in time. By loving the aging neighbor through life’s changes that include illness, disease, and even death, persons enact the love received that embraces the particularity of the individual in his or her old age. Finally, aging persons also play an integral role in benefiting communities by providing wise, unconditional love that supports the young and middle aged as they continue in their respective journeys through life. Reciprocity of love reflects receiving and giving that is active in both vertical and horizontal spheres. The reciprocal relation of love greatly benefits the young. Knowing and receiving love from elders can help establish a strong sense of rootedness and identity, encouragement and hope for younger generations living in a postmodern context. Thus, by participating in love for God and one another, both the community and aged persons experience a sense of union and interdependence across the generations that propels virtue.

CONCLUSION: SABBATH REST AS VOCATION

The Transhumanist Challenge Returning to the varying pressure points that challenge aging and death seems appropriate after surveying the shape and meaning of aging from the theologies of Augustine and Barth. In regards to the transhumanist critique of aging, a constructive ethics of aging might acknowledge some of its desires as coherent with Christian convictions while departing from the ends and means of the transhumanist agenda. Like transhumanists, Christian theology affirms that something indeed is wrong with the human condition. For transhumanists, the problem is human suffering, disease, and aging that might be remedied through science, medicine, and innovative technology. For Christianity, the problem also pertains to human suffering and disease, though the source of this problem along with the goals and means for their remedy differ from transhumanism. As Gerald McKenny highlights, transhumanists have to alter or depart from human nature in order to fulfill it. McKenny says, “It is not immediately obvious, however, that transhumanists abstract the good from human desire and wants. Transhumanists often refer to greater or more intense or lasting experiences of things that many or most humans currently consider to be good.”1 However, in order to attain a posthuman reality that sustains ongoing life, even transhumanist leader Nick Bostrom “readily admits—and accepts—that some modifications of our capacities would likely constitute a change of identity. Such a change of identity, if it occurred, would undoubtedly entail the possibility that what our successors value will be discontinuous with what we value.”2 In other words, transhumanists value the good of human life to the point of extending life indefinitely. However, they also implicitly trust evolutionary progress to transcend current human limits through artificial intelligence or other enhancements that may, in effect, alter our nature and current understandings of human flourishing. McKenny suggests even Nietzsche would reject this motivation as self-hatred, for it rejects human identity.3 Most accounts of human flourishing or the human good in philosophy are tied to some view of human nature. Because

1. McKenny, “Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology,” 186. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 187.

230

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

the transhumanist project ironically departs from the good imbedded in human nature or embodiment, McKenny finds their conception of the good to be an “empty one.”4 McKenny continues, saying, In the end the good as transhumanists understand it can only be described as the unknown correlate of the radically enhanced human capacities that are capable of grasping it. It follows that all transhumanists can do is urge us to keep pushing the technology further on the grounds that there will be great goods to enjoy— whether for us or, more likely for our successors, whoever or whatever they are.5

McKenny finds not only these values to be empty, but also subject to “power” rather than the good itself.6 For example, Ted Peters highlights how transhumanists, at times, are willing to endorse the mind’s departure from the body as good. Here referencing Ray Kurzweil’s desire to upload the human brain beyond physical death, Peters describes transhumanism as freeing humanity from our “biological chains.”7 He says, Whereas in the past we have been prisoners of our biology, in the future we will be liberated. Our liberation will come from increased intelligence, intelligence that itself will find a way to remove itself from our deteriorating bodies and establish a much more secure substrate for endurance. Our mental lives in the future may take place within a computer or on the Internet. What we have previously known as Homo sapiens will be replaced by Homo cyberneticus.8

Here the human species may evolve into something beyond what is recognizable as currently human, whether through the medium of robot or some other form of technologically enhanced advancement that forges human identity as a synthesis of nature and machine. Peters’s description of the transhumanist desire to transcend biological chains sounds much like the Manichaean or Gnostic impulse that divides soul and body for human identity. Augustine departs from the perspective that delineates the material world as bad and the spiritual world as good. Instead, he affirms the spiritual and material, or soul and body, as good given they are both elements of God’s creation. For Augustine, death is problematic precisely because it severs

4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ted Peters, “Transhumanism and the Posthuman Future,” in H+ Transhumanism and Its Critics, eds. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (Philadelphia, PA: Metanexus Institute, 2011), 150. 8. Ibid.

Conclusion

231

soul from body. Likewise, Barth affirms that both soul and body are necessary for human identity, participating in active and passive dimensions of human agency. Instead of favoring the transhumanist agenda, here the theology of Augustine and Barth reflects more of what McKenny describes as the “humanistic naturalist” perspective that recognizes the good embedded in the human body or nature.9 Like the humanistic naturalists, Augustine and Barth describe time and those limitations circumscribed by time as good. Barth notes how the very boundaries of time encourage humans to forge their identity through limitation, urging individuals to commit to particular projects, relationships, and communities as a way of responding to the singular uniqueness of one’s existence. The experience of birth, death, and every aging stage in between illuminates ways in which individuals might respond to God and neighbor through virtues such as faithfulness, love, and endurance. Aging as a sense of limited time encourages individuals to cultivate a life of virtue that capitalizes on the value intrinsic to this human boundary. However, as McKenny also highlights, Christianity is not synonymous with humanistic naturalism that claims value resides in human nature alone.10 Here Augustine and Barth might suggest that humanistic naturalism overlooks the problem of those limits found in suffering, involving disunity between soul and body, as well as the separation of loved ones that results from the tragic reality of death. Instead of fully merging with humanistic naturalism, here the theologies of Augustine and Barth begin to edge toward transhumanist hopes in their desire for something more. Like the humanistic naturalists, Augustine and Barth see creation as fundamentally good in its original intention to mirror and image the likeness of God. However, unlike the humanistic naturalists, they desire to see nature fulfilled or redeemed in relation to something that transcends or goes beyond human experience. For Augustine and Barth, individuals are intended for union with God in our original creation and redemption. Participation in Christ through contemplation and action, prayer and virtue might be pursued in our temporal existence, displaying partial glimpses of the full union anticipated with God in eternity. Like transhumanists, Christian theology anticipates something more for humanity, but unlike transhumanism, recognizes that transformation does not depart from human nature to attain its final goal. Even the risen Christ was recognizable through bodily form, a body that maintains its physical scars. Instead, the theology of Augustine and Barth claims that God transforms what was originally created as good into something better. The telos of glorified human nature for Christianity departs from those transhumanist goals that focus primarily on rational capacities or the “soul” rather than the body.

9. McKenny, “Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology,” 177–78. 10. Ibid., 178.

232

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Instead, Christian theology prizes the union of soul and body as not only necessary for human identity, but also perfected through participation in the divine life throughout eternity. As Ted Peters emphasizes, Christianity’s eschatological vision cannot sidestep temporal death, but like Christ, must travel through death and resurrection as imitators of Christ, the fullest image of God.11 Through death and resurrection, Christ becomes the way to new life, a transcendent hope, involving resurrected bodies as well as souls. Christ was vulnerable to death, but did not allow death to have the final word. Through Christ’s broken body, the healing of human nature begins. As imitators of Christ, the Christian community affirms nature as vulnerable and subject to brokenness through death—but like Christ’s example, death does not hold the final word. By privileging mind over body or our evolving rationalistic capacities over physical vulnerability and mortality, transhumanists privilege knowledge as power. Todd Daly claims transhumanism mistakes the tree of knowledge for the tree of life.12 For Christians, on the other hand, the tree of life serves as the source for not only knowledge, but also wisdom. From an Augustinian lens, access to such wisdom comes through Christ—the new tree of life—who offers participation in the “mind of Christ” as well as hope for bodily resurrection in the life to come. But beyond the transhumanist challenge, wisdom found through an Augustinian and Barthian perspective might also respond to the pressure points found in modern medicine and its often ambiguous relationship to death and aging. Here McKenny amplifies ways in which the technological drive for control behind modern medicine is not far removed from the ideals of technological utopianism imbedded in transhumanism.13 Rather than rely upon techne or the practice of medicine to determine value, instead, McKenny proposes that medicine turn to religious and philosophical conceptions of the good life that offer moral significance for the body.14 This book is an attempt to offer value to aging and dying bodies through an Augustinian and Barthian lens. Here the purposes and practices of medicine might benefit from wisdom in the Christian narrative pertaining to value for the human body through aging and death.

The Telos of Medicine In To Relieve the Human Condition, Gerald McKenny diagnoses contemporary bioethics’ fundamental need to recognize medicine as a practice (techne)

11. Peters, “Transhumanism and the Posthuman Future,” 173. 12. Todd Daly, “Chasing Methuselah,” in Transhumanism and Transcendence, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 140. 13. McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition, 3. 14. Ibid., 4.

