"Married Love and the Gift of Life:" American Bishops

Getting married. What a blessed and hope-filled time.

Men and women considering marriage yearn for certain things. They want to be accepted unconditionally by each other. They want their marriage to be filled with love and happiness. They want a family. In short, they want their marriage to be a source of joy and fulfillment their whole life long.

God’s plan for marriage, from the time he first created human beings as male and female, has always included all this and more. The desire and ability of a man and woman to form a lasting bond of love and life in marriage is written into their nature.

In the Rite of Marriage (1969) a man and woman are asked if they will love one another
faithfully and totally—in short, if they will love as God loves. “Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?” asks the bishop, priest, or deacon. “Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives? Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?” These are different ways of asking the same basic question: Are you ready to accept this person, and all that may come from your union, completely and forever?

The spouses seal their love and commitment through their sexual union. Many today find
it difficult to understand how profound and meaningful this union is, how it embodies these
promises of marriage. Our culture often presents sex as merely recreational, not as a deeply
personal or even important encounter between spouses. In this view, being responsible about sex simply means limiting its consequences—avoiding disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. This cultural view is impoverished, even sad. It fails to account for the true needs and deepest desires of men and women. Living in accord with this view has caused much loneliness and many broken hearts. God’s plan for married life and love is far richer and more fulfilling. Here sexuality is the source of a joy and pleasure that helps the spouses give themselves to each other completely and for their entire lives.

What does the Church teach about married love?

Marriage is more than a civil contract; it is a lifelong covenant of love between a man and a
woman. It is an intimate partnership in which husbands and wives learn to give and receive love
unselfishly, and then teach their children to do so as well. Christian marriage in particular is a
“great mystery,” a sign of the love between Christ and his Church (Eph 5:32).

Married love is powerfully embodied in the spouses’ sexual relationship, when they most
fully express what it means to become “one body” (Gn 2:24) or “one flesh” (Mk 10:8, Mt 19:6). The Church teaches that the sexual union of husband and wife is meant to express the full
meaning of love, its power to bind a couple together and its openness to new life. When
Scripture portrays God creating mankind “in his image” (Gn 1:27), it treats the union of man and woman as joining two persons equal in human dignity (“This one, at last, is bone of my bones /and flesh of my flesh,” Gn 2:23), and as being open to the blessing of children (“Be fertile and multiply,” Gn 1:28).

What does this have to do with contraception?

A husband and wife express their committed love not only with words, but with the language of their bodies. That “body language”—what a husband and wife say to one another through the intimacy of sexual relations—speaks of total commitment and openness to a future together. So the question about contraception is this: Does sexual intercourse using contraception faithfully
affirm this committed love? Or does it introduce a false note into this conversation?

Married love differs from any other love in the world. By its nature, the love of husband and wife is so complete, so ordered to a lifetime of communion with God and each other, that it is open to creating a new human being they will love and care for together. Part of God’s gift to husband and wife is this ability in and through their love to cooperate with God’s creative power. Therefore, the mutual gift of fertility is an integral part of the bonding power of marital intercourse. That power to create a new life with God is at the heart of what spouses share with each other.

To be sure, spouses who are not granted the gift of children can have a married life that is
filled with love and meaning. As Pope John Paul II said to these couples in a 1982 homily, “You are no less loved by God; your love for each other is complete and fruitful when it is open to others, to the needs of the apostolate, to the needs of the poor, to the needs of orphans, to the
needs of the world.”

When married couples deliberately act to suppress fertility, however, sexual intercourse is no longer fully marital intercourse. It is something less powerful and intimate, something more “casual.” Suppressing fertility by using contraception denies part of the inherent meaning of married sexuality and does harm to the couple’s unity. The total giving of oneself, body and soul, to one’s beloved is no time to say: “I give you everything I am—except. . . .”

The Church’s teaching is not only about observing a rule, but about preserving that total, mutual gift of two persons in its integrity. This may seem a hard saying. Certainly it is a teaching that many couples today, through no fault of their own, have not heard (or not heard in a way they could appreciate and understand). But as many couples who have turned away from contraception tell us, living this teaching can contribute to the honesty, openness, and intimacy of marriage and help make couples truly fulfilled.

Why does saying “yes” to children at the altar mean never using contraception to close the act of intercourse to new life? Some argue that if a husband and wife remain open to children throughout their marriage, they need not worry about using contraception occasionally. But practicing what is good most of the time does not justify doing what is wrong some of the time.

Even if I see myself as a truthful person “on the whole,” any occasional lie I tell is still a
lie, and so is immoral. By such acts, I begin to make myself into the kind of person who lies.
This is no less true when we falsify the “language of the body,” speaking total love and
acceptance of the other person while denying an essential part of that message.

A couple need not desire or seek to have a child in each and every act of intercourse. And
it is not wrong for couples to have intercourse even when they know the wife is naturally
infertile, as discussed below. But they should never act to suppress or curtail the life-giving power given by God that is an integral part of what they pledged to each other in their marriage vows. This is what the Church means by saying that every act of intercourse must remain open to life and that contraception is objectively immoral.

“[Natural Family Planning] has become more than a totally safe, healthy, and reliable method of birth regulation to us. The essential qualities of self-restraint, self-discipline, mutual respect, and shared responsibility carry over to all facets of our marriage, making our relationship more intimate.” (Faithful to Each Other Forever, 44)

Are couples expected to leave their family size entirely to chance?

Certainly not. The Church teaches that a couple may generously decide to have a large family, or may for serious reasons choose not to have more children for the time being or even for an indefinite period (Humanae Vitae, no. 10). In married life, serious circumstances—financial, physical, psychological, or those involving responsibilities to other family members—may arise to make an increase in family size untimely. The Church understands this, while encouraging couples to take a generous view of children.

What should a couple do if they have a good reason to avoid having a child?

A married couple can engage in marital intimacy during the naturally infertile times in a
woman’s cycle, or after child-bearing years, without violating the meaning of marital intercourse in any way. This is the principle behind natural family planning (NFP). Natural methods of family planning involve fertility education that enables couples to cooperate with the body as God designed it.

“NFP does require communication and commitment, but isn’t that what marriage is all about?

We have gained so much by using NFP and have lost nothing.” (Natural Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage, 18)

What is natural family planning?

Natural family planning is a general name for the methods of family planning that are based on a woman’s menstrual cycle. A man is fertile throughout his life, while a woman is fertile for only a
few days each cycle during the child-bearing years. Some believe that NFP involves using a
calendar to predict the fertile time. That is not what NFP is today. A woman experiences clear,
observable signs indicating when she is fertile and when she is infertile. Learning to observe and
understand these signs is at the heart of education in natural family planning.

When a couple decides to postpone pregnancy, NFP can be very effective. NFP can also
be very helpful for couples who desire to have a child because it identifies the time of ovulation.
It is used by many fertility specialists for this purpose. Thus a couple can have marital relations
at a time when they know that conception is most likely to take place.

Is there really a difference between using contraception and practicing natural family planning?

On the surface, there may seem to be little difference. But the end result is not the only thing that matters, and the way we get to that result may make an enormous moral difference. Some ways respect God’s gifts to us while others do not. Couples who have practiced natural family
planning after using contraception have experienced a profound difference in the meaning of
their sexual intimacy.

When couples use contraception, either physical or chemical, they suppress their fertility,
asserting that they alone have ultimate control over this power to create a new human life. With NFP, spouses respect God’s design for life and love. They may choose to refrain from sexual
union during the woman’s fertile time, doing nothing to destroy the love-giving or life-giving
meaning that is present. This is the difference between choosing to falsify the full marital
language of the body and choosing at certain times not to speak that language. The Church’s support for NFP is not based on its being “natural” as opposed to artificial. Rather, NFP respects the God-given power to love a new human life into being even when we are not actively seeking to exercise that power. However, because NFP does not change the human body in any way, or upset its balance with potentially harmful drugs or devices, people of other faiths or of no religious affiliation have also come to accept and use it from a desire to work in harmony with their bodies. They have also found that it leads couples to show greater attentiveness to and respect for each other.

“NFP has helped me mature, though I have a long way to go. . . . It has called me to cherish my wife rather than simply desire her.” (Faithful to Each Other Forever, 45-46)

What has been the impact of contraception on society? On married couples?

Many would likely be surprised at how long all Christian churches agreed on this teaching
against contraception. It was only in 1930 that some Protestant denominations began to reject
this long-held position. Those opposed to this trend predicted an increase in premarital sex,
adultery, acceptance of divorce, and abortion. Later, in 1968, Pope Paul VI warned that the use
of contraception would allow one spouse to treat the other more like an object than a person, and that in time governments would be tempted to impose laws limiting family size. Pope John Paul II called attention to the close association between contraception and abortion, noting that “the negative values inherent in the ‘contraceptive mentality’ . . . are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation [to abortion] when an unwanted life is conceived” (Evangelium Vitae, no. 13).

These predictions have come true. Today we see a pandemic of sexually transmitted
diseases, an enormous rise in cohabitation, one in three children born outside of marriage, and
abortion used by many when contraception fails. A failure to respect married love’s power to
help create new life has eroded respect for life and for the sanctity of marriage. “NFP made our union different, more of a total giving. . . . Because we’re open to life, we’re giving everything.” (Natural Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage, 64)

Is it true, as some claim, that some methods of birth control can cause an abortion?

