Dear Mark,
Very thought provoking, keep it coming.
Your comments will be in the normal font, and mine in bold.
First, regarding the thought experiment that you present. It seems like forgiveness could be involved in either option or not [where is the forgiveness if you kick me back?]; the disjunction is not that sharp. If you wrong me grievously by kicking my shins, it seems that justice demands that both I am revenged on you [clearly not, unless God is unjust for not sending us all to hell] and you pay reparation to me. Now maybe both are accomplished by you washing my car (it needs it) but maybe not. Every evil requires vengeance or punishment, which is penal. But as I say, your one act of washing my car may make reparation and as you say, still involve that penal aspect. [Washing the car, that is, making satisfaction, does involve something penal; but this is still fundamentally different from revenge. It comes down to this: justice may be restored by the sinner offering something sufficiently good to the offended, or by the offended inflicting evil on the sinner.]
In the case of the relationship between God and man, it seems that sin, at least original sin, merits the eternal punishment of damnation [exactly]. Yet God accepts the sacrifice of Christ as satisfaction for our sins [true]: those who become members of Christ, that is, who participate in Him and in His Passion through Baptism, no longer have to undergo this punishment [right; and neither does Christ. So, what has happened to: "justice demands vengeance"? Is God unjust?].
They do have to undergo the punishment of purgative suffering, however. [Yes, they do. God, in His Wisdom, seems to want our cooperation in our salvation. Sin entails both temporal and eternal punishment; once the sin is forgiven, eternal punishment is out of the question – once again I question how forgiveness remains when the full punishment is inflicted – but temporal punishment remains. Now, for those forgiven of their sins, there is a direct correspondance between the amount of satisfaction they make for their sins through penitential works on earth and the amount of punishment that will be inflicted upon them in purgatory. Making satisfaction = not being punished]. Now it is clear that Christ does not undergo eternal damnation (your point 3). So somehow Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for His members not having to undergo the punishment that they justly deserve for sin.
Here is what I would accept about the situation from what you have said: Christ freely offers Himself to the Father. He does this in obedience to the Father. In doing so, He takes upon Himself the deepest level of human suffering [This last depends very much on what you mean. When discussing the fact that Christ endured maximal pain, St. Thomas is very careful to say that this refers to maximal pain in this life: "The pain suffered by a separated soul belongs to a state of future damnation which exceeds every evil in this life, as the glory of the saints exceeds every good of our present existence. When we speak of Christ’s pain as being maximal, we exclude all comparisons with the pain endured by a soul in the next life" (S.Th. IIIa, 46, 6, ad 3)]. He does this so as to offer perfect worship to the Father, to reveal the glory of the self-donative love of the Trinity in a fallen world, to give us a perfect model of charity. He also does this so as to repay the debt which we owe to the Father, but not just repay it but overpay it, so to speak, that He might have an abundance of grace to pour out upon us [also true; it is at least the common opinion (Sent. communis) that Christ’s atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. Actually, come to think of it, your point about the superabundance of Christ's satisfaction strikes me as an argument in my favor. Pope Clement VI declared that one drop of blood would have sufficed for the redemption of the whole human race on account of its infinite preciousness (is that a word?). Tradition says that the suffering on the Cross was more than enough; it seems to me that von Balthasar wants to say that it wasn't enough - now Holy Saturday must also be a day of suffering, in fact, of even greater suffering than good Friday. If this is the peak of Christ's redemptive work - his alienation from God in hell - why the stress upon the Cross, and specifically upon His Blood in the Bible and the Tradition?]. He furthermore does this so as to reveal His love for us, to be in total solidarity with us in our every suffering [just curious, but this seems like a premise to me, more than a conclusion – a premise which leads to the conclusion that Christ suffered the pains of damnation – and I wonder upon what is this premise based. It strikes me as unnecessarily assumed], even to the point of descending into death and hell [Christ's descent to hell has always been interpreted as a descent to the limbo of the fathers in order to lead them forth – never as a continuation of his suffering, at least until the modern era. His work of redemption was "finished" on the sixth day (Friday) – on the seventh day he rested]. St. Thomas argues that Christ descends into hell to shame the damned, but I think that there is something to what Balthasar says: He goes into hell so that even there His compassion has been manifested, so that no one can say that God was not there for him. [I’m not sure what that means]