Conclusion

233

participating in a communal understanding of the good life.15 A vision of the good life holds important implications for the human body, interpretations of suffering, and frameworks appropriate for human healing. For both Augustine and Barth, medicine and the role of the body cannot be understood apart from their relation to God in creation, sin, and redemption. This interpretive lens shapes how one approaches the practice of medicine. However, the Baconian ideals driving transhumanism and modern medicine in their desire to eliminate most—if not all—forms of suffering through control or choice currently shapes most of contemporary bioethics.16 By prizing autonomous choice as supreme alongside lives free from suffering, transhumanism and increasingly medicine itself implicitly devalues the body and its fragility as something to control apart from our individual identity.17 Such practices reincarnate a gnostic division between soul and body by imposing choice as supreme whether this results in physician-assisted suicide or its opposite, mechanized perpetuity.18 In both cases, the body is something alien to manipulate according to our preferred choice. In contrast, the Christian tradition following Paul recognizes tension within the self as one that is fractured, experiencing life as willed and non-willed.19 Here Paul, as well as Augustine and Barth along with him, recognize the body as essential to self-identity. Both souls and bodies experience tension in life. In other words, the self-fracturing does not occur between a “core” self or “soul” in juxtaposition to the “body.” Instead, the fracturing occurs within the whole self, both body and soul, reflecting the prevalence of sin and grace in every aspect of human life. Thus, the themes of sin and grace, brokenness and healing present within the Christian narrative offer an alternative understanding of the body that accepts human frailty and vulnerability while looking toward the hope of reconciliatory transformation. Weaknesses exposed through Baconian medicine that desire to eliminate suffering and expand choice have little room for understanding or “welcoming” suffering bodies.20 Here the psychological experience of illness, disability, aging, and death become even more problematic than natural pain associated with these conditions because of their apparent attack on our “core” human identity.21

15. Ibid., 218–26. 16. Ibid., 1–4. 17. Ibid., 219–22. 18. Ibid., 221. 19. Ibid., 220. 20. Ibid., 219–22. 21. Editorial, “Physician-Assisted Suicide Laws Grant Dignity: Our View,” USA Today, October 20, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/20/our-viewphysician-assisted-suicide-california-oregon-editorials-debates/74282866; Charles C. Camosy, “The Vulnerable Will Be the Victims: Opposing View,” USA Today October 20, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/20/california-physician-assistedsuicide-belgium-netherlands-editorials-debates/74296214/

234

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

Gnostic dualisms that subtly suggest the body is merely an instrument to control within the realm of human choice fueled by the desire to eliminate most—if not all—forms of suffering result in a “denial of the body of the [suffering] Other.”22 Suffering becomes an experience outside the self as “Other” rather than as tension within the self or part of the human condition. As McKenny says, such denial might cause us to do the following: … postpone death, stall or reverse biochemical aging processes, restore youthful anatomical features, and in general eliminate or alter anything that is unwanted. Just as significantly, this denial of the Other equates the meaning of embodiment with control over the body. When the inevitability of the body of the Other is denied, the end of life may become a desperate quest to seize control through physician assisted death.23

Writing in 1997, McKenny’s volume perhaps foretells the 2014–16 media frenzy surrounding Brittany Maynard in her endorsement and enactment of physicianassisted suicide that places autonomy as the highest good in dying well.24 The idea that autonomy or self-realization is the highest value to be achieved while diseased or unattractive bodies isolate our “core, ideal” self was the implicit and explicit message imbedded in the subtext of multiform advertisements and public policy arguments following Maynard’s death for the state of California and across the nation.25 For example, pain does not rank as one of the top five reasons for recent physician-assisted suicide arguments, but instead, “people are afraid of losing autonomy and dignity.”26 Sadly, as bioethicist and Jesuit priest John J. Paris highlights, we now find ourselves in a medical culture that prizes “autonomy run amuck” in which patients can demand healthcare providers offer treatment even when treatment seems medically futile or the opposite extreme, demand life’s end by going against the original goals of medicine.27 In other words, Gnostic denial of the body—particularly the suffering body— as integral to the self, may result in those original pressure points identified as problematic for the aging experience, such as the desire to first, forestall death or reverse aging as seen in transhumanism; second, restore youthful features through

22. McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition, 221. 23. Ibid., 222. 24. The Brittany Maynard Fund, “Compassion & Choices,” October 6, 2014. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPfe3rCcUeQ 25. Brakkton Booker, “California Governor Signs Physician-Assisted-Suicide Bill Into Law,” The Two-Way Breaking News from NPR, October 5, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/ thetwo-way/2015/10/05/446115171/california-governor-signs-physician-assisted-suicidebill-into-law 26. Camosy, “The Vulnerable Will Be the Victims: Opposing View.” 27. John J. Paris, “The Hour of Our Death,” America, October 5, 2015, http:// americamagazine.org/issue/hour-our-death

Conclusion

235

cosmetic surgeries and newfound diets; or third, replace what appears to be the core value of healing within medicine with one of control by ironically embracing physician-assisted suicide as a legitimate approach to suffering. In the latter case, compassion within medicine now becomes the elimination of the sufferer rather than care for the sufferer.28 Moreover, McKenny acknowledges the ways in which the Baconian-Cartesian desire to eliminate and control suffering within the human body superficially expands freedom while imprisoning agents to those “choices” most regularly embraced and defined by society. Through the desire for perfect bodies subject to control, individuals become slaves to the “hegemony of society that produces the subjects whose desires and choices enable it to accomplish its normalizing ambitions.”29 Thus, rather than suggest medicine set forth its own ultimate value or succumb to the Baconian principles of control, beauty, and utility embraced by contemporary society, McKenny argues medicine find its meaning within a broader vision of the good life that offers significance to the human body. The Augustinian and Barthian narrative that embraces the whole self, body and soul, as subject to creation, sin, and redemption poses an alternative vision to contemporary Western culture’s functional Gnosticism. Here the body is one that is created finite and dependent on God since its very beginning. The hope of immortality was never a given, but one wholly contingent upon grace and participation in the Divine life both before and after the cosmic fall toward sin and evil. Yet even after the introduction of sin and evil that turns creatures away from their original created ends and toward the self, both Augustine and Barth affirm the gratuitous nature of God’s movement toward humanity through the incarnation and redemption. Christ’s person and work begins the healing process of humanity’s fractured self by restoring individuals to wholeness—both body and soul—through union with the Divine life. Such healing and restoration does not deny the frailty of life, but embraces humanity’s vulnerabilities most acutely seen through Christ’s own passivity, suffering, and death that images God and offers dignity to those stages of life that involve suffering and dependence. Christ’s own union with the Father that propels his mission through time—both active and passive experiences—legitimizes human identity as fundamentally dependent through relationship with God, an idea that denies the absolute autonomy prized within contemporary culture. In this schema, Christianity welcomes suffering individuals as integral to human identity, accepts the limits of medicine, and denies measuring individuals according to society’s standards of “productivity, beauty, and success.”30 This Christian vision informed by Augustine and Barth would not deny the desire to heal or mitigate forms of suffering given its recognition that life is not as it was originally intended to be lived through soul-body harmony in union

28. Paris, “The Hour of Our Death;” McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition, 181, 221–22. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 223–25.

236

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

with God, but neither would it eliminate all forms of suffering through control and the illusive desire for perfection. Rather than become obsessed with the line between “therapy” and “enhancement,” instead, a Christian community informed by Augustinian and Barthian values might emphasize discernment or practical wisdom in asking what constitutes a “good or even acceptable” use of biotechnological powers in faithfulness to God.31 Here turning to Augustine’s order of love and Barth’s description of chthonic powers helps frame medicine within a vision of the good life shaped by love, obedience, and participation in God. For Barth, medical science is a human activity with powers and possibilities conferred from above.32 Doctors and the medical sciences aid individuals in the will to live, following the command of God. Sickness is a hindrance to following God’s command and life in general. Doctors are called to help improve health and aid the body-soul relationship when individuals experience loss through illness or disease.33 However, Barth’s ethic is also realistic by recognizing the limits of finitude and the limits of medicine. For Barth, life is not the ultimate good nor death the ultimate evil, but relative goods and evils in relation to the meaning of life. Health serves the ends of life and death, or the boundary of our “allotted time” that composes our individual concrete existence.34 In Barth’s posthumous IV/4 volume, The Christian Life, he considers the “lordless powers” of creation that reflect creative social structures gone array.35 “Lordless powers” are those powers created by human ingenuity and skill as positive capabilities, such as technology, government, philosophies, and ideologies that, in turn, bear down on the human community through oppression. What was once a creative power for good overtakes human persons through a kind of demonizing force. Such a passage might further illuminate Barth’s possible conception of the fruitless powers of medicine that concern McKenny along with Daniel Callahan and Jeffrey Bishop, resulting in the artificial prolongation of life—and the possible powers of chaos present in this artificial prolongation. While Callahan acknowledges the problems implicit in the goals of modern medicine given their cure-driven agenda, Bishop identifies the core issue as one in which formal and final ends are replaced with the material and efficient ends of utility, power, and control. Rather than direct medicine at a metaphysical goal that offers transcendent value behind the material practices in time, instead, Bishop argues medicine collapses ultimate or supernatural ends with material causes that

31. Ibid., Ronald Cole-Turner, “Transhumanism and Christianity,” in Transhumanism and Transcendence, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 4. 32. CD, III/4, 360–63. 33. Ibid., 362. 34. Ibid., 371–72. 35. Barth, The Christian Life, 213–33.