Some methods of birth control are aimed at preventing the union of sperm and egg and therefore act only as contraceptives. These would include barriers such as condoms and diaphragms. By contrast, hormonal methods such as the Pill may work in several ways. They can suppress ovulation or alter cervical mucus to prevent fertilization, and thus act contraceptively. But they may at times have other effects, such as changes to the lining of the uterus. If the contraceptive action fails and fertilization takes place, these hormonal methods may make it impossible for a newly conceived life to implant and survive. That would be a very early abortion. Medical opinions differ on whether or how often this may occur. Currently there is no way to know precisely how these drugs work at any given time in an individual woman.
Concern about the risk of causing an early abortion is stronger in the case of pills taken
after intercourse to prevent pregnancy (“emergency contraception” or “morning-after pills”). In some cases these pills are taken when sperm and egg have already joined to create a new life, in
which case the drug could not have any effect except to cause an early abortion.

Conclusion

By using contraception, couples may think that they are avoiding problems or easing tensions,
that they are exerting control over their lives. But the gift of being able to help create another
person, a new human being with his or her own life, involves profound relationships. It affects
our relationship with God, who created us complete with this powerful gift. It involves whether
spouses will truly love and accept each other as they are, including their gift of fertility. Finally,
it involves the way spouses will spontaneously accept their child as a gift from God and the fruit
of their mutual love. Like all important relationships with other persons, it is not subject solely to our individual control. In the end, this gift is far richer and more rewarding than that.
You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Cor 6:19-20, RSV)

Living God’s design for human sexuality in marriage can be difficult. But husbands and
wives have not been left alone to live out this fundamental life challenge. If you have failed to do
so in the past, do not be discouraged. God loves you and wants your ultimate happiness. Loving
as Christ loves is a possibility opened to us by the power of the Holy Spirit, as a free gift of God.
Through prayer and the sacraments, including Reconciliation and the Eucharist, God offers us
the strength to live up to this challenge. Recall the words of Christ, repeated so often by John
Paul II: “Be not afraid!” The Church’s teaching on marital sexuality is an invitation for men and women—an invitation to let God be God, to receive the gift of God’s love and care, and to let this gift inform and transform us, so we may share that love with each other and with the world.

* * * * * * * *

WHERE TO LEARN MORE

The following list of resources begins with practical assistance and brief articles, and it
concludes with books and major Church documents that explore the Church's vision of
responsible parenthood at a deeper level.

Web Site United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/ (offers information on church teachings on conjugal love and responsible parenthood, methods of
natural family planning (NFP), where to find local classes, and which NFP organizations offer
home study programs).

Articles from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Respect Life Program

Bruchalski, John T. “The Contraceptive Revolution and its Fruits” (1997),
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/97rlpbru.htm.

Doerflinger, Lee Ann. “Natural Family Planning: An Unexpected Grace” (2002),
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/leedorf02.htm.

Notare, Theresa. “Sex: What Do Women (and Men) Really Want?” (2004),
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/04notare.htm.

Schu, Rev. Walter J. “Contraception and Abortion: The Underlying Link” (2005),
www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/Schu05finaleng.pdf.

Popular Books

Doyle, Fletcher. Natural Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage: Nineteen True Stories.
Cincinnati: Servant Books, 2006.

West, Christopher. Good News About Sex & Marriage. Cincinnati: Servant Publications, 2000.

Theology Books

García de Haro, Ramón. Marriage and the Family in the Documents of the Magisterium. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.

Hogan, Richard M., and John M. LeVoir. Covenant of Love: Pope John Paul II on Sexuality,

Marriage, and Family in the Modern World. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985.

Shivanandan, Mary. Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage. Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999.

Smith, Janet E. (ed.). Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader. San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1993.

West, Christopher. Theology of the Body Explained. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2003.
Church Documents

Pope Benedict XVI. Encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love). Washington, DC: United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2006.

Pope John Paul II. Encyclical Evangelium Vitae (On the Value and Inviolability of Human Life).
Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1995.

Pope John Paul II. Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (On the Family). Washington,
DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1982.

Pope Paul VI. Encyclical Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Birth). Washington, DC: United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1968.

Pope John Paul II. Letter to Families. Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 1994.

Pope John Paul II. The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan. Boston: Pauline
Books & Media, 1997.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd ed.), nos. 369-373, 1601-1666, 2360-2379. Washington,
DC: Libreria Editrice Vaticana–United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2000.

Married Love and the Gift of Life was developed by the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). It was approved for publication by the full body of bishops at its November 2006 General Meeting and has been authorized for publication by the undersigned.

Msgr. David J. Malloy, STD
General Secretary, USCCB

No to Contraception! "Married Love and Gift of Life" - American Bishops

“The Compass:” Diocese of Green Bay, Nov. 10, 2006.

“The proposed statement `Married Love and the Gift of Life’ marks the first time since `Human Life in Our Day’ in 1968 that the U.S. bishops have prepared a statement devoted specifically to the church's teaching that every conjugal act must be open to new human life. Several statements since then have reaffirmed that teaching, but none was devoted primarily to that question.

The 11-page statement from the Committee for Pro-Life Activities, says: "Some argue that if a husband and wife remain open to children throughout their marriage, they need not worry about using contraception occasionally. But practicing what is good most of the time does not justify doing what is wrong some of the time."

"A couple need not desire or seek to have a child in each and every act of intercourse," it adds. "And it is not wrong for couples to have intercourse even when they know the woman is naturally infertile.... But they should never act to suppress or curtail the life-giving power given by God that is an integral part of what they pledged to each other in their marriage vows. This is what the church means when it says that every act of intercourse must remain open to life."

The document on worthiness to receive Communion stems from a debate, peaking during the 2004 national elections, on whether bishops should publicly bar some Catholic political leaders from receiving Communion because of their public policy stands on abortion.

The 22-page statement from the Committee on Doctrine discusses what Catholics believe about the Eucharist and reception of Communion, what is meant by communion with the church and assent to its teachings, the need for sanctifying grace and how it is lost through grave violations of God's commandments.

"The statement is not intended to be a technical document for bishops, pastors or ministers, but is addressed to all the faithful and is designed to aid them in personally preparing for reception of holy Communion," says the committee's introductory note.


The National Catholic Register:

“Authored by the conference’s Pro-Life Committee, Married Love and the Gift of Life is intended to help Catholics understand God’s plan for married life and clarify why the Church cannot condone contraception.

“This is probably the most misunderstood teaching in the Church,” said Theresa Notare, assistant director for the bishops’ Natural Family Planning Program. “People think it’s a quaint little teaching that’s unrealistic, and when the Church catches up to modern times, it can change. They don’t understand that these teachings are basic truths that have been handed down since the apostolic age, and are based in Genesis.”

Notare said the document is an easy resource that priests can use in marriage preparation and other stages of married life. It has been tested in marriage prep programs by several dioceses, and feedback from couples has been very positive. Many of the couples reported that the document was engaging and clarified Church teaching.

“This document can hopefully get the conversation going again about why it’s important for Catholics to pay attention to it,” said Notare. “It’s not supposed to supplant Humanae Vitae, but it certainly is trying to get people to take a second look.”

Father Jeffrey Gubbiotti, parochial vicar at Most Holy Trinity Church in Wallingford, Conn., is looking forward to the document because, he said, it’s hard to find good resources on the subject. The challenge in talking about contraception from the pulpit is that priests are mandated to preach on the Gospel, he said, and when it is possible, they have to be sensitive to younger age groups. The biggest challenge, however, is the sheer depth of the teaching.

“We’ve so lost our sense of anthropology of how the human person is. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand why NFP is the best way to exact stewardship when it comes to fertility,” said Father Gubbiotti. “When there’s so much groundwork that has to be laid, there’s no way you can present the entire argument for the sinfulness of contraception in the course of one homily. You can only make a few points and hope that they’ll go out on their own and discover the beauty of NFP.”

The document sprang from committee discussions on the need to inform Catholics about the abortifacient potential of chemical contraceptives, said Notare. But the discussion soon turned to why Catholics shouldn’t be using any contraception.

Root Cause

Steve Koob, director of One More Soul, an apostolate promoting God’s plan for marriage and family, thinks that’s a wise approach.

“Contraception is wrong, period, not because it’s an abortifacient,” he said. “We should be opposed to it because it’s against God’s will, nature and the fundamental sexual act. It’s clearly been demonstrated what contraception has done to the culture. Hopefully this document will be a conversation starter.”

Notare echoed that sentiment.

“Society is really trying to cling to this idea that sex can be had with no consequences. But you don’t even have to be religious at this point; a thinking person can look at how poorly we treat sexual intercourse and connect the dots to pedophilia, the gross rise in pornography, abortion, divorce, delay in age in marriage, and the number of children we’re having.”

The conversation is starting to ripple through the pro-life community, which Koob said is a welcome sign because the abortion issue won’t be solved until contraception is addressed.
Many pro-life leaders, especially evangelicals, have maintained that contraception is not their issue, but they’re coming to see that it leads to abortion, said Ruben Obregon, co-founder of No Room for Contraception, a website that addresses the personal and cultural consequences of contraception.

“With contraception, abortion is skyrocketing, and non-Catholics are starting to see that it’s an inseparable issue that has to be dealt with,” he said.

As an example, Obregon posted an article on the website by Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called “Can Christians Use Birth Control?” In it he wrote: “The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm. … Most evangelicals responded with disregard to Pope Paul VI’s famous encyclical Humanae Vitae and became devoted users of birth control technologies.” But a growing number “are rethinking the issue of birth control and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies. … The most important of these is the abortion revolution.”

Pro-Life Action Ministries decided to address contraception at its national conference in September. Director Joe Scheidler said they wanted to bring people from all areas of the pro-life movement together to see if they could come to a meeting of the minds on the root cause of the anti-life/anti-family mentality — contraception.

“We were told by other pro-life groups that we were committing suicide by even bringing it up, but we can’t dodge it anymore, and we don’t intend to,” he said. “It was hard to reason against the proof presented by people at the conference who aren’t even on the same wavelength as us.”

