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The Encyclical: God’s Eros Is Agape
| Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
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"We have seen that God’s eros for man is also totally
agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely
gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is
love which forgives" – Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas
Est, #10
Walking along the corridor of our department just hours after Deus
Caritas Est was issued, I ran into a young man I did not know. He
asked me if I had seen the new document. I was impressed that he ever
heard of it. I had not seen it, though I knew about it. He told me its
title. He added that he had hoped for something more "relevant,"
like bio-ethics.
I replied that I thought charity was a pretty good topic since it is central
to the Church’s teaching about who God is and what our lives are
about. And it has not a little to do even with such a perplexing topic
as bio-ethics, such as addressing the foundations of bio-ethics. One of
the reason some bio-ethicists get things wrong when they do is, I suspect,
because they do not understand the primacy–even the physical primacy–of
charity, in its full theological and philosophical meaning, even as applies
to the fact that we, as individual persons have both minds and bodies
to be what we are.
The printed encyclical is twenty-five single-spaced pages in length, or
about 16,000 words. It is not nearly so long as Fides et Ratio, John
Paul II’s encyclical on faith and reason. I do not know what
I expected to find here, what topic that the Benedict XVI would first
write upon, though the news channels had indicated this topic for a long
time. Evidently, John Paul II had wanted to write on this subject also.
So the question was really, how would Pope Ratzinger develop the argument?
No topic in the world needs more straightening out than this one of love.
It does not take a private revelation to predict that a pope might address
the issue.
Early on, I assumed that the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of Faith would write first on pressing doctrinal topics, of which there
are not a few. I thought the author of The Spirit of the Liturgy
might say something about the (often dire) condition of liturgy in the
Church. The ongoing clerical scandals and the related question of ordination
of homosexuals suggested that totally unpleasant topic. The increasing
expansion and militancy of Islam hinted that perhaps the Church would
finally say something directly meaningful and theological about "What
is Islam?" (The Pope did place these words in the encyclical’s
third paragraph: "in a world where the name of God is sometimes associated
with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence...")
Or perhaps the Bavarian pope would speak of the
decline of Europe, something he has reflected upon often. Or Benedict
would tell us of the actual meaning of Vatican II–not its aberrant
"spirit"–something he has touched on in other recent documents.
And, as a German, Lutheranism and the relation to the Protestant churches
might be a prime topic of interest. But nothing on war is found, nor on
China, Hinduism, or liberalism. Of course, I am fully aware that a list
of things "not talked about" is almost by definition infinite!
John Paul II’s first encyclical was Redemptor Hominis, about
Christ, the redeemer of man. Benedict XVI’s first encyclical is on
charity as the definition of God. In some sense both topics are the same,
once we see the relationship between the Trinity and the Incarnation,
the two doctrines that most separate Christianity from Judaism, Islam,
other faiths, and most philosophies. But the encyclical turns out to be
really closer to the great social encyclicals of the Church, beginning
with those of Leo XIII. In fact, Benedict mentions the major encyclicals
of his predecessors (#27). What Deus Caritas Est does is carve
out a clearer picture of the importance of practical charity. Benedict
more clearly relates faith to justice, a relationship that is often confused.
In fact, if there has been any major defect in recent social movements
in the Catholic Church since Vatican II, it has been the downplaying of
charity over against the almost exclusive elevation of justice and, with
it, politics. This encyclical insists on separating both in order to see
precisely what each is and how one is related to the other.
Benedict has nothing bad to say about politics, but he wants to identify
just what it can and ought to do:
The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into
itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy, incapable of guaranteeing
the very thing which the suffering person — every person —
needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which
regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance
with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports
initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity
with closeness to those in need (#28)
While Benedict may not think the state is the cause
of all evils, he certainly sees its limits and the principles on which
those limits depend. Benedict, with the Gospel, assures us that the poor
and the needy will always be with us, but this is not a principle of inactivity,
but precisely a locus of charity. He is aware that much modern ideology
claims to solve all social problems with institutional or genetic or psychic
reforms, with no need of charity or internal reform. He is also aware
that such movements usually end up enslaving man.