Conclusion

237

seek to control “living” matter with “dead” matter. The problem for Bishop is that apart from a community of meaning, the body becomes “decontextualized.”36 Bishop concludes his volume claiming that medicine normatively should respond by “suffering-there-with the other.”37 The locus for perceiving needs of the other comes from living communities. Bishop says, “In living traditions, the community shares a common story of origin and directedness toward some telos. They have their origin in oikos, the home, and usually are animated by desire and love, by the task of care, and by the task of meeting embodied needs.”38 Turning to the narrative of Christianity through the theologies of Augustine and Barth reveals not only the meaning of death but also its purpose for medicine and the task of meeting those embodied needs. For Augustine, understanding the role of medicine is perhaps uniquely tied to understanding his politics, particularly in his description of the saeculum, alongside the order of love. In the City of God Book 19, Augustine dispels the notion of a just commonwealth in Rome given that it does not offer just worship toward God.39 He also claims that all individuals and institutions are marked by sin apart from perfection. Augustine’s view of the polis is informed by his understanding of evil as privation rather than Manichean dualisms pitting the body against the soul.40 While the material world and all created things are good in their created essence, the cataclysmic fall introduced evil into human nature. Individuals became an ambivalent composite of good or grace (in their creation) and sin (or evil) from the fall.41 Post-lapsarian anthropology depicts a corrupt human nature—a nature that is neither purely evil nor purely good. Augustine’s theological anthropology includes an ambiguous mixture of good and evil within the individual, both body and soul. And just as there is an ambiguous mixture of good and evil within the single individual, so too is there an ambiguous mixture of good and evil within social institutions, both civil and ecclesial.42 Augustine’s theological anthropology leads him to be ambivalent about multiple categories. He is ambivalent about the way individuals experience the dialectic of sin and grace in temporal life, which extends into his understanding of temporal institutions such as the Church and political arrangements. The saeculum is the space in which good and evil coexist. But the secular is not a dualistic concept set against the sacred as commonly believed in congruence with post-Cartesian categories characteristic of modernity. Instead, the saeculum becomes a space of

36. Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse, 27. 37. Ibid., 305. 38. Ibid., 307. 39. Augustine, City of God, 881–84. 40. Augustine, Confessions, 111–32. 41. R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), xi. 42. Augustine, City of God, 881–83; 45–46

238

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

tension between sin (evil) and creation (grace).43 In the introduction to his book, Saeculum, R. A. Markus writes, “Human life became a chronic conflict between sin and grace, and history the theatre in which this conflict was played on a large scale.”44 The conflict of sin and grace serves as the negative deconstruction of temporal authority, including civil and ecclesial institutions. By negative deconstruction, I mean his anthropology that includes sin eliminates hopes of political perfectionism in this life. Utopian visions, political or Christian, are not an option in Augustinian anthropology. Augustine’s political realism protects and safeguards the individual and group against the harms of political perfectionism, “idealisms,” or triumphal religious ideologies that become all-encompassing.45 Idealism can become harmful when it swallows up an individual’s identity for the sake of group identity. Just as Augustine’s understanding of the problem of evil informs his view of the saeculum and politics, it also might inform medicine and how the “order of love” might circumscribe Christian participation in its practice. For Augustine’s theology, everything can be reduced to love of God or love of self. Just as recent scholarship draws on Augustine’s order of love for political theology,46 so too does this order apply to modern medicine. In On Christian Teaching, Augustine sets forth his uti et frui concept, describing the proper order of love in relation to God, self, neighbor, and objects. Frui or “enjoyment” is reserved for God alone while uti or “use” involves all things here below (self, neighbor, and the material world).47 The uti et frui distinction builds on Augustine’s understanding of the distinction between temporality and eternity. Enjoyment (frui) is reserved for God alone, or that which is eternal, while use (uti) is a means of enjoying all objects as given and directed toward the ultimate end, love of God, thereby transforming temporal goods with eternal purposes.48 Much like the polis, medicine is a temporal good to be used rather than enjoyed as the ultimate good. Medicine is an imperfect institution that rises and falls according to human loves. Likewise, Barth affirms the role of medicine as servant of human life and death. Barth’s warning against those created institutions that slip into “chthonic” or “lordless powers” prophetically dispels the myth that medicine might supply its own origin, end, and meaning to its practice apart from transcendence. Technology, medicine, and health serve the ends and meaning of life—not the other way around. When we forget the meaning of death’s role in defining human life, our loves become disordered and we misuse our creative capabilities to serve false premises and false ends. Such falsehoods serve a collapsed

43. Gregory, Politics and The Order of Love, 11. 44. Markus, Saeculum, xi. 45. R.M. Brown, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 123. 46. Gregory, Politics and Order of Love, 364–84. 47. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 9–10, 18. 48. Ibid., 9–10.

Conclusion

239

vision of history and eschatology, time and eternity—by placing medicine as the sum, end, and Eschaton of human existence rather than as servant of human life and death. Just as Augustine recognizes the mixture of loves and motives in the temporal polis, we also might recognize the mixture of loves, motives, and ends in the institution of medicine. Only transcendent ends or loves offer value to temporal goods. No institution can replace or contain these values, but are held in check by final purposes. Institutions are good only insofar as they serve the meaning of life—and no institution will perfectly embody such ends in time. Given the human condition’s penchant for self-deception, displacing means and ends is often easier than expected. Vulnerability to death, suffering, and human fear often lead individuals to seek false security and control. As Dodaro argues, Augustine’s City of God is a treatise on human forms of control—cloaking fear of death—whether the forms are distractions from entertainment, political honor, or philosophical conceit.49 Instead, medicine and its practice should be informed by narratives such as Augustinian and Barthian theologies that help supply our deepest conception of the good life. Medicine—like politics—is not in a position to make ultimate claims about human life. Rather, turning to sources within theology such as Augustine and Barth reminds those individuals and communities participating in medicine’s practice regarding life’s final end and purpose. Opening ourselves to God, self, and other through vulnerability, participants in the institution of medicine might come to see our bodies and identities as we really are—limited and dependent on the One who both made and redeems us, thereby making life, death, and the experience of aging meaningful. In this way, Augustinian and Barthian theologies respond to those original pressure points identified as problematic for the aging experience, including transhumanism as well as Western culture’s prized autonomy, power, and utility seemingly hard wired into modern medicine’s goals and practices since the influence of Bacon. Deconstructing our operational biases reiterates the importance of describing the meaning of death and the aging experience in light of ultimate claims regarding the good life, God, human identity, time, and change. By turning to Augustine and Barth through both their negative and positive descriptions of aging and death, a richer appreciation for these life stages might inform goals and practices for all living. Thus, I conclude with a final consideration of Augustine’s and Barth’s vision as one described as vocation aimed at Sabbath rest.

Sabbath Rest as Vocation Considering the aging experience as one of virtue and vocation directed at Sabbath rest in the context of community offers meaning for this often perplexing and

49. Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine, 30–43.

240

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

ambiguous stage of life. Reflecting on the possible meaning and content of this life stage holds significance not only for theological communities but also holds possibilities for the broader society, particularly medicine in its acceptance of finitude and limits within its practice. Turning not only to Augustine’s and Barth’s approach to aging and death, but also to Christology in its possibilities for union with Christ as the heart of virtue reconfigures what we define as the meaning of aging. For Augustine, death and aging are products of the fall that remind us of our disordered love of self through sin. Given that our original intimate, spiritual union with God is severed, the body naturally moves toward death as an outward sign or analogy of this inward decay. However, describing death and aging as loss also provides a way to honestly account for grief that accompanies this experience. Given that Christianity affirms the soulbody relation in juxtaposition to the Manichaean and Neoplatonic philosophies of his day, Augustine acknowledges the loss in death for which persons lament. Nonetheless, even in this loss, Augustine forges an ethics of compassion through a God who took on flesh in the incarnation and enters into solidarity with our loss. Moreover, Augustine affirms aging as unique in its sign and preparation for eternal Sabbath rest in a way that offers a positive dimension to this stage of life. Only God is divine simplicity that holds together the fractured parts of ourselves as well as our movement through past, present, and future. Rest cannot be found in any temporal object but only in the eternal God as Creator and Redeemer. Aging serves as a sign and preparation for that eternal rest to be practiced in the here and now. As Eucharistic people, they look both behind and ahead pointing to a greater transcendent reality in their movement toward Sabbath rest. However, such rest is not stagnant but an active receiving and giving in relation to God and others as aging persons anticipate and witness to this rest within their communities. Likewise, Barth offers a vision of aging and death with dialectical nuance in comparison to Augustine by explicitly claiming that death is both evil and good. For Barth, aging and death is both negative and positive, shadow and light. First, aging and death represent the negative or judgment of God in relation to human sin. Yet even in this negative view, Barth reminds persons of Christ’s solidarity in this judgment on our behalf. Second, aging and death represent the positive dimension of human nature as finite, mortal, and limited. Christ’s incarnation and willingness to take on human life implies the good of human finitude. Moreover, the limit to human life in temporal existence benefits individuals in multiple ways, particularly by circumscribing human identity. To face limits is to pose boundaries on our identity that causes us to define who we are in the palpable moment of today. By facing limits, individuals choose whether or not to live out their promises with integrity and permanence. Mirroring his basic anthropology that acknowledges the dual strength and weakness of aging and death, Barth encourages persons to safeguard life and stave off death. Nonetheless, his ethics acknowledges limits to medicine and the possibilities that human power might offer. Finally, Barth ends by describing the three stages of life—youth, middle age, and old age—as those stages composing our whole life as vocation. Each stage entails hearing the ongoing, new call of