Presenters included Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology from Rutgers University and an atheist, who showed how the contraceptive mentality has affected men and possibly led to the rise in homosexuality. Allan Carlson of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society gave a history of how Protestant churches came to embrace contraception, and acknowledged that Pope Paul VI was prophetic.

“They can see that contraception is a plague,” said Scheidler. “We have to get to the root cause of this anti-life mentality. We’re using God’s gift for pleasure and not for what it was intended” [emphasis mine].

Barb Ernster
Fridley, Minnesota.

Note

Observe in the above the specific references of the intrinsic connection between artificial contraception and all of the life issues, not least of which is homosexuality. At the root, it is because contraception undermines the ontological orientation of the person as gift as made in the image of the divine Persons.

This has always been difficult to see and as difficult to explain. It moves the perception of reality from “nature” as object (and with it the argument from “natural law” presuming an anthropology of man as substantial rational animal) to person and "the law of the person." The explanation of “Humanae Vitae” with the intrinsic connection between love-making and life-giving cannot be explained adequately on the level of nature as object with primary and secondary ends, but on the level – or “horizon” – of person as subject. It is calling for a revamping of a metaphysics of being from substance-object (an abstraction) to person-subject, not unlike the tension that the homoousios introduced into the Greek metaphysics of substance. In a word, to be = to be for. The theology of Joseph Ratzinger and the phenomenology-metaphysics of Karol Wojtyla work in tendem in this endeavor. The meaning of the being of the human person can only be understood by the meaning of the Being of Christ as “one in substance with the Father” (Nicene Creed). Human sexuality – and therefore the human person - cannot be adequately understood on the level of substance since it abstracts from the constitutive reference-to-the-other. Contraception is the praxis of this abstraction, and therefore the existential undermining which appear in the consequences listed above. A new Hellenization of the Christian Faith as taught by the Second Vatican Council is the work at hand.

As Benedict XVI said at Regensburg: "We will succeed in doing so [broadening our concept of reason] only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons... a rationality of faith."

Christology: Magisterial Texts & Ratzinger Exegesis

Give this a careful read. It is repetitive (which is helpful).

The text of Chalcedon (451):

“Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all teach that with one accord we confess one and the same son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in human nature, truly God and the same with a rational soul and a body truly man, consubstantial with the Father according to divinity, and consubstantial with us, according to human nature, like unto us in all things except sin,; indeed born of the Father before the ages according to divine nature, but in the last days the same born of the virgin Mary, Mother of God according to human nature; for us and for our deliverance, one and the same Christ only begotten Son our Lord, acknowledged in two natures, without mingling, without change, indivisibly, undividedly, the distinction of the natures nowhere removed on account of the union but rather the peculiarity of each nature being kept, and uniting in one person and substance, not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same son only begotten God Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as from the beginning the prophets taught about Him and the Lord Jesus Himself taught us, and the creed of our fathers has handed down to us.”


The Text of Constantinople III (680-681):


“And we proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will. For the will of the flesh had to be moved, and yet to be subjected to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For just as his flesh is said to be and is flesh of the Word of God, so too the natural will of his flesh is said to and does belong to the Word of God, just as he says himself: I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me, calling his own will that of his flesh, since his flesh too became his own. For in the same way that his all holy and blameless animate flesh was not destroyed in being made divine but remained in its own limit and category, so his human will as well was not destroyed by being made divine, but rather was preserved, according to the theologian Gregory, who says: "For his willing, when he is considered as saviour, is not in opposition to God, being made divine in its entirety"… Therefore, protecting on all sides the "no confusion" and "no division", we announce the whole in these brief words: Believing our lord Jesus Christ, even after his incarnation, to be one of the holy Trinity and our true God, we say that he has two natures [naturas] shining forth in his one subsistence[subsistentia] in which he demonstrated the miracles and the sufferings throughout his entire providential dwelling here, not in appearance but in truth, the difference of the natures being made known in the same one subsistence in that each nature wills and performs the things that are proper to it in a communion with the other; then in accord with this reasoning we hold that two natural wills and principles of action meet in correspondence for the salvation of the human race.

The key to understanding the unity of the divine and human in Christ is to understand that there is one divine Person Who has taken the humanity of the man Jesus of Nazareth epitomized in the human will as His own. It is critical to understand that it is not the will that wills, but the person. That is, the divine Person wills with His own human will. Only this can make sense of Jn. 6, 38: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” The divine “I” does not do His own human will, but that of the Father. The dynamic of self-mastery consists in the Person subduing the human will that has been “made to be sin” (2 Cor. 5, 21). [1] In a word, this is the radical self-gift of the Son as God-man.
Put more clearly, the relation of the divine and the human in Christ is not a parallelism of two natures bound together by the commonality of a Person as substance in itself. Rather, it is the compenetration of the divine and the human by the fact that the divine Person has taken the human will as His own and He, the divine Person, wills with the human will. The result is the “compenetration” of the two “wills,” the divine and the human because it is one and the same Person doing the willing.
And yet, the human will does not lose its autonomy and freedom, but rather has it radically enhanced by the fact that it is a divine Person living out the Trinitarian relation to the Father, now as man with a human will.

Preface

Josef Ratzinger

(“Journey Towards Easter”[2])

The Christian Meaning of “Communio”
- and its Roots –

“A brief analysis of the roots of the Christian usage of the word `communion’ can show us how the stages of development in the human spirit are directed towards Christ and how in the Lord is realized the synthesis of separate or even opposed elements in human thought.

“1. A primary origin of the Christian word communio appears to be a long way off from the religious and spiritual world, but it is precisely this profane root which has become important; we shall meet it in our last meditation, and therefore I will limit myself here to a brief reference.

“In the account of St. Peter’s call (Lk. 5, 10) we read that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were koinonoi of Simon, that is his `partners’ in the fishing. In other words: the three constitute a `cooperative,’ they are proprietors of a small enterprise, of which Simon is the manager. `You shall be fishers of men:’ in the conference on the priesthood we shall meditate on the marvelous transformation of this cooperative of Simon’s into the `communion’ of the Church. The fishing kooinonia (communion, cooperative) becomes the koinonia of the fish wrapped in mystery, Christ.

“2. The second root of the Christian word communio is to be found in the Hebrew world. In our mediation of Holy Thursday we have already shown that the chaburah of the Hebrews corresponds to the koinonia of the Greeks; this word too, indicates a cooperative, a society of common work and common values, But naturally the particular situations of Hebrew society are reflected in the word, adding specific aspects to its meaning. Essentially there are three. The Pharisees as a group already called themselves chaburah in the first century BC; the Rabbis came to be called the same by the end of the second century; and finally also the community gathered in for the Passover meal (at least ten people). In this last significance the mystery of the Church appears again. The Church is the chaburah in a very profound sense: it is the community of Jesus’ Pasch, the family that fulfills his eternal desire to eat the Pasch with us (cf. Lk. 22, 15). His Pasch is more than a meal; it is love unto death. His Pasch is therefore the participation in his own life, shared in his death for all, communicated in this anticipation of death which is realized when he says, `Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you. Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you ad for al so that sins may be forgiven.’

“Here we find in a very clear fashion what is specific of the New Testament, what is new in the `New.’ In the Old Testament also the ultimate intention of sacrifice and meal is the communion between God and his people. But the word chaburah – communion – is never used to express the relation between God and the human race; it means exclusively relations between human beings. Between God and humans there is no communion: the transcendence of the Creator is insuperable. The relationship actually existing between God hand human being is not expressed by the word `communion’ but with the term ‘covenant’ (testament: berith). This terminology signifies both the superiority of God, who alone can take the initiative of forming a relationship, and the distance permanent within the relationship. For that reason some exegetes refuse to translate berith as covenant: covenant expresses a certain equality between the partners, which on the contrary does not exist in the relation between God and human beings. In conclusion, the Old Testament does not know a communion between God and the human race: the New Testament conversely is communion.

“3. While the Old Testament opposes the transcendence and the uniqueness of God to pagan polytheism, and has consequently to reject the beautiful concept of communion between God and humankind, in the pagan world this concept was central to religion. Plato speaks in his Symposion of the reciprocal communion between the gods and men and explains that this communion is the ultimate intention and the most profound content of the sacrifice, of worship. In the final analysis, he says, worship is concerned with nothing else than love’s care and cure. What a foreshadowing of the truth of Christ! Let us add that for Greek mysticism also communion between the divinity, human beings, and all relational beings, is a central concept, but the true desire of this mysticism is union, not communion, with the divinity: in the end it is identity, not relation. If Philo distances himself from the traditional Hebrew terminology and in the framework of Greek mysticism he too speaks of the koinonia between God and worshipper, we may well speak of a certain hellenization of Hebrew thought. But if tin the New Testament the Church is communion, not only between persons but, by means of the mystery of death and resurrection of Jesus, it is communion with Christ, man and son of God – and therefore with the eternal love of the Trinity – this is not the result of anew thought synthesis but rather the fruit of anew reality. The one and only transcendent God of the Old Testament reveals his inmost life; he reveals that he is in himself the eternal dialogue of love. Since he is in himself relation, he is word and love and therefore can speak, listen, respond, love. Since he is relation, he can open himself to a relation of the creature with himself. In the Incarnation of the eternal Word is realized that communion between God and humankind that at first seemed incompatible with the transcendence of the one and only God.