One cannot help but be amused that Benedict cites the Emperor Julian the
Apostate, the infamous persecutor of Christians, with some approval. Julian,
it seems, had a rather difficult childhood. "As a child of six years
old, Julian witnessed the assassination of is father, brother and other
family members by guards of the imperial palace" (#24). Julian in
retrospect blamed this heinous act on the Emperor Constantius’ Christian
faith. The only thing Julian liked about Christianity was its stress on
active charity. So he went off and formed his own religion taking charity
from Christianity but nothing else. The Pope concludes, "in this
way, then, the Emperor confirmed that charity was a decisive feature of
the Christian community, the Church." This may be the first time
in ages that a Pope has cited an Apostate in confirmation of a basic Christian
teaching!
Benedict also recalls an amusing exchange between Gassendi and Descartes,
in which the former called the latter "Soul" and the latter
called the former "Flesh," an explicit reference to Descartes’
famous philosophical separation of soul and body (#5) The point was, of
course, that both were wrong and that the central theme of the encyclical
is precisely the one-being-ness of the human person, body and soul. "It
is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man,
the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only
thus is love — eros — able to mature and attain its authentic
grandeur." In this encyclical, in a rather off-handed manner, the
Pope thus corrects many "small errors" in the beginning that
have become "big errors" in the end, to recall Aristotle’s
famous phrase.
A good deal of this document is devoted to the Old Testament and to
the philosophical understanding of love. Benedict points to the unity
of the Old and New Testaments. Augustine is cited, as are Nietzsche, Plato,
Aristotle, and Sallust. I did not see Aquinas, but I did see Gregory the
Great, Ignatius of Antioch, and Ambrose. Teresa of Calcutta is mentioned
twice. Those saints in particular known for charitable works come up:
Martin of Tours, Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Ignatius of Loyola,
John of God, Camillus de Lellis, Giuseppe Conolengo, John Bosco, Luigi
Orione. This document is adamant in carving out a place for specifically
Catholic institutions of charitable works that are clearly not a kind
of sub-branch of the welfare state–a danger not a few Catholic institutions
are subject to when too readily accepting state aid.
   
One might speculate on why Benedict thought this emphasis on actual charity–not
impersonal or state aid, not simple benevolence–was so important?
This is especially curious since he insists that charity is not to be
used for "proselytism": "Charity, furthermore, cannot be
used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism.
Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving other ends. But
this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and
Christ aside. For it is always concerned with the whole men. Often the
deepest cause of suffering is the absence of God" (#31). That is
a fertile thought, that the deepest cause of human suffering is precisely
the "absence" of God. I think the reason for this emphasis on
active charity is a reminder that we live in an actual fallen world that
retains its goodness of being but is not our lasting city (#31).
One need not write his own encyclical to explain the new encyclical of
Benedict XVI, though it is tempting. One could reflect on the relation
of Josef Pieper’s discussion
of the Platonic enthusiasm or madness (Enthusiasm
and the Divine Madness) and what Benedict has to say about the
same topic. "The Greeks — not unlike other cultures — considered
eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of
reason by a ‘divine madness’ which tears man away from his finite
existence and enables him, in the very process or being overwhelmed by
divine power, to experience superior happiness" (#4).
Another way of looking at this same experience would be the awareness
that at any time, something, some love, even divine love, can come to
us from outside our narrow concept of the world. It need not be a justification
of doing what we want, but rather a sign of our incompleteness yet also
our goodness. The intoxication or madness does not point to itself, but
to the good that comes to us. That such an experience can easily get out
of hand explains why the Pope, in the modern context, insists that eros
be itself disciplined and ordered so that its true completion in a full
and complete experience can be realized, in both friendship and agape.
The Pope also deals with some of this topic when he talks of the difference
between eros and agape–the love that ascends and the
love that descends (#3). "Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed
‘ecstasy,’ not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but
rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking
self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic
self-discovery, and indeed the discovery of God" (#6). Love "at
first sight" must also become love "at hind-sight," something
that lasts over the years, something that includes, as Aristotle put it,
a complete life. The essence of biblical faith is "that man can indeed
enter into union with God — his primordial aspiration. But this union
is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine;
it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain
themselves and yet become one" (#10).