Conclusion

241

God that legitimizes human agency within each phase. Moreover, each stage of life has something to learn from the other stages by which Barth offers a kind of virtue for those persons belonging to each phase. Given the unique vantage point in each stage before God, Barth accounts for the importance of intergenerational relationships that cut across these varying life stages.50 Aging holds the specific virtue of wisdom in its “Sabbath” location near death and experiences accrued over time. Here Barth reverses Luther’s interpretation of Deut. 33:25 to read “May thy youth be as thine age.” After considering the specific meaning of aging and death within the particular works of Augustine and Barth, I turn to the role of Christology in each of their theologies. For Augustine, Christ’s divine and human natures rectify the broken image of God present within human persons. Bringing together the severed wisdom and knowledge after the fall, Christ’s eternal wisdom offers meaning for knowledge in the temporal realm. Likewise, wisdom might offer meaning for knowledge or final ends/purposes associated with the practice of medicine. Aging individuals come to participate in this merging of wisdom and knowledge through union with Christ that results in the congruence of contemplation and action. In this way, union with Christ becomes the key to moral agency as well as understanding Christ’s atoning work as securing hope for a new identity through resurrected souls and bodies. In addition, Augustine describes how Christ experiences psychological abandonment before God on behalf of all persons in the totus Christus, including aging individuals in their sense of loneliness and isolation. Reading the Psalms Christologically, Christian communities confess their emotional challenges before Christ who walks in solidarity with human experience. Confessing their emotions before God strengthens true selfknowledge as constituted in Christ while simultaneously receiving the benefits of Christ’s person and work that rectifies the painful consequence of aging and death through His great exchange. Likewise, Barth’s Christology offers significant meaning for the aging experience through his account of the active and passive agency of Christ. The hypostatic union displays Christ’s coming to persons through divine election and the incarnation that reflects humility and obedience. Christ’s human response displays gratitude and obedience that inculcates what it means to live in perfect union with the Spirit. In this way, Christ embodies the giving and receiving not only within the Triune Godhead, but also within the Divine-human relation that results in the legitimacy of active and passive agency. W. H. Vanstone expounds the dual sides of this dynamic through his account of the active and passive agency of Christ as seen through the Gethsemane and Cross scenes within the gospel narratives. Jesus’s passive agency that receives the events of the world through his passive acceptance or patience offers significance for those aging persons experiencing loss through their latter stages of life. In this way, Christ’s witness as passive agent challenges our modern understandings

50. CD III/4, 618.

242

Sabbath Rest as Vocation

of agency solely in terms of “control,” “use,” or “profit.” Instead, Christ’s passive agency that responds to the other inculcates a new disposition for human identity. Aging individuals are active and passive, giving and receiving, praying and working in union with Christ as agents reflecting Sabbath rest. Here the primary virtue for death and aging associated with medical ethics near the end of life might be interdependence by attuning to our closest relationships and particularly, the Divine voice rather than proclaiming illusory autonomy as supreme. Finally, both Augustine’s and Barth’s theologies hold much significance for aging individuals and their surrounding communities through a constructive virtue theory based on union with Christ. Through participation in the living Christ, aging individuals come to cultivate specific virtues such as humility, gratitude, wisdom, prudence, generosity, fortitude, and hope. Likewise, the community surrounding aging individuals might cultivate respect, justice, friendship, mercy, and love toward aging persons. Each virtue entails both a receptive and active component reflecting the union of contemplation and action through participation in Christ. The virtues have significance for communal relations as well as individuals navigating medical care. In this way, aging individuals might come to hold significant meaning within their theological communities as persons integrally tied to the whole body of Christ. The young and middle aged would benefit from the old as examples for how to live faithfully through decline and change. In this sense, aging individuals still give to the community even during those stages that entail more physical receptivity and contemplation that looks toward Sabbath rest. Much like Augustine and Barth, Kenneth Kirk affirms aging persons as “Sabbath people” by receiving the world through “eyes of wonder,” “enjoyment,” and a “deepening prayer life.”51 Here Kirk describes aging persons as those who “disengage” to “reengage” the world with deeper freedom and love. He says, We can look more deeply into the meaning of life and thus focus on the things we see to be most important. .  .  . Retirement can spark off a further stage of growth in our more authentic self. In a society which bases personal worth on such indices as economic achievement and capacity as a consumer, facing up to retirement can help us to be more aware that we are more than what we do. Our self-identity goes much deeper than our activity.52

In this sense, retirement, aging, and the end of life toward death offer significant meaning for human identity and its particular role within the theological community. Standing as signs and examples of our mixed anthropology composed of possibilities and limits, aging individuals reflect what it means to be human

51. Kenneth Kirk, “It’s Great to Be Alive: Retirement and Human Flourishing,” in Between Poetry and Politics: Essays in Honour of Enda McDonagh, eds. Barbara Fitzgerald and Linda Hogan (Blackrock: Columbia Press, 2003), 197–98. 52. Ibid., 196.

Conclusion

243

as persons who receive and act through faithfulness in ending well. By offering meaning to aging, the theology of Augustine and Barth responds not only to current transhumanist and Baconian medical challenges through accepting human limits, but also legitimates the aging stage of life as representative of human identity and integral to theological communities. In these communities, aging persons have a dignified vocation as signs and sacraments for the coming Sabbath rest through prayer and virtue. Like the Gospel of Luke’s example of Anna and Simeon awaiting the coming Messiah in the Temple, aging persons await and bear witness to union with Christ through death and the hope of resurrection. Simeon’s testimony serves as a sign and preparation for the eternal kingdom of God inaugurated in time. Like Simeon, the aged among our communities become signs and witnesses of the eternal rest we anticipate through contemplation while embodying virtuous acts of humility, gratitude, generosity, wisdom, fortitude, and hope during our travel here as pilgrims. Their vocation is integral to the Christian community as witnesses to the eschatological hope of Sabbath rest for full union with God in eternity while remaining faithful through participation in Christ through time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambrose, St. De bono mortis in Seven Exegetical Works, The Fathers of the Church. Translated by Michael P. McHugh. Washington, DC: University of America Press, 1972. American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. “Ageless Beauty: Anti-aging Cosmetic Procedures at any Age.” January 22, 2013, https://www.surgery.org/consumers/ plastic-surgery-news-briefs/ageless-beauty--anti-aging-cosmetic-procedures-ageinfographic-1048223 Anderson, Gary A. Sin: A History. New Haven: Yale University, 2009. Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1948. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by J. A. K. Thomson. London: Penguin Books, 1955. Athanasius, St. On the Incarnation. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000. Augustine, St. Answer to the Pelagians, III: Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 1, vol. 25. Translated by Roland J. Teske, 1422. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999. Augustine, St. Arianism and Other Heresies. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 1, vol. 18. Translated by Roland Teske. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1995. Augustine, St. The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. Translated by Bruce Harbert. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999. Augustine, St. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. Augustine, St. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Augustine, St. Essential Sermons. Translated by Edmund Hill. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007. Augustine, St. Expositions of the Psalms, 1-32. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 15. Translated by Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000. Augustine, St. Expositions of the Psalms, 33-50. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 16. Translated by Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000. Augustine, St. Expositions of the Psalms, 51-72. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 17. Translated by Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2001. Augustine, St. Expositions of the Psalms, 73-98. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 18. Translated by Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002.

246

Bibliography

Augustine, St. Expositions of the Psalms, 99-120. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 19. Translated by Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003. Augustine, St. Expositions of the Psalms, 121-150. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 20. Translated by Maria Boulding, 135–36. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004. Augustine, St. Homilies on the First Epistle of John. In Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 3, vol. 14. Translated by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008. Augustine, St. Instructing Beginners in the Faith. Translated by Raymond Canning. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2006. Augustine, St. Letters, 100-55. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 2, vol. 2. Translated by Roland Teske. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002. Augustine, St. Letters, 156-210. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 2, vol. 3. Translated by Roland Teske. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004. Augustine, St. Letters, 211-270. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 2, vol. 4. Translated by Roland Teske. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005. Augustine, St. Marriage and Virginity. Translated by Ray Kearney. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999. Augustine, St. Of True Religion. In Augustine: Earlier Writings. Translated John H. S. Burleigh, 225–83. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1956. Augustine, St. On Christian Teaching. Translated by R. P. H. Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Augustine, St. On Free Choice of the Will. Translated by Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff. Upper-Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Augustine, St. On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Translated by Edmund Hill and Matthew O’Connell. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002. Augustine, St. On the Morals of the Catholic Church. In Basic Writing of St Augustine, vol. 1, edited by Whitney J. Oates, 319–57. New York: Random House, 1948. Augustine, St. The Retractationes. In The Fathers of the Church. Translated by Sister Mary Inez Bogan. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968. Augustine, St. The Teacher. In Augustine: Earlier Writings. Translated by J. H. S. Burleigh, 69–101. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1953. Augustine, St. Tractates on the Gospel of John, 55-111. In The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 90. Translated by John W. Rettig. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1994. Augustine, St. The Trinity. Translated by Edmund Hill. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991. Ayres, Lewis. “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV.” Augustinian Studies 29, no. 1 (1998): 111–39. Ayres, Lewis. “Christology as Contemplative Practice: Understanding the Union of Natures in Augustine’s Letter 137.” In In the Shadow of the Incarnation, edited by Peter W. Martens, 190–211. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and its Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Baker, Kimberly F. “Augustine on Action, Contemplation, and their Meeting Point in Christ.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 2007.

