Flesh
So, I have this class on the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The more I read the more disturbed I become at his view of God. But, maybe more frightening is his view of human nature.
He isn't the only person in this contemporary era to have a flawed understanding of human nature. Think about your own human nature. What comes to mind? It's complicated, right? But, most of us, if we are honest, will recognize a stark dichotomy within us. We will see a lot of beauty and mystery. Man is a wondrous animal. Look at the art! Look at the thought! The heights of human goodness transcend the tips of the mountains. Yet, at the same time, our depths are depraved. Aquinas even states that man without law devolves to behavior lower than the brute animals. The atrocities that we are capable of are worse than demonic. Yet, the disorder, the depravity, is not properly part of our nature.
The doctrine of Original Sin is essential for understanding man and Christ. Our proper nature, our original nature, does not possess the disordered passions that we currently experience. It does not possess the weakened will that we have. It does not possess the dulled intellect. These characteristics that we all experience are not proper to our nature. They are results of the sin of Adam. Our nature has been distorted.
Now, this is important for us because it lets us know important information about ourselves in treating the illness of vice and sin. But, it also let's us know what Mary is not. Mary, remember, because of the Immaculate Conception, does not participate in Original Sin. Those three things are not present in her. She is as Adam and Eve were before the fall. This is important because it tells us something about Christ. Christ received his human nature from Mary. He inherited from her a human nature undefiled by Original Sin.
So here is the problem with von Balthasar on this point. He presents to us a flawed image of Christ's humanity. In his work "The Heart of the World" he presents Christ as having experienced irrational disordered emotions. It is important to not get confused here. Emotions are good. They are part of our nature. The problem after the fall is that they are no longer harmoniously ordered by reason. It is this sort of humanity, fallen humanity, that he attributes to the person of Christ. This is a serious error.
The motivation for this is to try and present a God who experiences the same disordered state that we experience in the face of tragedy. But, the reality is very different. Christ is the savior not because he experiences exactly what we experience. Christ is the savior because he takes all things that are proper to man and through his redemptive act in the Paschal Mystery he restores the right relationship between God and man. He redeems what is proper to the human nature. He does not redeem what is not proper to the human nature. In the resurrection those things that are improper to human nature will no longer adhere to us. They have no part in Christ.
We must take seriously the statement that Christ was like us in all ways except sin. All the debates about the knowledge of Christ, the will of the Christ, the affective life of Christ in our contemporary time are colored by this same impoverished understanding of human nature like that found in von Balthasar. We must resist this temptation.
Idolatry
I'm disturbed.
I'm really, really disturbed.
The more I listen to people, even priests, the more I'm convinced that most people have replaced God with an idol of their own making. My first realization of this came to me when one of the brothers was recounting a story about a class he was taking. The professor wanted to know how we can account for God condoning and commanding violence in the Old Testament. One student said that she was uncomfortable with a God like that. Wait. What!!!?? Seriously!!!??
This sort of thing sends me SO ANGRY!
This is only one example of the way people recreate God in our own image. I hear people do it all the time. Philosophers and Theologians are always trying to make God less than what he is. I think they are genuine in their desire for God. However, they often lose sight of the ramifications for their statements.
They want God to be surprised. They want God to be changed by our prayers. They want God to suffer along with us. But, what they don't realize is that if God does any of these things then he is not God – he is unworthy of worship. Let me break it down:
- Surprised God = God lacking knowledge
- Changed God by prayers = God lacking in knowledge & goodness
- Suffering God = God lacking power
In the end, all of these things do violence to the absolute perfection and transcendence of God. If God is limited in his knowledge, power, perfection, goodness, etc., then he is not God, he becomes a thing among other things.
The young lady wasn't comfortable with a God who commands violence. I'm not comfortable with a God who lacks the ability to command violence. I'm not comfortable with a constrained God. I'm not comfortable with an image of God that isn't God!
I don't want this post to be about the philosophy of God. I simply want to point out that God is more than all these things. The world says that God needs to be relevant. What it means by this, however, is that God needs to be an emotional salve for my emotional wounds. On the contrary, God is not relevant in this way. The world wants us to believe that God needs us.
No!
God doesn't need any of us. It is the fact that God doesn't need us that makes his love for us all that more great. We don't increase his glory, we don't add to his goodness, we can't change him, we can't effect him. We can't DO anything for God. But, it is because of all this that his act of creation is so awesome. We do nothing for God, but he does everything for us. His love for us is unmerited, undeserved. There is no way for us to merit or deserve his love. He simply grants it because he loves us.
It's that simple.
So, who cares if you aren't comfortable with God! The reality of God doesn't hinge upon your comfort level. But, your existence hinges upon God's reality.
We can't punish God with our doubt or disbelief.
We must learn to not explain away God's actions. We simply need to try and understand the vastness of the mystery of God. We need to smash the Golden Calf in our mind and turn again to the true God who is infinitely transcendent.
God is beyond anything you can conceive of in your mind.
If you can conceive of God ... that's not God.
We Don't Need No Stinking Evidence
At least, this is often the problem with much of what passes as Scripture Scholarship these days. This is not an indictment of all contemporary Exegesis. I know some fantastic guys in the field. However, they are a persecuted class.
I have already seen some pushback against the third Jesus of Nazareth book by Pope Benedict XVI. I have even seen a brief article mocking the Holy Father's claims by a popular tech magazine. That's right! A tech magazine. Folks should really stick to what they know. Reach too far and you might just fall off the mountain side.
However, my friend Mark Brumley has written a short piece in defending the Holy Father's claim that literally all evidence points to Jesus being born in Bethlehem as opposed to those who claim that Jesus was born in Nazareth. Mark, however, makes a more important point: arguments from silence should not be taken seriously. Unfortunately, many contemporary theories in biblical scholarship stem from either silence or inference. Unfortunately, such claims are taken very seriously.
“In other words, the only places we can go for information regarding the birth of Jesus are the gospel accounts. They give no indication of Jesus having been born in Nazareth but they insist he was born in Bethlehem.”
