Trinity Catena 2a

Love is the union of a lover, a beloved, and of their mutual love. When we, following scripture, assert "God is love," we confess that God is a plurality in unity; God is love.

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It is Augustine who observes that God is love (in chapter eight of his wittily titled The Trinity). He doesn't do it as a philosopher, but as a pastor. Even while he is outlining how the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the father, and the intensity of their love is the Spirit of love itself, he reminds that love draws us out. Love requires us and compels us and irresistably changes us. Love is loving; it acts. Loving makes us lovers, bone of its bone, ever more able to see and be what loving requires. Our flaming hearts accept nothing less. And in the center of its unity we strain to glimpse the form itself-–the lover, what is being loved, and love–-and that is God.

The gaze catches so completely that I can only stammer some mystical poetry: a few lines from San Juan de la Cruz's love poem La noche oscura del alma ("Dark Night of the Soul") and from Mechthild of Magdeburg's Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of the Godhead):

"In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed
Forth unobserved I went,

In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.

That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,

O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love."

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"I cannot dance, O Lord,
Unless You lead me.
If You wish me to leap joyfully,
Let me see You dance and sing—-

Then I will leap into Love—-
And from Love into Knowledge,
And from Knowledge into the Harvest,
The sweetest Fruit beyond human sense.

There I will stay with You, whirling."

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Anyway, then--looking out from contemplation--there's something else that this sight of God as love does to us. That God is love itself sets the tone for what Christians mean when they talk about our deepest ideas of unity and community. The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff called the Trinity the communion of life and love. “Solitude is hell,” he said. “No one is an island. We are surrounded by persons, things, and beings on all sides.” The loving community of the Trinity calls us “to maintain relationships of communion with all, giving and receiving.”

Only persons can be in communion. It means that one is in the presence of the other, different from the other but open in a radical mutuality. For there to be true communion there must be direct and immediate relationships: eye to eye, face to face, heart to heart. The result of mutual surrender and reciprocal communion is community. Community results from personal relationships in which each is accepted as he or she is, each opens to the other and gives the best of himself or herself.

We will pick up this theme again.

The Meetup of Divine Intent

Driving in to work this morning, I was listening to a lecture on St. Bonaventure. I have always been fascinated by the mystics of Christian history, and I have read many of their works and summaries of their lives. The problem for me, though, is the explicit Neoplatonism that informs their ideas. The mystic way is not something I would have learned from the lips of the apostles. Its descent into the soul to find God is not the kind of spiritual advice that I read Jesus encouraging his followers to practice. So, as much as I admire these devout men and women of the church, I respectfully believe them misguided with respect to their Biblical theology. And that is no hidden scar.

But this morning I realized that I have come to find myself at the door of a better mystic way. This way is not a ladder of divine ascent. It does not struggle inward to God. Instead, it journeys outward--soul and body together--into the lives of one's neighbors and the needs of our communities. Instead of the cloud of unknowing, the self disappears into the river of God's selfless, overflowing love. One is carried in the eucharistic direction, to be broken and distributed for others. Perhaps there is still the threefold pattern of purgation, illumination, and union. Purgation of the self. Illumination about the people and communities in which one lives. And union with the Spirit as it pours itself kenotically into the world setting apart the name of God, living out the kingdom rule of God, and seeking to do the will of God.

Doctor Ehrmstuhl on the phone

The other day, I stopped during hours at the office of Doctor Ehrmstuhl and was pleased to find him at his desk. His office was generously lined with books and could have been tidy until he left off shelf space and began stacking along the floor. He motioned for me to come in and he seemed pleased to see me. It had been a while. Nevertheless, he was in animated conversation with someone on the phone. I waited so long that I finally took down some of it, and so here it is. These are my notes, remember, so factual mistakes or exaggerations are my own.

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I too was taught that differences between traditions, and especially between east and west, are due to the different emphases along what, for lack of a better term, is called the Christ event: birth-to-ascension. Over that, I lay the linguistic, political, and geographic differences that have shaped and separated both halves. I would add, on my own, that the east seems to properly begin with the community whereas the west has been fascinated by the individual and individualism to our very day. (He drummed his fingers on the table in muted staccato.)

You are right that the east is not as interested in how to be cleansed and more in how to live a holy life. The high example of that for EO are the monks of Mount Athos. EO kept the monasticism that Luther democratized in the West. It also retained a Neoplatonic core that the west gave up for Aristotelianism in the fourteenth century w Thomas Aquinas.

Let's separate mysticism from theosis (deification is a Latin term which doesn't quite ring with the right overtones.) Theosis, the doctrine that the new humanity is made like God, is definitely front-and-center in EO. Funny enough, it is in the west as well. A couple of decades ago, scholars started finding it in the Reformers--especially Calvin. Theosis has been in the west all this time as well. When we talk about the imago Dei's renewal in the sanctification process, the end goal where this is going is Christlikeness or theosis. I asked Tom Wright about it probably ten years ago now, and he affirmed that theosis is not only permissible but biblical. That said, it is NOT becoming a God or God, it is becoming like God: being made in the image of his Son.

That is why I don't like deification. It doesn't leave enough difference in the undertones and it suggests that one, in our own track, can improve and improve until one finally arrives at divinity. This is a kind of Mormon or New Age or New Thought or some brand of Wesleyan perfectionism. I prefer theosis because it keeps a note of distinction in between that which is by nature and that which is by grace. It is soteriological, not ontological.