Bibliography

247

Baltes, Paul B., Judith Gluck, and Ute Kunzmann, “Wisdom.” In Handbook of Positive Psychology, edited by C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, 327–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Barth, Karl. The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV, 4 Lecture Fragments. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960. Barth, Karl. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963. Beauchamp, Tom, and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Becker, Ernst. The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press, 1973. Bedwell, Sarah Jane. “Your 1-Day Anti-Aging Diet: Eat Your Way to the Fountain of Youth,” Self, August 27, 2015, http://www.self.com/food/recipes/2015/04/your-1-dayanti-aging-diet/ Biggar, Nigel. “Barth’s Trinitarian Ethic.” In The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster, 212–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Biggar, Nigel. The Hastening that Waits. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Bishop, Jeffrey. The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and Care for the Dying. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. Bishop, Jeffrey. “The Reckoning of the Corpse.” Plenary Lecture presented at the 2013 University of Virginia Graduate Colloquium on Theology, Ethics, and Culture. Charlottesville, VA, April 5, 2013. Bostrom, Nick. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14, no. 1 (2005): 1. Bowlin, John. “Barth and Aquinas on Election, Relationship, and Requirement.” Paper presented at “Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Protestant-Catholic Dialogue.” Princeton Theological Seminary, June 19–22, 2011. Braaten, Carl E., and Robert W. Jenson, eds. Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Brigham, Erin. See, Judge, Act. Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2013. Bromiley, Geoffrey. An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979. Brown, R. M. The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Byers, Sarah. “Augustine and the Philosophers.” In A Companion to Augustine, edited by M. Vessey, 175–87. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2012. Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Global Justice, Christology, and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Theological Bioethics: Participation, Justice, Change. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005. Callahan, Daniel. Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987. Callahan, Daniel. The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. Callahan, Daniel. What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990. Calvin, John. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960. Cameron, Michael. “Enarrations in Psalmos.” In Augustine through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 290–96. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.

248

Bibliography

Cameron, Michael. “Sign.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 793–98. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Camosy, Charles C. “The Vulnerable will be the Victims: Opposing View.” USA Today October 20, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/20/californiaphysician-assisted-suicide-belgium-netherlands-editorials-debates/74296214/ Canning, Raymond. “Uti/Frui.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 859–61. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Cavadini, John C. “Ambrose and Augustine De Bono Mortis.” In The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R.A. Markus, edited by William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey, 232–49. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Cavadini, John C. “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s De trinitate.” Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 103–23. Chrysostom, John. The Preaching of Chrysostom: Homilies on the Sermon on the Mount, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967. Coakley, Sarah A. “‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion.” In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by S. T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins, 123–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Cochran, Elizabeth Agnew. Receptive Human Virtues: A New Reading of Jonathan Edward’s Ethics. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free Press, 2006. Couenhoven, Jesse. “Saint Augustine.” In The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by Hugh LaFollette. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013. Daly, Brian. “Christology.” In Augustine through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 164–69. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Coming of Age. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. New York: Warner Books, 1973. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Citadel Press, 1948. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books, 1952. de Grey, Aubrey with Michael Rae. Ending Aging. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007. de Grey. “SENS Statement of Principle.” In H+Transhumanism and its Critics, edited by Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie, 67–69. Philadelphia: Metanexus Institute, 2011. de Grey. “The Urgency Dilemma: Is Life Extension Research a Temptation or a Test?” In On Moral Medicine, 3rd edition, edited by M. Therese Lysaught and Joseph Kotva, 535–38. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Dodaro, Robert. Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Dodaro, Robert. “Justice.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 481–83. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Downing, Raymond. Death and Life in America. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2008. Editorial, “Physician-Assisted Suicide Laws Grant Dignity: Our View.” USA Today, October 20, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/20/our-viewphysician-assisted-suicide-california-oregon-editorials-debates/74282866 Eire, Carlos. A Very Brief History of Eternity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Bibliography

249

Emmons, R. A., and M. E. McCullough, eds. “Gratitude and the Science of Positive Psychology.” In Handbook of Positive Psychology, edited by C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, 459–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Emmons, R. A., and M. E. McCullough, eds. “Highlights from the Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness.” http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/ Erikson, Erik H., and Joan M. Erickson. The Life Cycle Completed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1997. Evans. G. R. Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Farley, Margaret. “Compassionate Care: The Fostering of Hope.” Paper presented at Stella Maris Annual S. Louis Mary Battle, RSM, Lecture, November 24, 2003. Farley, Margaret. Compassionate Respect: A Feminist Approach to Medical Ethics and Other Questions. New York: Paulist Press, 2002. Fiedrowicz, Michael. “General Introduction.” In On Genesis, edited by Augustine, 13–22. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002. Finlan, Stephen. Problems with Atonement. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005. Fitzgerald, Allan D. “Works of Mercy.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 557–61. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Fries, James F. “Physical Activity, the Compression of Morbidity, and the Health of the Elderly.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 89 (February 1996): 64–68. Fullam, Lisa. The Virtue of Humility: A Thomistic Apologetic. Lewiston, NY: Edwin-Mellen Press, 2009. Goldstein, Valerie Saiving. “The Human Situation: A Feminine View.” The Journal of Religion 40, no. 2 (April 1960): 100–12. Gregory, Eric. Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Gregory of Nanzianzus, “Letter 101,” in Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. J. N. D. Kelly. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1976. Gustafson, James F. Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Hall, Stephen S. Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. Hauerwas, Stanley, Carole Bailey Stoneking, Keith G. Meador, and David Cloutier, eds. Growing Old in Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row. 1962. Hunsinger, George. “A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Calvin and Barth.” In Conversing with Barth, edited by John C. McDowell and Mike Higton, 68–89. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. Hunsinger, George. Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. Hunsinger, George. How To Read Karl Barth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Hunsinger, George. “Karl Barth’s Christology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster, 127–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hunsinger, George. “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Concept of Death.” In Stanford Honors Essay in Humanities, XII. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1969. Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. Jones, Paul Dafydd. The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. London: T&T Clark, 2008.

250

Bibliography

Jones, Paul Dafydd. “Karl Barth on Gethsemane.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9, no. 2 (April 2007): 148–71. Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd edition Translated by James W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. Kass, Leon. Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002. Keenan, James F. Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Texts from the Catholic Tradition, 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward, 2004. Keenan, James F. Virtues for Ordinary Christians. Kansas City : Sheed & Ward, 1996. Keenan, James F. The Works of Mercy: The Heart of Catholicism, 2nd edition. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Keenan, James, and Daniel Harrington. Jesus and Virtue Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Keenan, James, and Daniel Harrington. Paul and Virtue Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. Kierkegaard, Søren. Repetition. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Kirk, Kenneth. “It’s Great to Be Alive: Retirement and Human Flourishing.” In Between Poetry and Politics: Essays in Honour of Enda McDonagh, edited by Barbara Fitzgerald and Linda Hogan, 191–203. Blackrock: Columbia Press, 2003. Kolbet, Paul R. Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Krötke, Wolfe. “Karl Barth’s Anthropology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster, 159–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kurzweil, Ray, and Terry Grossman. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, Inc., 2004. Lancel, Serge. St. Augustine. Translated by Antonia Nevill. London: SCM Press, 1999. Lavere, George. “Virtue.” In Augustine Through The Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 871–73. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Markus, R. A. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Mathewes, Charles T. “Augustinian Anthropology.” Journal of Religious Ethics 27, no. 2 (1999): 195–221. Mathewes, Charles T. Evil and the Augustinian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Mathewes, Charles T. A Theology of Public Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. May, William F. The Patient’s Ordeal. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Mayo Clinic Staff, “Human Growth Hormone (HGH): Does it Slow Aging?” http:// www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/healthy-aging/in-depth/growth-hormone/art20045735 McCarty, Brett. “Diagnosis and Therapy in the Anticipatory Corpse: A Second Opinion.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (2016): 621–41. McGrath, Alister. Introduction to Christian Theology, vol. 5. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. McGrath, Alister. Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Bibliography