So Christ repays our debt freely as a gift—on this we can agree. But this can lead to some problematic results [It shouldn't. It is one, undoubtably true premise. Problematic results could only occur throught the addition of false premises, or through faulty reasoning]. Our debt involves the punishment of suffering, death, and hell, and Christ takes these on Himself (though not so as to go to hell eternally [well, then, does he or doesn’t he take upon him our punishment? I don’t think you can have it both ways.]). Christ is innocent, yet the Father commands Him to suffer and He obeys—is this just of God to do (your point 1)? Christ is not fallen—so how can He pay our debt? How would it be just? For it is not qua human but qua fallen that we need to pay a debt in the first place. And the Fathers pointed out that "that which is not assumed is not redeemed" and Christ did not assume our fallenness. This seems to be an objection to the whole legal justice model that has to be met. [I don’t see the difficulty here – Christ’s innocence (and divinity) is precisely that which allows him to make such a valuable offering to God, and He makes this offering qua human, not just as a man, but as the definitive and last man, as the new Adam, who takes all of humanity up into himself; indeed, this is exactly why we must be incorporated into His body (the Catholic Church) in order to receive the fruits of the redemption. The “debt” cannot be paid by an innocent man if it is understood as the obligation to undergo punishment; it can be “paid” an innocent (representative) man if it is understood as the obligation to make reparation. If my brother breaks your car’s windows, it would be unjust for you to punish me, but it would be perfectly fine for me to pay for your window to be fixed. Re: the Eastern Fathers, and the "not assumed, not redeemed", it is not our "fallenness" that needs to be redeemed it is our nature, our race. This, at least, was clearly what they who said it meant by it. In fine, I see the points you make as an objection to penal substitution specifically, rather than to considerations of justice in general.]
[…]
Regarding Christ’s alienation from God, I think this is to be understood on an experiential or phenomenological level, not on the level of the actual principles involved. So there is no divide in the Trinity. [What does it mean to experience something that is not true/real? If Christ is not separated from God (remember: He is God), how can He experience this?] Rather, Christ willingly takes on all of our sufferings [I admit only maximal suffering in this life], including the experience of alienation from God [this is the suffering of the damned – this is the necessary conclusion of the penal substitution theory, which is precisely why I think that theory so woefully errant]. This does not preclude that He is actually close to God at the moment of his cry on the Cross. But we could tell the story this way: in the immanent Trinity, the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father involves the total self-donation of each to the other and thus their union. But when the Son becomes man in a fallen world, this total self-donation is experienced in terms of all the uncertainties and divisions that come with our fallen world. Coupled with His choice to experience all of our sufferings [again, only temporal sufferings], this means that the Son, in pouring Himself out to the Father on behalf of humanity reveals the glory of the Trinity (that is, the self-donative, self-emptying love of the Godhead) but this is experienced, in virtue of His humanity, in terms of uncertainty and loneliness. Thus it seems to me that both Balthasar and Ratzinger could be correct to a certain degree. [In regards to the story just told, I think that I can only admit that I don’t speak fluent von Balthasar. What does it all mean? I’m not really sure what you mean especially by kenosis within the Trinity. I’m aware of this word only in Phil. 2. Do you really think that Christ experienced uncertainty? What about the experience of the Beatific Vision that was his from conception unto eternity?]