“Plato’s affirmation that things pertaining to worship are concerned with communion between the gods and the human race and that all this belongs to the safeguarding and healing of love, now take son a new significance. Let us note that Plato is not speaking of God but of gods, and that Greek mysticism also does not speak of God but of the divinity. In Jesus we have something totally new: that the one and only personal God really communicates with human beings, incarnating himself in human nature. Divine nature and human nature compenetrated - `inconfuse et indivise’ – in the person of Christ. It would be absurd to want to see here a hellenization of Christianity out of a desire to return to pure Hebrew origins. To do such a thing would be simply to renounce the newness of Christianity. In reality the Incarnation is the new synthesis drawn by God himself, going beyond the limits of the Old Testament, assuming the whole heredity but bringing to it the riches of every culture: the Incarnation is reconciliation, it is communion of those once at enmity (cf. Eph. 2, 11-22), of Jews and pagans, and in the fields of thought as well. The charge of hellenization and the purist return to Hebraic origins signify a want of comprehension of the essence of Christianity.

“4. In 1 Cor. 10, 16 ff we find the heart of Christianity explained by means of the word `participation’ – communion. In this passage of Scripture the central premise of our argument finally appears: the enduring origin of ecclesiastical communion is founded on Christology; Christ Incarnate is the communion between God and humankind; the essence of Christianity is fundamentally nothing other than participation in the mystery of the Incarnation, or, using a formula from St. Paul, the Church, as Church, is the body of Christ. If we accept this truth the indivisibility of Church and Eucharist, communion and community, is entirely clear. In the light of this statement the words of St. Paul concerning our problem, or better, our mystery, are explained without difficulty. `The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Cor. 10, 16 ff). For St. Augustine these verses formed the core of his theology, and his homilies for Easter are in fact an exegesis of these words. By eating the same bread we become what we eat. This bread – he says in his Confessions – is the food of the strong. The usual foods are less strong than the person taking them and in the last analysis this is to their purpose: they are assimilated into the organism of the one eating them. But this food is superior to the person taking it, it is the stronger, and therefore the purpose is inverted: the person becomes assimilated to Christ, becomes bread like him: `We being many are one bread, one body.’ The consequence is obvious: the Eucharist is not a dialogue for two only, a private meeting between Christ and myself: Eucharistic communion is a total transformation of my life. This communion discloses the `I’ of a person and creates a new `we.’ Communion with Christ is necessarily communication also with all `his;’ I thus become part of this new bread which he creates by the transubstantiation of earthly beings.

“Now we may see the close connection between the notion of communio and the concept of the Church the body of Christ as well as the images of Christ, the true vine, or the fig tree, symbols of the people of god. These biblical concepts demonstrate once again the dependence of the community of Christians on Christ. The community of Christians is not to be explained in purely horizontal fashion: a tow-way relationship with the Lord is the condition of its existence; we can also say: the Church is relationship realized by the love of the Lord, which creates also a new relationship with us. With the fine words of Plato we can say that the Eucharist is really `love’s healing.’”[3]

I

['Behold the Pierced One’]

Thesis 6: “The so-called Neo-Chalcedonian theology which is summed up in the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) makes an important contribution to a proper grasp of the inner unity of biblical and dogmatic theology, of theology and religious life. Only from this standpoint does the dogma of Chalcedon (451) yield it full meaning.”

“It is common enough for the theological textbooks to pay scant attention to the theological development which followed Chalcedon. In many ways on e is left with the impression that dogmatic Christology comes to a stop with a certain parallelism of the two natures in Christ. It was this same impression that led to the divisions in the wake of Chalcedon. In fact, however, the affirmation of the true humanity and the true divinity in Christ can only retain its meaning if the mode of the unity of both is clarified. The Council defined this unity by speaking of the `one Person’ in Christ, but it was a formula which remained to be explored in its implications. For the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ which brings `salvation’ to man is not a juxtaposition but a mutual indwelling. Only in this way can there be that genuine `becoming like God,’ without which there is no liberation and no freedom.

“It was to this question, after two centuries of dramatic struggles which also, in many ways, bore the mark of imperial politics, that the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) addressed itself. On the one hand, it teaches that the unity of God and man in Christ involves no amputation or reduction in any way of human nature. In conjoining himself to man, his creature, God does not violate or diminish him; in doing so, he brings him for the first time to his real fullness. On the other hand (and this is no less important), it abolishes all dualism or parallelism of the two natures, such as had always seemed necessary in order to safeguard Jesus’ human freedom In such attempts it had been forgotten that when the human will is taken up into the will of God, freedom is not destroyed; indeed, only then does genuine freedom come into its own. The Council of Constantinople analyzed the question of the two-ness and the one-ness in Christ by reference to the concrete issue of the will of Jesus. It resolutely maintains that, as man, Jesus has a human will which is not absorbed by the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes one will with it, not in a natural manner but along the path of freedom. The metaphysical two-ness of a human and a divine will is not abrogated, but in the realm of the person, in the realm of freedom, the fusion of both takes place, with the result that they become one will not naturally, but personally. This free unity – a form of unity created by love – is higher and more interior than a merely natural unity. It corresponds to the highest unity there is, namely, Trinitarian unity. The Council illustrates this unity by citing a dominical word handed down to us in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). Here it is the divine Logos who is speaking, and he speaks of the human will of the man Jesus as his will, the will of the Logos. With this exegesis of John 6, 38 the Council indicates the unity of the subject in Christ. There are not two `I’s in him, but only one. The Logos speaks in the I-form of the human will and mind of Jesus; it has become his I, has become adopted into his I, because the human will is completely one with the will of the Logos. United with the latter, it has become a pure Yes to the Father’s will.[4]

Maximus the Confessor, the great theological interpreter of this second phase of the Christological dogma, illuminates this whole context by reference to Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives, which as we already saw in thesis I, expresses Jesus’ unique relationship to God. Indeed, it is as if we were actually looking in on the inner life of the Word-made-man. It is revealed to us I the sentence which remains the measure and model of all real prayer: `Not what I will, but what thou wilt’ (Mk. 14, 36). Jesus human will assimilates itself to the will of the Son. In doing this, he receives the Son’s identity, i.e., the complete subordination of the I to the Thou, the self-giving and self-expropriation of the I to the Thou. This is the very essence of him who is pure relation and pure act., Wherever the I gives itself to the Thou, there is freedom because this involves the reception of the `form of God.’ [The Absolute].

But we can also describe this process, and describe it better, from the other side: the Logos so humbles himself that he adopts a man’s will as his own and addresses the Father with te I of this human being; he transfers his own I to this man and thus transforms human speech into the eternal Word, into his blessed `Yes,’ Father.’ By imparting his own I, his own identity, to this human being, he liberates him, redeems him, makes him God. Now we can take the real meaning of `God has become man’ in both hands, as it were: the Son transforms the anguish of a man into his own filial obedience, the speech of the servant into the Word which is the Son.

Thus we come to grasp the manner of our liberation, our participation in the Son’s freedom. As a result of the unity of wills of which we have spoken, the greatest possible change has taken place in man, the only change which meets his desire: he has become divine. We can therefore describe that prayer which enters into the praying of Jesus and becomes the prayer of Jesus in the Body of Christ as freedom’s laboratory. Here and nowhere else takes place that radical change in man of which we stand in need, that the world may become a getter place. For it is only along this path that conscience attains its fundamental soundness and its unshakable power. And only from such a conscience can there come that ordering of human affairs which corresponds to human dignity and protects it. Every generation has to seek anew this right ordering of the world in response to a conscience that is alert, until the kingdom of God comes, which God alone can establish.[5]


Later, in the same “Behold the Pierced One” (original: “Schauen auf den Durchbohrten” 1984)…

A) Eucharist:

(The whole is an explanation of Eucharistic spirituality. Jesus Christ “opens the way to the impossible, to communion between God and man, since he, the incarnate Word, is this communion. He performs the `alchemy’ which melts down[6] human nature and infuses it into the being of God. To receive the Lord in the Eucharist, therefore, means entering into a community of being with Christ, it means entering through that opening in human nature through which God is accessible – which is the precondition for human beings opening up to one another in a really deep way. Communion with God is the path to interpersonal communion among men. If we are to grasp the spiritual content of the Eucharist, therefore, we must understand the spiritual tension which marks the God-man: only in the context of a spiritual Christology will the spirituality of the sacrament reveal itself to us.

Christology and Soteriology (continuing the above):

b) “Western theology, with its predominantly metaphysical and historical concerns, has rather neglected this aspect, which is in fact the link between the various disciplines of theology and between theological reflection and the concrete, spiritual working out of Christianity. The Third Council of Constantinople (the thirteen hundredth anniversary of which , 1981, was – significantly enough – almost forgotten, compared with the celebration commemorating the First Council of Constantinople and the of Ephesus) sets forth the essential elements which, in my view, are also fundamental to a proper interpretation of the Council of Chalcedon, Obviously, we do not have space to make a thorough exposition of the problems, but let us at least try briefly to outline the issues which concern us here. Chalcedon had described the ontological content of the Incarnation with its celebrated formula of Two Natures in One Person. This ontology signaled the beginning of a great dispute, and the Third Council of Constantinople found itself confronted with the question: What is the spiritual substance of this ontology? Or, more concretely: What does it mean, in practical and existential terms, to speak of `One Person in Two Natures’? How can a person live with two wills and a twofold intellect? These were by no means questions posed out of theoretical curiosity: the questions affect us too, for the issue is this: How can we live as baptized people, to whom Paul’s words must apply: `I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal 2, 20)?