251

McKenny, Gerald. The Analogy of Grace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. McKenny, Gerald. To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology, and the Body. Albany : State University of New York, 1997. McKenny, Gerald. “Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology.” In Transhumanism and Transcendence, edited by Ronald Cole-Turner, 177–92. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2011. Meilaender, Gilbert. Friendship. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. Meilaender, Gilbert. Should We Life Forever? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. Meilaender, Gilbert. The Theory and Practice of Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. Middleton, Marc. “Growing Bolder: Jack LaLane, The Father of Compressed Morbidity.” The Huffington Post, January 25, 2011. Neder, Adam. Participation in Christ: An Entry into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Nimmo, Paul. Being in Action. London: T&T Clark, 2007. Norris, Richard, ed. “The Council of Chalcedon’s Definition of the Faith.” In The Christological Controversy. Translated by Richard A. Norris, 155–59. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. Nuland, Sherwin. The Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being. New York: Random House, 2007. Nussbaum, Martha C. Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellensitic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. O’Donovan, Oliver. The Problem of Self Love in St. Augustine. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. O’Donovan, Oliver. “Usus and Fruitio in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I.” Journal of Theological Studies 33, no. 2 (October 1982): 361–97. Plato, Republic, 2nd ed. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992. Pinches, Charles. “The Virtues of Aging.” In Growing Old in Christ, edited by Stanley Hauerwas, Carole Bailey Stoneking, Keith G. Meador, and David Cloutier, 202–25. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pope, Stephen J. “Overview of the Ethics of Aquinas.” In The Ethics of Aquinas, edited by Stephen J. Pope, 30–53. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002. Porter, Jean. “Virtue.” In The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, edited by Gilbert Meilaender and William Werpehowski, 205–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Possidius. The Life of Saint Augustine, edited by John E. Rotelle. Villanova, PA: Augustinian Press, 1988. Quinn, John M. “Eternity.” In Augustine through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 318–20. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Quinn, John M. “Time.” In Augustine through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 832–37. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Belknap: Cambridge Press, 1971. Rebillard, Eric. “Interaction between the Preacher and His Audience: The Case-Study of Augustine’s Preaching on Death.” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 86–96. Rebillard, Eric. In hora mortis: évolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort aux, IVe et Ve siècles dans l’Occident latin. Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 283. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994.

252

Bibliography

Reta, Jose Oroz. “Conversion.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 239–42. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Rodin, R. Scott. Evil and Theodicy in the Theology of Karl Barth. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “The Left Hand of God in the Theology of Karl Barth; Karl Barth as a Mythopoeic Theologian.” Journal of Religious Thought 25, no. 1 (1968–69): 3–26. Rusch, William G., ed. The Trinitarian Controversy. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. Selderhuis, Herman J., ed. The Calvin Handbook. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Snyder, C. R., and Shane J. Lopez, eds. Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Snyder, Kevin L. Rand, and David R. Sigmon. “Hope Theory.” In Handbook of Positive Psychology, edited by C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, 257–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sommers, Tish, and Laurie Shields. Women Take Care: The Consequences of Caregiving in Today’s Society. Gainesville, FL: Triad Publishing, 1987. Steven, M. Cahn, and Christine Vitrano, Happiness: Classical and Contemporary Readings in Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Stipp, David. “Beyond Reserveratrol: The Anti-Aging NAD Fad.” Scientific American, March 11, 2015. Straw, Carole. “Timor Mortis.” In Augustine through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A., 838–42. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Tangney, June Price. “Humility.” In Handbook of Positive Psychology, edited by C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, 411–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Tanner, Kathryn. Christ the Key. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Tanner, Kathryn. “Creation and Providence.” In The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster, 111–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Teske, Roland J. “Genesis Accounts of Creation.” In Augustine through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 379–81. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Resolution on Health Care Reform,” Origins 23, no. 7 (1993). Accessed August 31, 2016, http://originsplus.catholicnews. com. Vacek, Edward Collins. “Vices and Virtues of Old-Age Retirement.” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 30, no. 1 (2010): 161–81. Van Bavel, Tarcisius J. “Love.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 509–16. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Van Inwagen, Peter. “Genesis and Evolution.” In Reasoned Faith, edited by Eleonore Stump, 98–100. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993. Vanstone, W. H. The Stature of Waiting. London: Morehouse Publishing, 1982. Verhey, Allen. The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2011. Verhey, Allen. Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Vogt, Christopher. Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Wanjek, Christopher. “Anti-Aging May Actually Shorten Life.” Live Science, March 27, 2014, http://www.livescience.com/44436-anti-aging-hormone-may-actually-shortenlife.html

Bibliography

253

Weaver, Darlene Fozard. “Sorrow Unconsoling and Inconsolable Sorrow: Grief as a Moral and Religious Practice.” In Making Sense of Dying and Death, edited by Andrew Fagar, 31–48. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. Weaver, J. Denny. The Nonviolent Atonement. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. Webster, John. Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Webster, John. Barth’s Moral Theology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. Webster, John. The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Werpehowski, William. “Narrative and Ethics in Barth.” Theology Today 43, no. 3 (1986): 334–53. Werpehowski, William. “Weeping at the Death of Dido.” Journal of Religious Ethics 19, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 175–91. Wetzel, James. Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2010. Wetzel, James. Augustine and the Limits of Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Williams, Rowan. “Augustine and the Psalms.” Interpretation 58, no. 1 (January 2004): 17–27. Williams, Rowan. “Augustine’s Christology: Its Spirituality and Rhetoric.” In In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daly, edited by Peter W. Mathewes, 176–89. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2008. Williams, Rowan. “Christological Exegesis of Psalm 45” In Meditations of the Heart: the Psalms in Early Christian Thought and Practice, edited by A. Andreopoulos, A. Casiday, and C. Harrison, 17–32. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011. Williams, Rowan. “Creation.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 251–54. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Williams, Rowan. “De Trinitate.” In Augustine Through the Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 845–51. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Williams, Rowan. “‘Good for Nothing’? Augustine on Creation.” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 9–24. Williams, Rowan. “Insubstantial Evil.” In Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, edited by Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, 105–23. London: Routledge, 2000. Williams, Rowan. “Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine’s De Doctrina.” Journal of Literature & Theology 3, no. 2 (July 1989): 138–50. Williams, Rowan. “Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on De Trinitate.” In Collectanea Augustiniana, edited by Bernard Bruning, Mathijs Lamberigts, and J. van Houtem, 317–32. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Suffering Love.” In Philosophy and the Christian Faith, edited by Thomas Morris, 196–237. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.

INDEX abandonment Augustine’s 117 psychological experience of 115, 120–3 action contemplation and 102–3 manner of virtuous living and 191–4 manner of vocational living and 204–7 obedience and 150–2 Word or Wisdom of God 134–5 active agency 143–60 as middle voice 160–72 active obedience 145–8, 179 actualization 20–2 age retardation therapy 2 aging. See also death Augustine on 46–57, 102–39 Barth on 89–98, 142–80 as consequence of cataclysmic fall 32–4 cross and resurrection for 123–33 Divine summons 92–4 images of 1–2 meaning of 46–57 in middle voice 141–80 organic growth as 20–2 as preparation 54–7 transhumanist perspective of 2–3 as union, prayer, and participation 178–80 as “the unique opportunity” 89–92 virtues for 209–20, 220–8 visible signs of 2 allotted life span 85–9 Ambrose 17–18, 34, 36, 37, 41 Analogy of Grace (McKenny) 59, 79 n.90, 82 n.105, 141, 194, 196 n.65 Answer to the Arian Sermon (Augustine) 115 Anticipatory Corpse, The (Bishop) 6, 8

anxiety awareness of this mindset and 162 psychological 40, 136, 157 apatheia 39 Apollinarianism 103, 115 Aquinas, Thomas 9, 22, 79 n.91, 89, 110, 182, 186, 196, 215–18, 222, 224 Aristotelian metaphysics 7 Aristotle 9, 110, 163, 186 “four natural virtues” 186 on friendship 222–3 natural virtue theory and 182 Nicomachean Ethics 56, 163 virtue of liberality 214 on wisdom and prudence 215–16, 218 ascent intellectual and volitional 108 Neoplatonic 112 n.57, 116 atonement centrality of 123 n.103, 129 n.129 giving and receiving 179 Great Exchange and 132–4 Attic Nights 183 Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed (Wetzel) 42–3 Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Wetzel) 182–4 Augustinian Christology 102–39 contemplation and action 102–23 cross and resurrection for aging and dying 123–33 participating in God and the Body of Christ 134–9 person of Christ 102–23 union with Christ 134–9 work of Christ 123–33 Augustinian sin 27–9, 32–4, 102 Augustinian-Thomistic virtue ethics 193–4 Augustinian virtue theory contemplation and action 191–4

Index

255

content of 182–6 manner of virtuous living 191–4 philosophical virtue theories and 182–4 role of Christology for Augustinian virtue 186–9 theological virtue theory and 182–4 union with Christ for virtue 189–91 Ayres, Lewis 105–7, 112, 134, 188

