Charles Taylor - A Secular Age III

Taylor's book is studded with great insights, and written with the lucidity of a chat over coffee. I have interrupted the story of the switch from the porous self to the buffered self to dip into the book at more random places today. This stood out, given my recent thinking about matters papal:

The secular age is schizophrenic, or better, deeply cross-pressured. People seem at a safe distance from religion; and yet they are very moved to know that there are dedicated believers, like Mother Teresa. The unbelieving world, well used to disliking Pius XII, was bowled over by John XXIII. A Pope just had to sound like a Christian, and many immemorial resistances melted...It's as though many people who don't want to follow want nevertheless to hear the message of Christ, want it to be proclaimed out there. The paradox was evident in the response to the late Pope. Many people were inspired by John Paul's public perpatetic preaching, about love, about world peace, about international economic justice. They are thrilled that these things are being said. But even many Catholics among his admireres didn't feel that they must follow his all his moral injunctions... (p. 727)

What does this mean for a diocese at mission, like the Sydney diocese?

What Paul knows, and what he doesn't...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the noetic point on which a belief in providence has its entire basis. Belief in providence is not an inference from history; nor is it a claim to know the pattern of the times. It is not augury or cloud-reading. Belief in providence is not a claim to special knowledge of the providential plan, but merely a claim to knowledge that there is such a plan and that has been made by one with the power and the will to accomplish it. From the covenant history which culminates in the Son of God’s action for salvation of the world we learn of the purpose and character of God to which all other history is ordered. When Paul exclaims, at the end of his troubling discussion of the election of Israel in Romans 9-11 –

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.

– he is not expressing in apophatic terms a despair of ever knowing the ineffable deity who must himself remain ever discreetly hidden behind a cloud of unknowing, but rather his joy in the righteous and loving character of God revealed in the gospel of his power (Rom 1:16). Though the plan of God is a yet concealed from view, his character has in fact been made known in gospel. This thought is Paul’s consolation.

JP II on martyrdom

Always a canny fellow, John Paul II wrote often about martyrdom and its significance for all humanity as well as for his church. Check this out:

Martyrdom, accepted as an affirmation of the inviolability of the moral order, bears splendid witness both to the holiness of God's law and to the inviolability of the personal dignity of man, created in God's image and likeness. This dignity may never be disparaged or called into question, even with good intentions, whatever the difficulties involved. Jesus warns us most sternly: "What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? " (Mk 8:36).

Martyrdom rejects as false and illusory whatever "human meaning" one might claim to attribute, even in "exceptional" conditions, to an act morally evil in itself. Indeed, it even more clearly unmasks the true face of such an act: it is a violation of man's "humanity", in the one perpetrating it even before the one enduring it. Hence martyrdom is also the exaltation of a person's perfect "humanity" and of true "life", as is attested by Saint Ignatius of Antioch, addressing the Christians of Rome, the place of his own martyrdom: "Have mercy on me, brethren: do not hold me back from living; do not wish that I die... Let me arrive at the pure light; once there I will be truly a man. Let me imitate the passion of my God".

I enjoy here the connection between human identity/ meaning and martyrdom, and how martyrdom both at once is the destruction of a human being's humanity and also the unmasking of the inhumanity in the perpetrator and in addition the vindication of the humanity of the martyr (as far as God is concerned). Of course, the Passion of Christ is the model - think how Mark interweaves all of these aspects.

Thomas Weinandy asks 'Does God Suffer?'

Just dipping into Weinandy's book Does God Suffer? I am finding a penetrating and illuminating discussion of the 'problem' of the impassability of God. I noted this comment, on evangelism and the 'suffering God':

...it should be noted that inherent within a theology of a suffering God is a feeble theology of evangelization. Those who propose that God suffers in himself speak as if this gives consolation to those who suffer. This has been shown to be a deceptive consolation. Moreover, they speak as if everyone, regardless of whether one is a Christian or not, is equally consoled by a suffering God. Thus, there is no urgent need to preach the gospel. But this too is false to the gospel. The Father does wish to console everyone, and that is precisely why he sent his Son into the world. However, the Father can only fully console those who are in union with Christ for Christ is the Father's consolation. It is only in Christ Jesus that one can come to experience fully the riches of the Father's mercy.... p. 249

It is a telling critique if he is right.

Of course, martyrdom is inevitably part of a discussion of whether God suffers, even if briefly:

While one should not seek martyrdom, yet to suffer for the sake of the gospel and even to die for the name of Jesus is a Christian's supreme honour. It is the Christian's consummate boast. p. 280

[Weinandy also reminded me that John Paul II once said this cool thing:

Martyrdom, accepted as an affirmation of the inviolabilty of the moral order, bears splendid witness both to the holiness of God's law and to the inviolability of the personal dignity of man, created in God's image and likeness.]