The contrast between Aristotle and Israel on God’s nature is also
of interest to the Pope. The Biblical God "loves man," itself
a revolutionary innovation of revelation:
The divine power that Aristotle at the height of Greek philosophy
sought to grasp the rough reflection, is indeed for every being an object
of desire and of love — and as the object of love this divinity
moves the world (Metaphysics, XII, 7) — but in itself it
lacks nothing and does not love; it is solely the object of love. The
one God in whom Israel believes, on the other hand, loves with a personal
love. His love, moreover, is an elective love: among all the nations
he chooses Israel and loves her — but he does so precisely with
a view to healing the whole human race. (#9)
One cannot read this passage without recalling the way Aquinas dealt with
the same text in Aristotle, not totally rejecting him but seeing in him
an opening whereby revelation was a response to a fundamental perplexity
in man. Indeed, several times in this document, the Pope suggests that revelation
is precisely some new force in the world that is directed to man’s
reason, to get it to see what is in fact reasonable.
The Pope is anxious to get away from the notion that a "commandment"
is something from outside of us, something imposed on us by an arbitrary
Divinity. "No longer is it a question, then, of a ‘commandment’
imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of freely-bestowed
experience from within, a love which by its very nature must than be shared
with others. Love grows through love." One cannot love unless he is
first loved. This is the connection of love and service, of the first and
second commandments: love of God and of neighbor.
"For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could
equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable
expression of her very being (#25). I suspect that this passage addresses
the exasperation that modern feminists often had with someone like Mother
Teresa, and indeed with every mother who devotes her life to children and
her children, all of whom turn out to be in fact much more womanly and more
unique precisely because in their very being they are closer to charity.
In conclusion, there is a richness here that takes time to digest —
we find teaching on the Eucharist, on the state, on the most central
desire of our being, on the fact that we are first loved–a fact that
both explains our being and ultimately our activity on the basis of this
being given to us, this divine eros that is agape. With this
encyclical, we can be sure that Benedict, like his predecessor, will be
a teaching pope. Popes are to teach, to sanctify, and to rule. The three
belong together and cannot exist long without one another.
Benedict, in another context, cites the famous passage from his favorites,
Augustine: "Si comprehendis, non est Deus" (#38) —
roughly, "if your idea of God claims to totally comprehend God, then
your idea is not God at all." In other words, if we would love God
and one another, as we should, we must be open to what God reveals to us
about Himself. It is in this very opening that we will begin to find the
explanation of all else, including ourselves. The Pope exists to remind
the world that its understanding of God is not God, and that the deepest
cause of its suffering is "the absence of God." No one else tells
us these things quite so clearly. Even if we do not want to hear such things,
they are spoken.
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links/Articles:
• Author page
for Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
• On Reading the Pope | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Archives of IgnatiusInsight.com
articles by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
 Fr.
James V. Schall, S.J., is Professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown
University.
He is the author of numerous books on social issues, spirituality, culture,
and literature including Another
Sort of Learning, Idylls
and Rambles, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing,
Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing,
and A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning.
Read more of his essays on his
website.
Visit
the Insight Scoop Blog and read the latest posts and comments by
IgnatiusInsight.com staff and readers about current events, controversies,
and news in the Church!
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G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the finest Christian authors and apologists
of the past two hundred years. Raised as an agnostic, he embraced Christianity as a young man, ultimately entering the Catholic Church
in 1922. He wrote hundreds of essays, as well as novels, short stories, poetry, apologetics, literary
criticism, and nearly everything else imaginable. Dale Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American
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Nothing To Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church
by Russell Shaw
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problem of mistrust that exists in the credibility of the Church. He is not concerned with the legitimate secrecy that is necessary to protect confidentiality and people's reputations, but
with the stifling, deadening misuse of secrecy that has done immense harm to communion and community in the Church in America. Shaw raises such questions as: What kind of Church do we want our Church to be, open or closed? What kind of Church should it be? And how much secrecy is compatible with having
such a Church? As Pope Benedict XVI has stated, "The consequence is clear: we cannot communicate with the Lord if we do not communicate with one another." The Church is a communion, not a political
democracy, and thus openness and accountability are even more crucial for the life of the Church than they are in a democracy. In a talk he gave many years before he became the current Pope,
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had this to say about the reality of ecclesial communion: "Fellowship in the Body of Christ and receiving the Body of Christ means fellowship with one another. This
of its very nature includes mutual acceptance, giving and receiving on both sides, and readiness to share one's goods ... In this sense, the social question is given quite a central place
in the theological heart of the concept of communion." This is a beautiful vision of the Church. Shaw's aim in his book is to make a contribution to realizing this vision in the concrete circumstances
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Read more about Nothing to Hide.
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