Bible 118 Biggar, Nigel 82, 199 Biotechnology 2 Bishop, Jeffrey 6, 43, 110–11, 141 n.2, 236–7 Body of Christ participating in 134–9 Bostrom, Nick 2–3, 229 Brummel-Smith, Kenneth 5–6

baby boomers 5 Bacon, Francis 3, 6 Baker, Kimberly 135, 192 “Barmen Declaration” 217 Barth, Karl 8–9, 59–98 on aging 89–98 on analogy of ordered soul and body 169–70 Christologically driven virtue theory 9, 181 on Christ’s obedience through humility 147–8 on death 59–89 on death and aging 59–99 on divine election 149–52 doctrine of creation 59, 194 on hypostatic union 155–60 interpretation of the Reformers 79 n.90, 197 n.67 on nothingness 64 “permissive will” 67 on Sabbath rest 173–6 on sign of judgment 69 Barthian Christology 142–80 person of Christ 143–60 union with Christ 173–80 work of Christ 160–72 Barthian vocation in its differentiation and similarity to virtue 194–9 manner of vocational living 204–7 receiving and acting 204–7 role of Christology for 200–2 status of ethical agent 194–9 as union with Christ 194–207 union with Christ as vocation 202–4 Beauchamp, Tom 221 Becker, Ernst 1 Being in Action (Nimmo) 194, 197–8, 200

Callahan, Daniel 6, 236 Calvin, John 67, 79, 82, 203 Cameron, Michael 135 Camosy, Charles 45 n.134, 233 n.21 Cassiciacum dialogues 16 cataclysmic fall 32–4 Cato “the Younger” 39 Cavadini, John C. 17–18, 44, 125, 189, 192 Chalcedon 103, 114, 120, 136, 147–8 Childress, James F. 221 Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus, The (Verhey) 11 Christian fidelity 223 Christian hope 206–7, 220 Christian Life, The 225, 236 Christian Stoics 17, 18. See also Ambrose Christian theology 8 Christology 9, 10. See also Augustinian Christology; Barthian Christology role for Augustinian virtue 186–9 role for Barthian vocation 200–2 Christus Victor 123 n.103, 127–9 Chrysostom, John 182 chthonic powers 225, 236, 238 Church Dogmatics (Barth) 13, 59, 64, 78, 81, 92, 141, 149, 195, 200, 217, 225 Cicero 16, 97 City of God, The (Augustine) 17, 27, 29, 36–7, 123–4, 126, 130, 138, 184 Coming of Age, The (de Beauvoir) 1 Commentaries on Genesis 192 communicatio gratiarum (communication of grace) 155 communicatio idiomatum (communication of idioms or attributes) 155 communicatio operationum (communication of operations) 155 compassion, ethics of 40–6

256

Index

Compassionate Respect (Farley) 221 competing interlocutors, Augustine and 17–18 compressed morbidity negative effects of 5 conditional mortality 27–9, 51 Confessions (Augustine) 23–4, 26, 29, 40, 43, 57, 114, 120, 123, 127, 183, 190, 217 contemplation 54, 56–7 action and 102–3 manner of virtuous living and 191–4 manner of vocational living and 204–7 Word or Wisdom of God 134–5 contemplative action Augustinian Christology and aging 102–39 overview 101–2 cosmetic surgeries 2 Council of Chalcedon 103 Council of Constantinople 103 Council of Nicaea 103, 114 creation 19–29 Augustine's allegorical interpretation of 48 of heaven and earth 20 shadow/negative side of 72–5 creation ex nihilo 20 cross for aging 123–33 for dying 123–33 cryonics movement 3 Cyril of Alexandria 103 Dafydd, Paul 68, 69, 70–1, 158 Daly, Brian 119 Daly, Todd 232 das Nichtige (nothingness). See nothingness (das Nichtige) death. See also aging; Barth, Karl; St. Augustine age-related diseases and 4 Ambrose on 17–18 as assault on created existence 35–6 as consequence of cataclysmic fall 32–4 emotions and 35–46 as entry into eternal rest 54–7

Manicheans on 17 modern attitudes towards 1 as sinister 65–8 terms of 33 as unnatural curse 18–35 de Beauvoir, Simone 1 De Bono Mortis (Ambrose) 17 De Doctrina Christiana. See On Christian Teaching (Augustine) de Grey, Aubrey 2, 4 De libero arbitrio (Augustine) 16 deliverer and liberator 123, 127–9 dementia 5, 134, 175 “denial of death” 7 Denial of Death (Becker) 1 deontology 221 descent 133, 152, 200 De Trinitate (Augustine) 128, 134 De vera religione (Augustine) 16 diminution 51 disintegration 51 divine summons 92–4 Docetism 147, 152–3 Dodaro, Robert 39, 42, 102, 183, 191, 224, 239 dying 36 cross and resurrection for 123–33 Einstein, Albert 90 Eire, Carlos 90 elders, negative image of 1 Emmons, Robert 213 emotions 18 compassion 40–6 death and 35–46 grief 16, 36–7, 40 love (see love) Enneads (Plotinus) 17 ensouled bodies 51 eschatological bodies 55 eternal temporality 75–6 eternity Augustine’s theology 24, 26 incarnation and 71, 75–6, 200 ethical agent, status of 194–9 ethics as command of God 78–82 of compassion 40–6 of death 82, 89

Index

257

euthanasia 45, 88, 217 Evangelical Theology (Barth) 176–8, 180 Evans, G. R. 30, 53–4 evil Barth’s view of 60–5 within das Nichtige 60–5 as disordered love 31–2 as privation 29–31 evolutionary biology 10, 21 existence as participation 178–80 as prayer 178–80 as union 178–80 Expositions of the Psalms (Augustine) 103, 123–4, 127, 135–6, 187 extropy 3 Extropy Institute 3 Extropy Magazine 3

Gospel of John 104, 108, 111, 115, 121, 161, 165 Gospel of Mark 160–1, 165 gratitude 152–60 Barth on 212–14 faith and 207 joy as 87 obeying Christ’s call with 77 Son of God 201 Son of Man 152–60 Great Exchange 122–4, 132–3, 137–8, 155 Gregory, Eric 11 n.41, 31 n.65, 32, 43, 139, 193 Gregory of Nanzianzus 115, 120, 136 grief legitimacy of 16, 36–7, 40, 120–3 repentance and 38 Guarente, Leonard 2

Farley, Margaret 221 fear of death. See timor mortis (fear of death) figurative signs 47 finitude 9, 70, 75–8. See also temporality evolutionary biology and 10 as gift 71, 72 Jesus Christ’s assumption of 70–1 mortality as 6, 72 fixed providential design 39 fortitude 186, 208–9, 217–19, 242–3 freedom, misuse of 27–9 friendship 209, 220, 222–3, 229 Fullam, Lisa 210

Heidegger, Martin 91–2 Hill, Edmund 104 Holy Spirit 103–4, 108, 114, 138, 159, 190, 206 Homily on the First Epistle of John (Augustine) 190 hope 125–6, 131, 181, 186, 201, 205–9, 219–20, 235, 241–2 human being Aristotelian definition of 16 Augustine on 25–7 as ensouled bodies 51 as time-bound creatures 51 human growth hormone therapy 2 humanistic naturalism 231 human nature Augustine on 16 mortality as constitutive of 71–2 human temporality. See temporality humility 44, 99, 103, 109, 114–19, 138–9 Christ’s great act of compassion through 126 Christ’s obedience through 146–8, 179 Personifying 132, 207 Son of Man 114–19, 200–1 Hunsinger, George 79 n.90, 91, 142, 145 n.18, 199 hypostatic union 103, 152, 154–5, 200–4, 241

Garden of Gethsemane 40, 64, 68, 160, 165, 177, 179 generosity 193, 209, 213–14, 242–3 geriatrics 5–6 Gilligan, Carol 223 giving 142–5, 148, 156, 159–60, 179, 209, 211, 214 Gnostic dualisms 234 God. See also Jesus Christ as Creator 19–29 participating in 134–9 and Sabbath rest 173–4 as summum bonum 184 Goldstein, Valerie Saiving 210

258 In a Different Voice (Gilligan) 223 incarnation 43, 44, 65, 70–1, 75–6 as active and eternal decree 143–5 compassionate 11 eternity and 71, 75–6, 200 Wetzel on 43 indignity of passion 160, 162–5 Jay, Meg 77 Jesus Christ active agency 143–60 active and passive agency as middle voice 160–72 Barthian vocation as union with 194–207 as elected human 149–52 giving and receiving 160–72 humility and love for the neighbor 138–9 humility and obedience 114–19 the Mediator as physician and healer 129–32 the Mediator as sacrifice and priest 123–7 passive agency in the human reception 143–60 person of 102–23, 143–60 resurrection 34–5, 52, 55 Sabbath rest as active receiving and prayer 173–80 as Son of Man 48, 103, 112, 114–19, 142, 143, 145, 148–59, 201 as time-ful 75–6 as Trinitarian Son 75 union with 134–9, 173–80 Word or Wisdom of God 134–5 work of 123–33, 160–72 Jesus of Nazareth 117 Jones, Paul Dafydd 158 judgment dark 68–70 sinister sign of 65–8 justice love and 138–9, 189, 192–3, 225 political 224 scientia 111 Son as mediator fulfilling 111