“As is well known, then – in the seventh century – as today, two solutions which were equally unacceptable presented themselves. Some said that in Christ there was in fact no actual human will. The third Council of Constantinople rejects this picture of Christ as that of a `Christ lacking on both will and power.’ The other solution took the opposite view and assumed that there were two completely separate spheres of will in Christ. But this led to a kind of schizophrenia, a monstrous suggestion which was also unacceptable. The Council’s answer is this: the ontological union of two faculties of will which remain independent within the unity of the Person means that, at the existential level, there is a communion (κοινωνία) of the two wills. With this interpretation of union as communion, the Council sketches an ontology of freedom. The two `wills’ are united in the way in which two wills can be united, namely, in a common affirmation of a shared value. In to her words, common affirmation of a shared value. In other words, what unites the two wills is the Yes of Christ’s human will to the divine will of the Logos. Thus, in concrete terms - `existentially’ – the two wills become a single will while remaining, at the ontological level, two independent realities. The Council adds that, just as the Lord’s flesh may be called the flesh of the Logos, his human will may also be termed the Logos’ own will. In practice the Council is here applying the Trinitarian model (with the mandatory ever-greater difference in the analogy) to Christology: the highest unity there is – the unity of God – is not the unity of unstructured, amorphous substance but unity by communion, a unity which both creates and is love. Thus the Logos adopts the being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own I: `For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become one in a single Yes to the will of the Father, communion takes place between human and divine being. The `wondrous exchange,’ the `alchemy of being,’ is realized here as a liberating and reconciling communication, which becomes a communion between Creator and creature. It is in the pain of this exchange, and only here, that that fundamental change takes place in man, the change which alone can redeem him and transform the conditions of the world. Here community is born, here the Church comes into being. The act whereby we participate in the son’s obedience, which involves man’s genuine transformation, is also the only really effective contribution toward renewing and transforming society and the world as a whole. Only where this act takes place is there a change for good – in the direction of the kingdom of God.”[7]

Concluding by returning to the consideration of the Eucharist:

“I offer a further consideration for the sake of completeness. We have established that the Incarnation of the Son makes possible a new communion among human beings. This communion between Body and man, which is realized in the Person of Jesus Christ, itself becomes communicable in the Easter mystery, i.e., in the Lord’s death and Resurrection. The Eucharist is our participation in the Easter mystery, and hence it is constitutive of the Church, the Body of Christ. This is why the Eucharist is necessary for salvation. The necessity of the Eucharist is identical with the necessity of the Church and vice versa. This is how we should understand the Lord’s saying: `Unless you eat the flesh o fhte Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ (Jn. 6, 53). Hence we see the necessity, too, of a visible Church and a visible, concrete (and one might say `institutional’) unity. The most intimate mystery of communion between God and man is accessible in the sacrament of the Body of the Risen Lord; conversely, then, the mystery lays claim to our bodies and is realized in a Body. The Church, which is built upon the sacrament of the body of Christ, must herself be a body. And she must be a single body, corresponding to Jesus Christ’s uniqueness, a uniqueness which is reflected in unity and in the `continuing in’ the one, apostolic teaching.”[8]

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“And we proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will. For the will of the flesh had to be moved, and yet to be subjected to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For just as his flesh is said to be and is flesh of the Word of God, so too the natural will of his flesh is said to and does belong to the Word of God, just as he says himself: I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me, calling his own will that of his flesh, since his flesh too became his own. For in the same way that his all holy and blameless animate flesh was not destroyed in being made divine but remained in its own limit and category, so his human will as well was not destroyed by being made divine, but rather was preserved, according to the theologian Gregory, who says: "For his willing, when he is considered as saviour, is not in opposition to God, being made divine in its entirety"… Therefore, protecting on all sides the "no confusion" and "no division", we announce the whole in these brief words: Believing our lord Jesus Christ, even after his incarnation, to be one of the holy Trinity and our true God, we say that he has two natures [naturas] shining forth in his one subsistence[subsistentia] in which he demonstrated the miracles and the sufferings throughout his entire providential dwelling here, not in appearance but in truth, the difference of the natures being made known in the same one subsistence in that each nature wills and performs the things that are proper to it in a communion with the other; then in accord with this reasoning we hold that two natural wills and principles of action meet in correspondence for the salvation of the human race[9].

II

[`Journey Towards Easter']

“But the development of dogmatic theology did not end with the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. The so-called neo-Chalcedonian theology resumed at the third Council of Constantinople (680-681) further made a notable contribut8ion to an exact understanding of the close union of dogmatic and biblical theology. Only through this can we fully understand the sense of the Chalcedonian dogma (481).

“In the manuals, the theological development after Chalcedon has ordinarily come to be little considered. The impression thus frequently remains that dogmatic Christology finishes up with a certain parallelism between the two natures of Christ. This impression has also been the cause leading to the divisions since Chalcedon. But in effect the declaration of the true humanity and the true divinity of Christ can retain its significance only when there is a clarification also of the mode of unity of the two natures, which the Council of Chalcedon has defined by the formula of the `one person’ of Christ, at that time hot yet fully examined. In fact only that unity of divinity and humanity which in Christ is not parallelism, where one stands alongside the other, but real compenetration, - compenetration between God and man – means salvation for humankind. Only thus in fact does that true `being with God’ take place, without which liberation and freedom do not exist.

“This same query returned at the third Council of Constantinople (680-681) after two centuries of dramatic struggle marked most often also by Byzantine politics. According to this Council, on the one hand: the unity between the divinity and the humanity in Christ does not in any sense imply an amputation or reduction of the humanity. If God joins himself to his creature –man/woman – he does not wound or diminish it: he brings it to its plenitude. But on the other hand (and this is no less important) there remains no trace of that dualism or parallelism of the two natures, which in the course of history was frequently judged necessary to defend the human liberty of Jesus. Such studies forgot that the assumption of the human will into the divine will does not destroy freedom, but on the contrary generates true liberty. The Council of Constantinople has analyzed concretely the problem of the two natures and one person in Christ in view of the problem of the will of Jesus. We are reminded firmly that there exists a specific will of the man Jesus that is not absorbed into the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes a single will with it, not, however, in a forced way but by way of freedom. The metaphysical duplicity of a human will and a divine will is not eliminated, but in the personal sphere, the area of freedom there is accomplished a fusion of the two, so that this becomes not one single natural will but one personal will. This free union – a mode of union created by love – is a union higher and more intimate than a purely natural union. It corresponds to the highest union which can exist, the union of the Trinity… The Council explains this union by a saying of the Lord given in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). Here the divine Logos is speaking, and speaking of the human will of Jesus in the mode by which he calls his will the will of the Logos. With this exegesis of John 6, 38, the Council proves the unity of the subject: In Jesus there are not two `I,’ but only one. The Logos speaks of the will and human thought of Jesus using the `I;’ this has become his `I,’ has been assumed into his `I,’ because the human will has become fully one with the will of the Logos, and with it has become pure assent to the will of the Father.
“Maximus the Confessor, the great theologian-exegete of this second phase of the development of Christological dogma, has illustrated those references to the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, which we have already seen in the previous meditation, as the most clear expressions of the singular relationship of Jesus with God. In effect, in such prayer we can, so to speak, look into the inner life of the Word become man. We can see it in that phrase which remains the measure and model of all effective prayer: “Not what I will, but who thou wilt’ (Mk. 14, 36). The human will of Jesus enters into the will of the Son. By doing so, it receives the identity of the Son, which consists in entire subordination of the I to the Thou, in the giving and transferring of the I to the Thou: this is the mode of being of the one who is pure relations and pure act. When the `I’ gives itself to the `Thou,’ freedom originates, because the `form of God’ has been assumed.
But we can also describe this process, and describe it better, from the other side: the Logos so humbles himself that he adopts a man’s will as his own and addresses the Father with te I of this human being; he transfers his own I to this man and thus transforms human speech into the eternal Word, into his blessed `Yes,’ Father.’ By imparting his own I, his own identity, to this human being, he liberates him, redeems him, makes him God. Now we can take the real meaning of `God has become man’ in both hands, as it were: the Son transforms the anguish of a man into his own filial obedience, the speech of the servant into the Word which is the Son.
“In the unity of wills of which we have spoken is attained the greatest conceivable transformation of any person, which is at the same time the one thing ultimately desirable: divinization. Thus the prayer which enters into the prayer of Jesus, and which in the body of Christ becomes the prayer of Jesus Christ, can be defined as the `laboratory’ of freedom. Here, and in no other place occurs that profound change in a person which we need for the world to become better. Only on this road in fact does conscience attain its full rectitude and an irresistible strength. And only from this conscience can be born again that order in human affairs which corresponds to human dignity and which can defend it: an order which in every generation must be sought afresh by a vigilant human conscience, so that the Kingdom of God may come, a kingdom which God alone can build.”[10]

The “Definitive” Christology of Constantinople III (680-691)

“Eucharist – Christology – Ecclesiology: the Christological Center of Our Argument”

“1. The communion between God and human kind in Christ foundation and model of Christian communion.

“As the last stage we have now to look more closely at the Christological content of communion, the foundation and sourece of the Christian community.

“Jesus Christ, as we have seen, opens the way to the impossible, to communion between God and humankind, because he, the Incarnate, is that communion; in him we find realized that `alchemy’ which transforms the human into the divine. Receiving our Lord in the Eucharist means entering into the being of Christ, entering into the alchemy of the human being, into that opening up towards God, which is the condition of the intimate opening of one person to another. The road to communion between persons is via communion with God. To understand the spiritual content of the Eucharist we have first to grasp the spiritual dynamism of the God-man; only in a spiritual Christology will the spirituality of the Eucharistic sacrament open itself up to us. Western theology, with its concern for the ontological and historical, has perhaps somewhat neglected this aspect of theology, which is the true bond between the various parts of theology, which is the true bond between the various parts of theology and between theology and life. The third Council of Constantinople, as we have already stressed in our Christological meditations, gives some indications which seems to me indispensable for the right interpretations of the Council of Chalcedon. The teaching of this Council has been explained by St. Maximus the confessor. We may give the essence in a few words: Chalcedon had expressed the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ with its well-known classic formulas. The second Council of Constantinople asked: What is the existential content of the ontological formula, What is `a person with two natures’? How can this person really live with two wills, two intellects, so infinitely different? This is no purely theoretical curiosity but a problem for our lives: how can we live, as baptized persons in Christ, following the model of St. Paul: `It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal. 2, 20)?

