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Jesus' Unsurpassable Uniqueness: A Theological Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

William M. Thompson
William M. Thompson*
Affiliation:
Duquesne University
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Type
Editorial Symposium
Information
Horizons , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1989 , pp. 101 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1989

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References

1 New York: Paulist, 1985, esp. pp. 385-94; again, slightly differently, in “Jesus’ Uniqueness: A Kenotic Approach,” in Leddy, Mary Jo and Hinsdale, Mary Ann, eds., Faith that Transforms: Essays in Honor of Gregory Baum (New York: Paulist, 1987), pp. 16–30.Google Scholar I would locate my major mistakes (my intentions, I think, have always been orthodox!) in the following two places: (1) inadequately thinking through the radical and definitive implications of the personalization (or “kenosis”) of God in Jesus, and (2) inadequately differentiating the mainly revelatory nature and unsurpassable nature of the Incarnation and the mainly nonrevelatory and more “noetic” differentiations of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Chinese orbits, and the only incomplete differentiation of the personal God in the other religious orbits. That my intentions were orthodox is perhaps shown in the desire to hold fast to the “consummately” and “uniquely” manifested expression of God in Jesus mentioned on page 392 of The Jesus Debate. Unfortunately, I think I drew the wrong conclusions.

2 See my Fire and Light: The Saints and Theology (New York: Paulist, 1986);Google ScholarDeville, Raymond, L'Ecole française de spiritualité, Bibliothèque d'histoire du Christianisme, 11 (Paris: Desclée, 1987);Google Scholar and Bérulle and the French School, Classics of Western Spirituality, ed. and intro. Thompson, William M., trans. Glendon, Lowell M. (New York: Paulist, in press).Google Scholar

3 The Letter is found in The Philosophy of Order, ed. Opitz, Peter J. and Sebba, Gregor (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), pp. 449–57 at 454.Google Scholar The other reference: Order and History 1, Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1956).Google Scholar

4 On First Principles II, 6, 6 (The Christological Controversy, Sources of Early Christian Thought, trans, and ed. Norris, Richard A. Jr., [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981], p. 79).Google Scholar

5 Orations against the Arians III, 30 (ibid., p. 88). It seems to me that the writings of Athanasius, esp. the orations here mentioned, in their entirety, are essential and irreplaceable. This is something the great Cardinal Newman knew too, who made a complete and the best English translation of the orations (The first three are thought to be Athanasius', normally in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, IV, ed. Schaff, Philip and Wace, Henry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), pp. 306–447.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Von Balthasar Reader, ed. Kehl, Medard and Löser, Werner, trans. Daly, Robert J. and Lawrence, Fred (New York: Crossroad, 1982), pp. 150–53, 403–05.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, her Story of a Soul, trans. Clarke, John (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1975)Google Scholar, and O'Connor, Patricia, In Search of Thérèse (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987).Google Scholar Karl Rahner also offers an argument for the unsurpassability of Jesus from our sense of participating in an “absolute” love. See The Love of Jesus and the Love of Neighbor, trans. Robert Barr (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 25-46. Here he also explores the definitiveness implied in God's personalization in Jesus.

8 See Von Balthasar, pp. 111-204, and Love Alone, trans. Dru, Alexander (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969);Google ScholarKasper, Walter, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. (New York: Crossroad, 1986);Google Scholar and Hebblethwaite, Brian, The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. “Perichoresis—Reflections on the Doctrine of the Trinity,” chap. 2, pp. 11-20.

9 The Trinity 8, 10, 14 (Fathers of the Church, trans. Stephen McKenna [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963], p. 266). Also see Richard of St. Victor, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans, and intro. Zinn, Grover A. (New York: Paulist, 1979)Google Scholar, esp. “Book Three of the Trinity,” pp. 373-97. For a contemporary meditation on the Cappadocian, Eastern tradition, a tradition brilliant and also love-oriented, see Staniloae, Dumitru, “The Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love,” in Barringer, Robert, trans., Theology and the Church (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), pp. 73–108.Google Scholar For a helpful entry, I would recommend Catherine LaCugna, Mowry, “Current Trends in Trinitarian Theology,” Religious Studies Review 13 (1987), 141–47.Google Scholar I, of course, mean that the Trinitarian, love structure of God is the condition of the possibility of the Incarnation. The “immanent” Trinity is the ground of the “economic” Trinity and the Incarnation.