Index Kant, Immanuel 221 Kass, Leon 210 Keenan, James F. 212–13, 216–7, 220, 223 Kirk, Kenneth 242 knowledge as scientia 111–13 Kolbet, Paul 36, 37, 130 Krötke, Wolfe 71 lament 11, 48, 66 n.37, 120, 181, 240 Lament for a Son (Wolterstorff ) 43 Lancel, Serge 16–17, 35 Lavere, George 186–8 legitimacy of grief 120–3 Letter to the Hebrews (Augustine) 123–4 life, various stages of maturity/middle age 95–6 old age 96–7 unique call amid 94–8 youth 94–5 Literal Meaning of Genesis, The (Augustine) 25, 28–9 literal signs 47 love 184–6 justice and 138–9, 189, 192–3, 225 for the neighbor 138–9 ordered/disordered 16, 31–2, 38–40, 46, 47, 54 sapientia-filled 138 Luther, Martin 79, 82, 92, 98, 132, 138, 142, 155, 203, 241 McCarty, Brett 7 McCullough, Michael 213 McKenny, Gerald 4, 7–8, 59, 111, 141, 171, 175, 229, 232–3 Manichaean dualisms 184 Manichaeism 183 Manicheans 17, 18, 19, 20 manner of virtuous living 191–4 of vocational living 204–7 Markus, R. A. 237 n.41, 238 Marriage and Virginity (Augustine) 16 Mathewes, Charles T. 8, 11 n.41, 30 May, William F. 211, 216, 218–19 Maynard, Brittany 45, 234 Medicare 5 medicine 5–8 “denial of death” 7

Index Meilaender, Gilbert 10–11, 208 n.120, 212, 223 memory 105, 113, 175, 216–17, 224 menacing waters 63 mercy 193, 209, 220, 224–8 middle age 95–6 mortality 6–8, 16–7, 19, 25, 31, 33, 46, 232 Christ’s assumption of human finitude illuminating 44, 70–1 conditional 27–9 as consequence of fallen humanity 33 as constitutive of human nature 71–2 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 74 natural death 33–4 Nazi Germany 217 Neder, Adam 141, 149, 158, 194–5 Neoplatonism 117, 130 Neoplatonists 19, 20, 37 Nestorius of Constantinople 103 New Testament 125, 126 n.117, 145, 203, 226 Nicaea 103, 136, 147 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 56, 163 Niebuhr, Reinhold 210 Nietzsche 229 Nimmo, Paul 142, 178 nothingness (das Nichtige) 29, 50 concept of 61–2 evil, sin, and consequent death within 60–5 as non-entity/third sphere 62 obedience 114–19 active 145–8, 179 perfected through Christ’s union with humanity 136–7 old age Augustine on 48–9 Barth on 96–7 Old Testament 104, 123 On Christian Life (Barth) 178 On Christian Teaching (Augustine) 31–2, 47, 185, 238 On Free Will (Augustine) 184 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees (Augustine) 18, 25, 46, 48 On the Incarnation (Athanasius) 137

259

On the Morals of the Catholic Church (Augustine) 186–7, 193 ordered/disordered love 16, 31–2, 38–40, 46, 47, 54, 185, 189, 191, 193, 216 original sin 18, 22 n.31, 30 n.58, 33, 66 Paris, John J. 234 Participation in Christ: An Entry into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Neder) 141, 194 passive agency in the human reception 143–60 as middle voice 160–72 Pauline 51, 55 Pearce, David 3 Pelagians 17, 18, 34, 42, 183, 184 person of Christ 102–23, 143–60 Peters, Ted 230, 232 Phaedo (Plato) 17 philosophical virtue theories 182–4 physician and healer 129–32, 137, 138 physician-assisted suicide 45, 46, 170–1, 233–5 Pinches, Charles 210 Plato 7, 17, 111 n.48, 186, 224 Phaedo 17 Republic 7 Platonists 17, 18, 20, 34, 39, 44 Plotinus 17 practical virtues 207–28 for aging 209–20 for community surrounding aging 220–8 prayer communal dimension of 178 Sabbath rest and 176–8 prayer and work 176–8 privation 50–1 evil as 29–31 Proslogion (Anselm) 177 providence 63, 65 psychological anguish 120, 189 Quinn, John M.

24, 33

Rebillard, Eric 40 Receiving 142–5, 148, 156, 159–60, 179, 209 Regulus, Marcus Atilius 39

260 relationality 134, 194 relativity, theory of 90 Republic (Plato) 7 res (signs) 47–50. See also sign(s) respect 209, 220–2, 224, 227–8, 242 rest 54–7 resurrected life 34–5 resurrection 25, 34–5, 44, 52, 55, 56 for aging 123–33 for dying 123–33 Retractationes (Augustine) 18 Rodin, R. Scott 60 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 63–4 Sabbath, Augustine's example of interpreting 47 Sabbath rest as active receiving 174–6 as active receiving and prayer 173–80 God and 173–4 prayer and 176–8 sign and preparation for 46–57 telos of medicine 232–9 transhumanist challenge 229–32 work and 173–4 sacred scripture, Augustine on 48 sacrifice and priest 123–7 saeculum (Markus) 238 St. Ambrose 17–18 St. Augustine 8–9, 15–57 on aging 46–57 allegorical interpretation of creation 48 competing interlocutors and 17–18 early works 16 Ennarations in Psalmos (Explanations of the Psalms) 118 on human being 25–7 on human nature 16 image of Simeon 57 Lancel on 16–17, 35 major life works 18 on original sin 18 on sacred scripture 48 theological positions 16 understanding of Genesis 1 48 sapientia (wisdom) 103, 107–14, 116, 134–5, 138, 187–8, 192, 215

Index scientia (knowledge) 110–13, 134–5, 187, 192, 215 senescence 4 SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation 4 shadow side of creation 70, 72–5 Shelton, Charles 213 Should We Live Forever? (Meilaender) 10 sign(s) 46–57 figurative 47 literal 47 things used as 47 useful 47 Simeon (Gospel of Luke) 57 sin within das Nichtige 60–5 as perversion 29–31 as resistance to God’s grace 66 sinister, death as 65–8 Son of Man, Christ 48, 103, 112, 114–19, 142, 143, 145, 148–59, 201 soul-body 119, 168, 172, 235, 240 souls 17 Stature of Waiting, The (Vanstone) 141, 160 Stoicism 130, 165, 183 Stoics 17, 18, 33–4, 36–7, 38, 39, 42, 43, 45 Tangney, June Price 211 Tanner, Kathryn 65, 99, 126–7, 132, 153n60 temporality 71, 75–8. See also finitude eternal 75–6 as good rather than evil 76–8 humans as time-bound creatures in flux 76 terms of death, Augustine's description of 33 theological virtue theories 182–4 theory of relativity 90 Theotokos (Mary) 103 Third Reich 217 Thomistic metaphysics 7 time 22–5 time-ful, Jesus as 75–6 timor mortis (fear of death) 15, 18, 37, 39–40

Index To Relieve the Human Condition (McKenny) 232 totus Christus 118–19, 124–5, 135, 139, 154, 169, 189, 192, 241 transcendence 238 transhumanism 2–3, 229–34, 239 “Transhumanist Declaration, The” 3–4 Trinitarian God 72, 105 Trinity, The (Augustine) 103, 105, 123 union with Christ Augustinian virtue as 182–94 as Barthian vocation 202–4 Barthian vocation as 194–207 Great Exchange through 132–3 for virtue 189–91 uti/frui 31, 43, 47 Vacek, Edward 211 van Bavel, Tarsicius J. 114, 139, 189, 190, 192–3 Vanstone, W. H. 13, 101–2, 141, 160–5, 179, 241 verbum (truth/thing) 47–50 Verhey, Allen 6 virtue(s) for the aging 209–20 Augustinian virtue as union with Christ 182–94 Barthian vocation as union with Christ 194–207 Barthian vocation in its differentiation and similarity to 194–9 of justice 225–6 of mercy 225–6 order of love as the mode of 184–6 overview 181–2

261

practical virtues 207–28 of respect 220–1 union with Christ for 189–91 virtuous living, manner of 191–4 vocation 92–4 as locus of responsibility 92 vocational living, manner of 204–7 Vogt, Christopher 220 Weaver, Darlene Fozard 41, 43 Werpehowski, William 41, 42, 199 Western Christianity 182 Wetzel, James 42–3, 53, 182–3, 184 Williams, Rowan 20–1, 22, 23, 30, 102–3, 107, 108, 114, 116–18, 120, 121–2, 134, 135, 138, 139, 189 wisdom 209, 211, 214–17, 232, 241 action and 135, 171 Christ as pinnacle sign of 137 contemplation and 135, 171 Father as 109 fractured 188 knowledge and 135, 171 knowledge of truth and 187 Lavere on 188 sobriety and 187 Son as 107–12 Williams on 139 and the Word 134–5 wisdom as sapientia 111–13 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 41–2, 43 work as active receiving 174–6 prayer and 176–8 Sabbath rest and 173–4 World Transhumanist Association 3 youth

94–5. See also life, various stages of