“Two solutions were pout forward; both unacceptable. Some said that there did not exist in Christ a proper human will. The second Council of Constantinople repudiated this Christ as `weak and weary.’ The other solution was a complete separation of the two wills. But by this arrive at a kind of monstrous schizophrenia, equally unacceptable. The Council replies: The ontological union is on the level of existence understood as communion. The Fathers thus sketch an ontology of freedom; the two wills are united in a manner in which the different wills can be united: in a common `Yes’ to common values. These two wills are united in the `Yes’ of the human will of Christ to the divine willl of the Logos. Thus the two wills become in reality a single will, and yet remain two. The Council says: Just as the flesh of the Lord can be called flesh of the Logos, so his will can be called te will proper to the Logos of God. In practice the Council is applying here the Trinitarian model: this ultimate unity, the unity of God, is not a mechanical unity but is communion, it is love. The Council found its solution in the Lord’s words: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). St. Maximus finds the center of his Christology – in which he develops the practical content of the Christology of Chalcedon – in the prayer at Gethsemane: `…not what I will, but what thou wilt’ (Mk. 14, 36), Here the obedience of the Son, in the suffering of obedience, is realized the communion between the divine and the human being. The wonderful exchange (`admirable commercium’), the alchemy of the two beings – here is realized the liberating and reconciling communion. To receive the Eucharist in its deepest significance means to enter into this exchange of wills. In the suffering of this exchange, and only here, the human essence is really changed, world conditions are changed, community is born, the Church is born. The ultimate act of sharing in the obedience of the Son is the only thing really efficacious also for renewal and change in the external realities or the world.

“One other observation is necessary to complete our reflections. Let us recall the premises given so far. The Incarnation of the Son of God brings about communion between God and humankind and thus also opens up the possibility of a new communion between people. Communion between God and humankind realized in the person of Jesus becomes communicable in the Paschal Mystery, that is in the Lord’s death and Resurrection. The Eucharist is our participation in the Paschal Mystery and thus it constitutes the Church, the body of Christ. Hence the necessity of the Eucharist for salvation. The necessity of the Eucharist is the same as that of the Church. It is in this sense that the Lord says: `Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ (Jn. 6, 53). This demonstrates also the necessity for the visibility of the Church and for a visible concrete unity. The intimate mystery of the communion between God and humankind is accessible in the sacrament of the Body of the Risen Lord; the mystery requires our body and is realized in one body: the Church constructed by means of the sacrament of the Body of Christ must itself be a body, and a single body, and, conformably to the unity in the Lord, must be expressed in unity and coherence with the teaching of the Apostles.”[11]



[1] “Made to be sin” is to enter into the loneliness of sin as the rejection of the Triune God, and therefore of the others. This is Benedict’s interpretation of Jesus death cry, `My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15, 34) which is the first and only time that Jesus refers to the Father as “El” and not as “Abba.” Benedict says: “In this last prayer of Jesus , as in the scene on the Mount of Olives, what appears as the innermost heart of his passion is not any physical pain but radical loneliness, complete abandonment;” “Introduction to Christianity,” op. cit 227.
[2] J. Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad (1987).
[3] Josef Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad, (1987) 133-137.
[4] Ratzinger comments: “The central distinction which is fundamental to the Council (and which has received scant attention up to now) was worked out by Maximus the Confessor: he distinguishes the Thelema Physikon which belongs to the naturae and thus exists separately in Christ’s godhead and manhood, from the `gnomic’ thelema `which is identical with the liberum arbitrium and pertain to the person; in Christ it can only be a single thelema, since he subsists in the divine Person’ (Beck 41). Thus `much that had earlier been regarded as Monophysite… could be taken into spiritually’ (Beck 43). Once this basic idea of Constantinople III, which is central to Neo-Chalcedonian Christology, based on Pannenberg, are futile, resting on a misunderstanding. In Theo. Berichte 2, 29, Wiederhehr speaks of the `symmetrical path of the two-natures doctrine’ under the influence of the `two wills’ decision and thinks that it resulted from the idea `of an internal Christological dialogue… between a divine and a human nature.’ Thus he can rightly object that `there is nothing of this in the Jesus of the synoptics.’ `As far as the man Jesus is concerned, his dialogue partner is the Father, not his own self in his divine nature and person.’ This assertion, which he opposes to Neo-Chalcedonism, is in fact precisely the view of Constantinople III, except that the latter works out its ontological and existential structure very much more thoroughly than Widerkehr. Pannenberg (Jesus, God and Man, 1968) formulates it thus: “`Person’ is a relational concept, and, because the relation of Jesus to the Father in his dedication to him is identical with the eternal Person of the Son of God’ (339). It seems to me, if I read him correctly, that Pannenberg too fails to see that he is thinking along sthe same lines as Constantinople III (and Maximus the Confessor). In fact he is concentrating rather on the dispute with Leontius of Byzantium. From this point of view… etc., etc.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) 37-42.
[6] Consider that this means that the being of man turned back on self is melted and reformed into the relation of self-gift.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1984) 90-93. Here Ratzinger remarks: “It was Maximus the Confessor who explored theologically the Third Council of Constantinople… giving bibliography in German [footnote on 93].
[8] Ibid. 93-94.
[9] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) 37-42.
[10] Josef Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad (1987) 88-91.
[11] Josef Ratzinger, “Jorney Towards Easter,” Crossroad (1987) 137-139.

Jesus Christ: The Absolute

Class @ Our Lady of Peace, New Providence, N.J. (November 10, 2006)

I

State of Affairs: Relativism -
No Absolute (as good and evil)

Dictatorship of Relativism: “A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the `I’ and its whims as the ultimate measure.”[1]

May 13, 2004: “It is our duty to cultivate within ourselves respect for the sacred [Absolute] and to show the face of the revealed God [Absolute] – the God who has compassion for the poor and the weak, for widows and orphans, for the foreigner; the God [Absolute] who is so human that he himself became man, a man who suffered, and who by his suffering with us gave dignity and hope to our pain.

“Unless we embrace our own heritage of the sacred we will not only deny the identity of Europe. We will also fail in providing a service to others to which they are entitled. To the other cultures of the world, there is something deeply alien about the absolute secularism that is developing in the West. They are convinced that a world without God has no future. Multiculturalism itself thus demands that we return once again to ourselves.

“We do not know what the future of Europe will be. Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself t the service of all human kind.”[2]

Benedict commented earlier that Toynbee “emphasized the difference between technological-material progress and true progress, which he defined as spiritualization. He recognized that the Western world was indeed undergoing a crisis, which he attributed to the abandonment of religion for the cult of technology, nationalism, and militarism. For him this crisis had a name: secularism.”[3] {Keep in mind the distinction between “secularism” and “secularity.” Secularism is a society without a transcendent God. Secularity is the attitude of the relative autonomy of self-determination and freedom that is a theological reality, a Christian truth and grounded in the anthropology of the act of Christian faith [self-gift])

II

Civilization and Culture

A) Sketch of Western Civilization
(Hilaire Belloc)

“The Crisis of Civilization”

“That the culture and civilization of Christendom – what was called for centuries in general terms `Europe,’ was made by the Catholic Church gathering up the social traditions of the Graeco-Roman Empire, inspiring them and giving the whole of that great body a new life. It was the Catholic Church which made us, gave us our unity and our whole philosophy of life, and formed the nature of the white world. That world – Christendom – went through the peril of the barbaric assault from without as also from the victorious pressure of great heresy – which soon became a new religion – Mahommedanism.

“These perils it survived , though shorn of much of its territory; it re-arose after the pressure was past to the high life of the Middle Ages, which in the 11th, 12th, and especially the 13th centuries reached a climax or summit wherein we were most ourselves and our civilization most assured. But from various causes of which perhaps old age was the chief, that great period showed signs of decline at the beginning of the 14th century; a decline which hastened rapidly throughout the 15th century. The Faith by which we live was increasingly doubted; and the moral authority upon which all depended was more and more contested. The society of Christendom underwent a heavy strain threatening disruption; it equally became more and more unstable, until at last in the early 16th century came the explosion which had been feared and awaited for so long. That disaster is called in general usage `The Reformation.’

“From that moment onwards throughout the 16th and 17th centuries and the 18th, on through the 19th, the unity of Christendom having disappeared and the vital principle on which its life depended having become weak or distracted, our culture became a house divided against itself, and increasingly imperiled. This evil fortune was accompanied by a rapid increase in external knowledge, that is in science and the command of man over material things, even as he lost his grasp of spiritual truths. It was the converse of what had happened in the beginning our civilization , when our religion had saved the ancient world and formed a new culture, though burdened by a decline in science and the arts and material things.

“Our increase in knowledge of the externals and in our power over nature did nothing to appease the rapidly growing internal strains of our world. The conflict between rich and poor, the conflict between opposing national idolatries, the lack of common standards and of the fixed doctrines upon which they depend had led up by the beginning of the 20th century to the brink of chaos; and threatened such dissention between men as to destroy Society. In this crisis the only alternatives are recovery through the restoration of Catholicism or the extinction of our culture.”

B) Benedict XVI: Marxism Continues to be Unresolved:

On May 13 [feast of Our Lady of Fatima] 2006, Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, addressed the Italian Senate on the state of the West. In it, he said:

“The Communist systems collapsed under the weight of their own fallacious economic dogmatism. Commentators have nevertheless ignored all too readily the role played by the Communists’ contempt for human rights and their subordination of morals to the demands of the system and the promise of a future. The greatest catastrophe encountered by such systems was not economic. It was the starvation of souls and the destruction of the moral conscience.