10 Kasper, pp. 155-56.

11 Discours de l'estat et des grandeurs de Jésus II, 13, Oeuvres complètes du Cardinal de Bérulle I (Montsoult: Maison d'Institution de l'Oratoire, 1960), pp. 190–91Google Scholar: “From all eternity an infinitely adorable God has existed, yet there has not been an infinite adorer. There has been a God infinitely worthy of being loved and served, but there has not been any man or servant who would render the appropriately infinite servitude and love. O Jesus, you are now this Adorer, this man, this Servant. …” Or, another example, from Father Olier, Jean-Jacques, La Journée chrétienne (ed. Amiot, François (Paris: Le Rameau, 1954), p. 156)Google Scholar: “How adorable this Mystery of God adored as well as adoring in his Son”

12 Aspects of Buddhism, trans. Lamb, George (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953), pp. 38, 51, 38.Google Scholar This work is really unsurpassed for its perceptive analysis, esp. the wonderful chapter 1, “Buddhist Charity.”

13 I am using The Bhagavad Gita, Penguin Classics, trans, and intro. Mascarò, Juan (New York: Penguin, 1962), p. 95.Google Scholar One can conveniently consult, for the Chinese orbit, The Analects of Confucius, IV, 3–4Google Scholar (on love); VII, 22 (on Heaven) (trans, and annot. Arthur Waley [New York: Vintage, 1938]), pp. 102, 127; and Tzu, Lao, Tao Te Ching, Penguin Classics, trans, and intro. Lau, D. C. (New York: Penguin, 1963), passim.Google Scholar

15 Voegelin, , “On Christianity,” p. 455.Google Scholar Voegelin seems to be referring to the notion of a co-redeemer which would claim equality with Jesus the Christ. This is quite different from what would be meant by the tradition of Mary as a “co-redemptrix,” who mediates her Son in and through her Son.

15 See note 11, above. Transposing the Bérullian “servitude” into “service” is Fernando Guillen Preckler's suggestion in his Bérulle aujourd'hui 1575-1975: pour une spiritualité de l'humanité du Christ, Le Point Théologique (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978), pp. 64–65, n. 39.Google Scholar

16 Hebblethwaite, pp. 51-52, 23. For a classical expression of the same sentiment, see Bérulle's, Grandeurs II, 2, pp. 171–72Google Scholar: “An excellent spirit of the age [Copernicus] wanted to maintain that the sun is the world's center, and not the earth. … This opinion, little followed in the science of the stars, is useful, and should be followed in the science of salvation. For Jesus is the unmoved sun in its grandeur, moving all things.… Jesus is the true center of the world, and the world must be in continual movement toward him. Jesus is the sun of our souls.… And the earth of our hearts must be in continual movement toward him.

17 Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), pp. 47, 76, 75.Google Scholar

18 See Carmody, John and Carmody, Denise Lardner, Interpreting the Religious Experience: A Worldview (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987), esp. p. 49Google Scholar, and all of chaps. 4, 5, and 6. The crucial Voegelin works here are vols. 2,3, and 4 of Order and History (1957, 1974), The World of the Polis, Plato and Aristotle, The Ecumenic Age. The final volume 5, In Search of Order (1987), has just been published.

19 Volumes 3 and 4 of Order and History are the basic studies.

20 It seems to me that the way Abraham Heschel interprets the prophets' experience of God brings it rather close to the outgoing God of the Incarnation. See his The Prophets, 2 vols. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971).Google Scholar

21 See the Carmodys, pp. 15-48.

22 ”Questions Not Tending to Edification,” in Burtt, E. A., ed., The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (New York: New American Mentor, 1982), pp. 32–36 at 34–35Google Scholar: “It is as if … a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions, his relatives and kinsfolk, were to procure for him a physician or surgeon; and the sick man were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, or to the Brahmin caste.…’” Note that it is the sick man, not the surgeon, who gets lost in dogmas. Gautama continues: “Whether the dogma obtain… there still remain birth, old age, death, sorrow …for the extinction of which in the present life I am prescribing.…”

23 Voegelin is especially fine on the soteriological thrust of the Classical philosophers, esp. in vols. 2 and 3 of Order and History. But also see vol. 1, p. xiv. Hebblethwaite, passim, points out how the outgoingness of God in the Incarnation is especially pertinent for understanding the lengths to which God will go to confront human evil; see, succinctly, pp. 5-6. The comments which follow in our text have been stimulated by him.