It seems to me that we must take seriously the fact that our experience of alienation from God is the deepest source of suffering, and thus a 'place' that Christ must go if He is really to be 'God With Us' [I don’t see why. He is "God with us" in everything but sin.]; we must also take seriously the fact that the Son and the Father are one [I think that this actually has to be taken way more seriously than the previous point, since it is the Primary Dogma of the Catholic Faith, whereas the assertion that "God must experience alienation from God in order to be with us" could only be, if granted, a conclusion at some remove from the articles of faith. Theology works from the top downwards – soteriology is to be understood in terms of Christology, not vice versa]. An objection that you could make is that Christ is not fallen and so has no way of having this experience, but I think that this lodges you in the same difficulty I raised earlier about the justice model to begin with [I disagree, but I wrote a few inadequate words there, so I won’t repeat myself]. Part of the merit that Christ earns is that He suffers through this alienation, which is indeed arduous for Him on an experiential level in virtue of His humanity, still trusting in the Father. By taking this on Himself He both fully allows humanity to be assimilated to Himself and offers the perfect and total sacrifice of Himself in a fallen world as a man, and thus reveals to us the sacrifice of Himself which He eternally makes to the Father in His self-donative love in the immanent Trinity.
I look forward to hearing from you re: the weak points in all that I said, and re: which concerns of yours you think that I failed to address.
P.S. I see you've entered a new comment.
It seems to me that the hierarchical notion of truth is a good one, but the Trinity is, to say the least, difficult to understand. All of our understanding is in the form of analogies and metaphors. Thus it seems that it is possible that different models of the Trinity can be correct and thus perhaps different models of the Redemption. It seems to me that there are various paradoxes or aporias involved here, as I mentioned in the above post, and involving various Bible quotes. I'm not sure that there is a "one size fits all" interpretation of them, and it seems that we need to respect these difficulties and not just try to explain them away.
Just two things: (1) I agree that the Trinity (as well as the Hypostatic Union) is difficult to understand. In fact, that's precisely why I favor an interpretation of the atonement based upon this understanding of the Trinity: "The three Persons of the holy Trinity are one in being and yet really distinct in their relations of origin." And for Christology I take this: "Christ is one person in two natures unmixed, untransformed, undivided, unseparated." What "self-donation" and kenosis mean in the inner life of the Trinity, and how these would be mirrored in the human life and actions of Christ, are far less certain.
(2) The only thing that I am trying to "explain away" is the theory of penal substitution. If it contradicts firmly clearly truths about the Trinity and/or Christ Himself, then its problems must be "explained" so as to make it go "away." If there is something that you think I'm inappropriately explaining away, I'd like to know, but maybe I'd need to hear more specificly what you don't want "away".
Pax!
And, least interesting of all, I wrote my last paper of the semester (it's all but finished, I just need to look up a reference for a footnote).
Patroness of the Americas (III Class)
I turned in my next to last assignment: a synthesized journal of principles of Catholic biblical interpretation. It's linked on the sidebar, but you can also read it here.
After hearning Mass in the traditional Ambrosian rite at the little Church of San Rocco al Gentilino, we had some time before the crypt of St. Charles Borromeo would be opened at the Duomo, and so we went back to the castle of the Sforza family to see it in the daylight, and to walk through its courtyards.
The crypt of St. Charles, as I mentioned, was supposed to open at 1:30, which would give us just time enough to venerate the great cardinal and bishop of Milan before running off to catch a bus to the airport at 2:00. However, stand there as we might, the door to the crypt was not opened for us and we had to leave without seeing St. Charles. Ah, well.
Some cookies and milk for St. Nicholas, of course!
In the essay, Lewis makes four points against the (still) prevailing methods of historical-criticism:
You would not believe how much easier it is to set a tree up when you have one of those tree stands with screws that go into the sides of the trunk. Finding such a thing was quite an exciting development this year! After Maria and I took a long nap this afternoon, we decorated it with a simple purple ribbon (barely to be seen in the picture).
Happy Thanksgiving!
After dinner, we were entertained by music from all different cultures. Above is Katie playing her violin while the kids dance all around her. She kept playing even when little Eli was hanging on her right arm. We took a fair amount of pictures of the evening, which are now in an online album.
In between our last class of the day and the lecture, we did squeeze in a quick dinner: meat loaf and mashed potatoes, followed by an apple dumpling with vanilla ice cream for Maria. The rest of us broke into the apple pie after the lecture.