“The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the Communist economy has been recognized, its moral and religious fallacy has not been addressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man’s original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem, and left untreated, it can lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we must begin to consider as a real danger – above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler”[4](emphasis mine).

The Argument (Philosophic Reason)

Consider civilization as the result of culture. Then, consider the meaning of culture as the activity of “cultivating” the human person as person. Then, consider the remarks of John Paul II that the human person cultivates himself/herself by means of activity. He asserts that “culture… develops principally within… the dimension of self-determining subjects. Culture is basically oriented not so much toward the creation of human products as toward the creation of the human self, which then radiates out into the world of products.”[5] He goes on: “As I understand St. Thomas’ thought, human activity (action) is simultaneously transitive and intransitive. It is transitive insofar as it tends beyond the subject, seeks an expression and effect in the external world, and is objectified in some product. It is intransitive, on the other hand, insofar as it remains in the subject, determines the subject’s immanent quality or value, and constitutes the subejct’s essentially human fieri. In acting, we not only perform actions, but we also become ourselves through those actions – we fulfill ourselves in them.”[6]

Theological Faith: to Experience Christ Who is the Absolute is to Know the Absolute

1) What is faith in metaphysical/anthropological terms? The gift of the “I.”

The first of all activities in the order of priority is the act of faith in that it is the only act in which the entire self is called forth to be gift to the Creator. John Paul II responded to Andre Frossard:
“To God who reveals himself we must bring the obedience of faith by which man entrusts himself entirely, freely , to God, bringing to him who reveals the complete submission of his intelligence and heart and giving with all his will full assent to the Revelation which he has made. Thus faith is man’s reply to the Revelation by which God `communicates himself’… In the words `man entrusts himself to God by the obedience of faith,’ one must see, if only indirectly, the thought that faith, as response to the revelation by which God `gives himself to man,’ implies through its internal dynamism a reciprocal gift on the part of man, who in a way `also gives himself to God.’ This gift of oneself is the profoundest and most personal structure of faith.

In the act of faith, man does not respond to God with the gift of a bit of himself, but with the gift of his whole person”[7] (emphasis mine).


2) How does one come to know the “I” of another? Knowing consists in being “one” with a reality outside the self. Being a finite creature, we cannot be a being that we are not. Hence, we form likeness of them within us. We have sense perception and abstract knowing through concepts and reasoning.

In the case of the “I” of another, since I have no access to experience that “I” directly, I must do what the other does so that in the “internal dynamism” of mastering and subduing myself, I experience in myself what he/she experiences in himself/herself.

Here is John Paul II’s philosophical rendering: “I have no other access to another human being as an I except through my own I.”[8]

“Self-determination, which reveals the freedom of the will and the freedom of the human being in the most direct and complete way, also allows us to define what makes each individual his or her own I, It allows us as if to touch what is expressed in the concept `self.’ Through the aspect of the self-determination manifested in my action, I who am the subject of that action discover and simultaneously confirm myself as a person in possession of myself. To the essence of my I, or self, belongs not just self-consciousness, but more important self-possession. Self-consciousness conditions self-possession, which manifests itself primarily in action. Thus action leads us into the very depths of the human I, or self. This takes place through experience.

“The other… lies beyond the field of this experience. Self-consciousness, like self-possession, as the name itself suggests, is not transferable beyond the individual concrete I, or self, that experiences itself and consequently understands itself in this manner. Although I cannot experientially transfer what constitutes my own I beyond myself, this does not mean that I cannot understand that the other is constituted in a similar fashion – that the other is also an I Fort the other to be so constituted, self-possession conditioned by the other’s own self-determination will be essential. An understanding of this truth defines to some extent the relation of my own concrete I to all other human beings. They are not just others in relation to my I; each of them is also another I. The other is always one of those I’s, another individual I, related experientially in some way to my own I. (…)

“Thus the reality of the other does not result principally from categorical knowledge, from humanity as the conceptualized essence `human being,’ but from an even richer lived experience [an event], one in which I as though transfer what is given to me as my own I beyond myself to one of the others, who, as a result, appears primarily as a different I, another I, my neighbor. Another person is a neighbor to me not just because we share a like humanity, but chiefly because the other is another I.”[9]

3) This is the metaphysical underpinning of Christian faith. It is not an abstraction or ideology, but an encounter-experience with the revealing Christ. And the experience and self-consciousness of myself as giving self is the likeness to the giving-Self of Christ Who is revelation of the Father precisely as “I.” So that I “know” Him by making the very gift of myself that is mimicking His gift of Himself. And so the faith is experiential and a pre-conceptual consciousness before it is conceptual as creed and dogma.

In fact, it is the experience of the Absolute in the self as believer. To be in relation as self-gift is to experience the Absolute directlyTo be in relation is to activate the absolute of the relationality of the divine Persons in one’s very self. It is to be divinized as image of God. It’s act is prayer and it plays out like the Transfiguration where Christ becomes a radiant light, visually and intellectually. Reason is filled with this activation of the “I” as being going out of self, and is the ultimate explanation of the relation of faith and reason.

III

Jesus Christ - Absolute

What Do We Mean When We Say That Jesus Christ – This Individual From the Town of Nazareth – is Absolute?

Ans: The “I” of Jesus Christ is Uncreated Being and Therefore, Absolute

The thesis at the root of all Benedict’s thinking is the following: There is ontological density – the most extreme and total – in the material, finite, contingent, individual “thisness” taken by the senses. The Source of Being and reality itself stands before us as the concrete man, Jesus of Nazareth. As Romano Guardini begins his classic, “The Lord:”

“If someone in Capharnaum or Jerusalem at the time had asked the Lord: Who are you? Who are your parents? To what house do you belong? – he might have answered in the words of St. John’s gospel: `Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am’ (Jn. 8, 58).”

This “I” that one turns into by the act of self-gift is “like” the “I” of the Absolute Christ as God in Person. Now it is necessary to consider that the Person of Christ is indeed the Absolute within the singular contingent individual Jesus of Nazareth. The Theology of that was ambiguous in Chalcedon in 451. It needed 200 years until the Council of Constantinople III (680-681) to experience and frame the relation between the divine and the human in Christ in terms of the will. The question that was answered was: how can the human will of Jesus of Nazareth be free when it is the will of the divine Logos? For 200 years, it was considered essential to consider the human and divine natures (2) as independent and parallel while existing in the one divine Person of the Logos.

Benedict XVI’s Statement on The Council of Constantinople III

“Western theology, with its predominantly metaphysical and historical concerns, has rather neglected this aspect [the spiritual tension which marks the God-man], which is in fact the link between the various disciplines of theology and between theological reflection and the concrete, spiritual working out of Christianity. The third Council of Constantinople (the thirteen hundredth anniversary of which, in 1981, was – significantly enough – almost forgotten, compared with the celebrations commemorating the First Council of Constantinople and that of Ephesus) sets forth the essential elements which, in my view, are also fundamental to a proper interpretation of the Council of Chalcedon. Obviously, we do not have space to make a thorough exposition of the problems, but let us at least try briefly to outline the issues which concern us here. Chalcedon had described the ontological content of the Incarnation with its celebrated formula of Two Natures in One Person. This ontology signaled the beginning of a great dispute, and the Third Council of Constantinople found itself confronted with the question: What is the spiritual substance of this ontology? Or, more concretely: What does it mean, in practical and existential terms, to speak of `One Persons in Two natures’? How can a person live with two wills and a twofold intellect? These were by no means questions posed out of theoretical curiosity: the questions affect us too, for the issue is this: How can we live as baptized people, to whom Paul’s words must apply: `I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal 2, 20)?

“As is well known, then – in the seventh century – as today, two solutions which were equally unacceptable presented themselves. Some said that in Christ there was in fact no actual human will. The third Council of Constantinople rejects this picture of Christ as that of a `Christ lacking on both will and power.’ The other solution took the opposite view and assumed that there were two completely separate spheres of will in Christ. But this led to a kind of schizophrenia, a monstrous suggestion which was also unacceptable. The Council’s answer is this: the ontological union of two faculties of will which remain independent within the unity of the Person means that, at the existential level, there is a communion (κοινωνία) of the two wills. With this interpretation of union as communion, the Council sketches an ontology of freedom. The two `wills’ are united in the way in which two wills can be united, namely, in a common affirmation of a shared value. In to her words, common affirmation of a shared value. In other words, what unites the two wills is the Yes of Christ’s human will to the divine will of the Logos. Thus, in concrete terms - `existentially’ – the two wills become a single will while remaining, at the ontological level, two independent realities. The Council adds that, just as the Lord’s flesh may be called the flesh of the Logos, his human will may also be termed the Logos’ own will. In practice the Council is here applying the Trinitarian model (with the mandatory ever-greater difference in the analogy) to Christology: the highest unity there is – the unity of God – is not the unity of unstructured, amorphous substance but unity by communion, a unity which both creates and is love. Thus the Logos adopts the being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own I: `For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become one in a single Yes to the will of the Father, communion takes place between human and divine being. The `wondrous exchange,’ the `alchemy of being,’ is realized here as a liberating and reconciling communication, which becomes a communion between Creator and creature. It is in the pain of this exchange, and only here, that that fundamental change takes place in man, the change which alone can redeem him and transform the conditions of the world. Here community is born, here the Church comes into being. The act whereby we participate in the son’s obedience, which involves man’s genuine transformation, is also the only really effective contribution toward renewing and transforming society and the world as a whole. Only where this act takes place is there a change for good – in the direction of the kingdom of God.”[10]

In a later moment (1985), Cardinal Ratzinger directed a retreat for John Paul II. There, he made the same point, but with nuances. He said:

“In the manuals, the theological development after Chalcedon has ordinarily come to be little considered. The impression thus frequently remains that dogmatic Christology finishes up with a certain parallelism between the two natures of Christ. This impression has also been the cause leading to the divisions since Chalcedon. But in effect the declaration of the true humanity and the true divinity of Christ can retain its significance only when there is clarification also of the mode of unity of the two natures, which the Council of Chalcedon has defined by the formula of the `one person’ of Christ, at that time not yet fully examined. In fact only that unity of divinity and humanity which in Christ is not parallelism, whereon stands alongside the other, but real compenetration – compenetration between God and man – means salvation for humankind. Only thus in fact does that true `being with God’ take place, without which liberation and free do not exist.”[11]

Comment: It is most important to observe that the two “wills” are “wills” of the One Person Who wills as both God and man. The human faculty of a human person does not will. The person wills. So also, if that human will is the will of a divine Person, it is the divine Person willing with a human faculty, not the human faculty willing. And yet, at the same time, that human will is not abolished by the fact that it has been assumed by a divine Person. On the contrary, the human will as the entire human nature of the historical man Jesus (whose only Person is the Logos) now achieves the autonomy and freedom of the divine Person. The human will does not lose its freedom by saying Yes to the will of the Father. It achieves the supreme freedom of self-gift that is its ontological “construction” as image of God.