(At this point, Dr. Ehrmstuhl remembered me. We exchanged some whispered pleasantries, and he assured me he was almost done. But, whomever he was talking to seems to have hit a nerve, and the doctor's attention swiveled back to the conversation.)

Mysticism is a style of discipleship which often refers to saints in the tradition who emphasized prayer and ascetic discipline, figures like Theresa of Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Francois Fenelon, Catherine of Siena, or anchorites like Richard Rolle or Julian of Norwich, and many others. But mysticism is a slippery word. Evelyn Underhill lays it all out in her work on mysticism. There are dangers here. You could be a neopagan and practice this, or a Buddhist or whatever. A deep question in my project is what to do with mysticism in the Christian tradition. Should we jettison it or not? Should mysticism even exists where the Solas exist? The short answer: a highly qualified yes. I do not agree with the hesychastic approach of the EO. They seek the uncreated light born of the energies of the Trinity. I think it is the ever-flowing agape life of the Spirit (Augustine's maestro) who calls us in the solas always higher up and further in. When theology turns its gaze there, it becomes apophatic--it can only say what is not.

(Here, his interlocutor took up the challenge. The Doctor swiveled in his chair. He finally broke in:) There is a Mount Athos documentary on YouTube. It is good. (More from the other side.) Hesychasm has nothing to do with the solas. I was using the solas as a part/whole to mean the framework of Reformed theology. Oh yes, a synecdoche--good catch! What I mean by that is that, because of that Neoplatonic core, EO developed a mysticism that is different than the mysticism of the West. And so I do not find their way into prayer a live option. What I know of it seems a way wholly apart from scripture. It risks keeping the divine Jesus and not the man. Or it might avoid Jesus altogether and try to climb on the rope of the Spirit alone. Therefore, it rings alarms in my head, not least of which is the alarm of gnosticism. I am not saying that EO monks are gnostics. They would probably be quick to shut that down. I'm just saying that it makes me nervous.

The whole essences and energies things comes out of Neoplatonic problems with the doctrine of the Trinity: how does the ineffable God have anything to do with finitude? The thinker here is Gregory of Palamas. (The doctor got up and rummaged around on his shelves.) The general understanding these days is that this language is strange to Western ears, but that it is orthodox. Trinitarian thinkers, EO or Western, are getting at the same thing. I read Palamas in that slim Classics of Western Theology volume. His isn't language I'm adopting anytime soon, but okay. One is stuck with the tradition you grew up with. I am okay attempting to be an informed Westerner.

(Here, again, his interlocutor took up the conversation for some distance.) Your thoughts on individualism and monasticism are good ones. I am not a good guide wading out any deeper into EO waters. I will say this, though. The danger with monasticism is that it has a tendency to create spiritual hierarchies (classism) in the church, and that is going on in EO. I prefer monasticism without hierarchy, and there are models for that even in Protestantism. My own denomination, for example, has various monasteries scattered about, as do other Protestant denominations.

Oh, I completely agree that the path of awakening, purgation, and union is the established way. But it has to be found correctly. Simply put: if it is not in Jesus, it is not available. He is the foundation stone. But not to worry: Paul's language of union with Christ, of being buried with him and raised with him, of being made alive in him: that is the invitation. So the mystic way is not to know nothing and to realize nothing, but to know Christ, following the pull of the Spirit, and to be remade after his image. It is to be invited, because the church has been invited, to the meal that the Trinity has set.

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At this point, I got a phone call from my wife. The doctor and I nodded genially, and he may have apologized. And I left.

Thielicke and the Father's heart

Helmut Thielicke (1908-19086) was a German, Lutheran theologian who helped his nation recover after World War II. He did what Bonhoeffer hoped to do. Thielicke was prolific. He wrote a giant book on ethics, a systematic theology, and many other works, including A Little Exercise for Youth Theologians. Today, I am reading one of his lesser books, I Believe (Ich Glaube. Das Bekenntnis der Christen) Fortress, 1968. And in it, he discusses what it is like to live as one who calls God "Father."

When I deeply love God, my conscience become more delicately adjusted, much more sensitive and responsive. Nor is this any wonder, for now my conduct is no longer determined by whether I should do this or that (my duty, for example), but I do it to please God. At first it is hard for me (even after I have become a Christian!) to work with someone who is disagreeable or whose character is dubious. It irks me to be open to someone like that, to give him a chance, and to speak an encouraging word to him. But now (even thought it still goes against the grain) I remember that Jesus Christ himself died for this man and that God grieves over him and wants to save him. Because I love God, my heart will beat with the Father's heart. Thus, I cannot do otherwise than accept and be "there" for this person with whom my Father does not think himself to good to associate. And when I fail to do this, when I simply cannot manage it, then I do not merely have a sense of moral failure, but rather I am sad because I have grieved God. When you love someone very much, his pain becomes your own pain. This is the reason why there is no more sensitive conscience than that of a person who loves God. It registers every shadow that passes over the heart of God. (6,7)

At first, this sounds no different than any other popular preacher's appeal printed in a thousand middlebrow paperbacks. But there is more to it than devotional good feeling. There is an ethic here. He soundly dismisses the Kantian deontology of müssen and duty. And, in its place, suggests a relational ethic that seems more like the personalism of Buber or Habermas. There isn't enough in this quotation to make it a Christian ethic, unless we give it the benefit of unspoken context. Nevertheless, if one squints a little, if the language is altered here and there, Thielicke could be an Eckhart or a Theresa of Avila. He could be a devoted lowland Beguine. Or, were the language developed and made sophisticated, maybe even an Augustine.