Conclusion: Since the human will does not will but the divine Person wills by it and through it, the Absolute of the divine Person is present in the exercise of the human will of this concrete man Jesus of Nazareth. And that humanity is neither independent as parallel in order to be free, or absorbed and abolished as human in the divine, but rather exalted, fulfilled and autonomous with the autonomy of the divine Person Himself who is now the revelation of exactly what it means to be man as image of the divine Persons. The Absolute is in the contingent, the eternal is in time, the infinite is in the finite.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another Rendering of Ratzinger’s “Compenetration” Without “Parallelism: Attention to the Disappearance of Dualisms
[Supernatural/natural, grace/nature, faith/reason, Church/State…]

Consider that “compenetration” of the divine Person in and with the human will of Jesus of Nazareth, is what is meant by “total self-gift,” and with it "communio."

And yet, the human will is not reduced but perfectly autonomous and free as divinized


“(The Third Council of Constantinople [680-681] teaches that the unity of God and man in Christ involves no amputation or reduction in any way of human nature. In conjoining himself to man, his creature, God does not violate or diminish him; in doing so, he brings him for the first time to his real fullness. On the other hand (and this is no less important), it abolishes all dualism or parallelism of the two natures, such as had always seemed necessary in order to safeguard Jesus’ human freedom In such attempts it had been forgotten that when the human will is taken up into the will of God, freedom is not destroyed; indeed, only then does genuine freedom come into its own. The Council of Constantinople analyzed the question of the two-ness and the one-ness in Christ by reference to the concrete issue of the will of Jesus. It resolutely maintains that, as man, Jesus has a human will which is not absorbed by the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes one will with it, not in a natural manner but along the path of freedom. The metaphysical two-ness of a human and a divine will is not abrogated, but in the realm of the person, in the realm of freedom, the fusion of both takes place, with the result that they become one will not naturally, but personally. This free unity – a form of unity created by love – is higher and more interior than a merely natural unity. It corresponds to the highest unity there is, namely, Trinitarian unity. The Council illustrates this unity by citing a dominical word handed down to us in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). Here it is the divine Logos who is speaking, and he speaks of the human will of the man Jesus as his will, the will of the Logos. With this exegesis of John 6, 38 the Council indicates the unity of the subject in Christ. There are not two `I’s in him, but only one. The Logos speaks in the I-form of the human will and mind of Jesus; it has become his I, has become adopted into his I, because the human will is completely one with the will of the Logos. United with the latter, it has become a pure Yes to the Father’s will.[12]

"Maximus the Confessor, the great theological interpreter of this second phase of the Christological dogma, illuminates this whole context by reference to Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives, which as we already saw in thesis I, expresses Jesus’ unique relationship to God. Indeed, it is as if we were actually looking in on the inner life of the Word-made-man. It is revealed to us I the sentence which remains the measure and model of all real prayer: `Not what I will, but what thou wilt’ (Mk. 14, 36). Jesus human will assimilates itself to the will of the Son. In doing this, he receives the Son’s identity, i.e., the complete subordination of the I to the Thou, the self-giving and self-expropriation of the I to the Thou. This is the very essence of him who is pure relation and pure act., Wherever the I gives itself to the Thou, there is freedom because this involves the reception of the `form of God.’ [The Absolute].

"But we can also describe this process, and describe it better, from the other side: the Logos so humbles himself that he adopts a man’s will as his own and addresses the Father with te I of this human being; he transfers his own I to this man and thus transforms human speech into the eternal Word, into his blessed `Yes,’ Father.’ By imparting his own I, his own identity, to this human being, he liberates him, redeems him, makes him God. Now we can take the real meaning of `God has become man’ in both hands, as it were: the Son transforms the anguish of a man into his own filial obedience, the speech of the servant into the Word which is the Son.

"Thus we come to grasp the manner of our liberation, our participation in the Son’s freedom. As a result of the unity of wills of which we have spoken, the greatest possible change has taken place in man, the only change which meets his desire: he has become divine. We can therefore describe that prayer which enters into the praying of Jesus and becomes the prayer of Jesus in the Body of Christ as freedom’s laboratory. Here and nowhere else takes place that radical change in man of which we stand in need, that the world may become a getter place. For it is only along this path that conscience attains its fundamental soundness and its unshakable power. And only from such a conscience can there come that ordering of human affairs which corresponds to human dignity and protects it. Every generation has to seek anew this right ordering of the world in response to a conscience that is alert, until the kingdom of God comes, which God alone can establish.[13]

Islam is “Faith” as Conceptual Ideology, not Anthropology of Self-Gift

The reality is that Islam does not live faith as an anthropological act. It is a conceptual act that leads to prayer and fasting, but this worship more than faith. John Paul II suggested this when he said: “Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside.
“Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad. There is als0 mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent. For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity.”[14]

Since Christian faith is an obedience of self-gift, and therefore, free, it is significant that faith in Islam is not free. And the result of this is the failure to have any notion of true “secularity” based on the “consciousness” of the self-transcending believer and the consequent dualism of Church and State as consequence. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger had this comment:

“The modern idea of freedom is thus a legitimate product of the Christian environment; it could not have developed anywhere else. Indeed, one must add that it cannot be separated from this Christian environment and transplanted into any other system, as is shown very clearly today in the renaissance of Islam; the attempt to graft on to Islamic societies what are termed western standards cut loose from their Christian foundations misunderstands the internal logic of Islam as well as the historical logic to which these western standards belong, and hence this attempt was condemned to fail in this form. The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom, presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing.

"In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom. Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church done away with as a pubic and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system in unavoidable.

“With this the fundamental task of the Church’s political stance, as I understand it, has been defined; its aim must be to maintain this balance of a dual system as the foundation of freedom. Hence the Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere. Hence it must also take care on the other hand that Church and state remain separated and that belonging to the Church clearly retains its voluntary character.”[15]


[1] Cardinal Ratzinger’s Homily in Mass at St. Peter’s Before Conclave: “Jesus Christ: `The Measure of True Humanism,’” April 19, 2005.
[2] Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI and Marcello Pera, “Without Roots – The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam,” Basic Books (2006) 79.
[3] Ibid. 67-68.
[4] Benedict XVI: “The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” in Without Roots, the West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, Basic Books (2006) 73-74.
[5] Karol Wojtyla, “The Constitution of Culture Through Human Praxis,” Person and Community Lang (1993) 265.
[6] Ibid. 266.
[7] Andre Frossard, John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid,” St. Martin’s Press (1984) 64.
[8] Karol Wojtyla, “Participation or Alienation,” Person and Community, (1993) 204
[9] Ibid. 200-201.
[10] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1984) 90-93.
[11] J. Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad (1987) 88-89.
[12] Ratzinger comments: “The central distinction which is fundamental to the Council (and which has received scant attention up to now) was worked out by Maximus the Confessor: he distinguishes the Thelema Physikon which belongs to the naturae and thus exists separately in Christ’s godhead and manhood, from the `gnomic’ thelema `which is identical with the liberum arbitrium and pertain to the person; in Christ it can only be a single thelema, since he subsists in the divine Person’ (Beck 41). Thus `much that had earlier been regarded as Monophysite… could be taken into spiritually’ (Beck 43). Once this basic idea of Constantinople III, which is central to Neo-Chalcedonian Christology, based on Pannenberg, are futile, resting on a misunderstanding. In Theo. Berichte 2, 29, Wiederhehr speaks of the `symmetrical path of the two-natures doctrine’ under the influence of the `two wills’ decision and thinks that it resulted from the idea `of an internal Christological dialogue… between a divine and a human nature.’ Thus he can rightly object that `there is nothing of this in the Jesus of the synoptics.’ `As far as the man Jesus is concerned, his dialogue partner is the Father, not his own self in his divine nature and person.’ This assertion, which he opposes to Neo-Chalcedonism, is in fact precisely the view of Constantinople III, except that the latter works out its ontological and existential structure very much more thoroughly than Widerkehr. Pannenberg (Jesus, God and Man, 1968) formulates it thus: “`Person’ is a relational concept, and, because the relation of Jesus to the Father in his dedication to him is identical with the eternal Person of the Son of God’ (339). It seems to me, if I read him correctly, that Pannenberg too fails to see that he is thinking along sthe same lines as Constantinople III (and Maximus the Confessor). In fact he is concentrating rather on the dispute with Leontius of Byzantium. From this point of view… etc., etc.
[13] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) 37-42.
[14] John Paul II, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” Knopf (1994) 92-93.
[15] J. Ratzinger, “A Christian Orientation….” Op. cit. 162-163.