Archive for the ‘Avery Cardinal Dulles’ Category

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The Population of Hell — Avery Cardinal Dulles

September 28, 2009
HellBosch  These are reading selections from an article Cardinal Dulles wrote in First Things back in 2003. There were references to some controversies at the time which I have removed as they seemed too topical for my wants, but I’ve kept the overall survey aspect of the Church’s teachings on hell – it is an invaluable resource and timeless overview of the topic. Whether it be commenting on the New Testament or Paul or dealing with contemporary theologians writings on the topic, Cardinal Dulles presents his materials and interpretations with consummate skill. Reading him in this way always causes me continued pain at his absence, wondering what we have been missing.

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Jesus and Hell
As we know from the Gospels, Jesus spoke many times about hell. Throughout his preaching, he holds forth two and only two final possibilities for human existence: the one being everlasting happiness in the presence of God, the other everlasting torment in the absence of God. He describes the fate of the damned under a great variety of metaphors: everlasting fire, outer darkness, tormenting thirst, a gnawing worm, and weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus indicates that some will be condemned. The Son of man says to the goats: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). In the Gospel of John, which says comparatively little about hell, Jesus is quoted as saying: “The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Father’s] voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29).

The apostles, understandably concerned, asked: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” Without directly answering their question Jesus replied: “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and not be able” (Luke 13:23-24). In the parallel passage from Matthew, Jesus says: “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). In a parable immediately following this exchange, Jesus speaks of those who try to come to the marriage feast, but are told: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. There you will weep and gnash your teeth” (Luke 13:27-28). In another parable, that of the wedding guest who is cast out for not wearing the proper attire, Jesus declares: “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). Taken in their obvious meaning, passages such as these give the impression that there is a hell, and that many go there; more, in fact, than are saved.

Other New Testament References
The New Testament does not tell us in so many words that any particular person is in hell. But several statements about Judas can hardly be interpreted otherwise. Jesus says that he has kept all those whom the Father has given him except the son of perdition (John 17:12). At another point Jesus calls Judas a devil (John 6:70), and yet again says of him: “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Matthew 26:24; Mark 14:21). If Judas were among the saved, these statements could hardly be true. Many saints and doctors of the Church, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, have taken it as a revealed truth that Judas was reprobated. Some of the Fathers place the name of Nero in the same select company, but they do not give long lists of names, as Dante would do.

References to punishment after death in the remainder of the New Testament simply confirm the teaching of the Gospels. In the Book of Acts Paul says that those ordained to eternal life have believed his preaching, whereas those who disbelieved it have judged themselves unworthy of eternal life (Acts 13:46-48). Peter’s First Letter puts the question: “If the righteous man is scarcely to be saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:18). The Book of Revelation teaches that there is a fiery pit where Satan and those who follow him will be tormented forever. It states at one point: “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).

St. Paul and Hell
The testimony of Paul is complex. In his First Letter to the Thessalonians he speaks of the coming divine judgment, in which Jesus will inflict vengeance “upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). In his epistle to the Romans Paul says that the impenitent Jews are storing up wrath for themselves on the day of judgment (Romans 2:5). In writing to the Corinthians he distinguishes between those who are being saved by the gospel and those who are perishing because of their failure to accept it (1 Corinthians 1:18). In a variety of texts he gives lists of sins that will exclude people from the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:3-6). And he tells the Philippians: “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

Some passages in the letters of Paul lend themselves to a more optimistic interpretation, but they can hardly be used to prove that salvation is universal. In Romans 8:19-21 Paul predicts that “creation itself will be set free from its bondage of decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God,” but the text seems to refer to the world of nature; it does not say that all human beings will achieve the glorious liberty in question. In 1 Corinthians 15:28 Paul speaks of all things being ultimately subjected to Christ, but he does not imply that subjection means salvation. He presumably means that the demonic powers will ultimately be defeated. In Philippians 2:9-10 he predicts that eventually every knee will bow to Christ and every tongue confess him. But this need not mean a confession that proceeds from love. In the Gospels the devils proclaim that Jesus is the Holy One of God, but they are not saved by recognizing the fact.

Equally unavailing, in my opinion, are appeals to passages that say that God’s plan is to reconcile all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:19-20). Although this is surely God’s intent, He does not override the freedom that enables men and women to resist His holy will. The same may be said of the statement that God “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Paul is apparently seeking to stimulate the apostolic zeal of missionaries who will bring the saving truth of Christ to all who do not yet believe. The absolute necessity of faith for salvation is a constant theme in the writings of Paul. I see no reason, then, for ranking Paul among the universalists.

The Teaching of the Church
The constant teaching of the Catholic Church supports the idea that there are two classes: the saved and the damned. Three general councils of the Church (Lyons I, 1245; Lyons II, 1274; and Florence, 1439) and Pope Benedict XII’s bull Benedictus Deus (1336) have taught that everyone who dies in a state of mortal sin goes immediately to suffer the eternal punishments of hell. This belief has perdured without question in the Catholic Church to this day, and is repeated almost verbatim in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC §1022, 1035). Several local councils in the Middle Ages, without apparently intending to define the point, state in passing that some have actually died in a state of sin and been punished by eternal damnation.

The Early Church Fathers
The relative numbers of the elect and the damned are not treated in any Church documents, but have been a subject of discussion among theologians. Among the Greek Fathers, Irenaeus, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem are typical in interpreting passages such as Matthew 22:14 as meaning that the majority will be consigned to hell. St. John Chrysostom, an outstanding doctor of the Eastern tradition, was particularly pessimistic: “Among thousands of people there are not a hundred who will arrive at their salvation, and I am not even certain of that number, so much perversity is there among the young and so much negligence among the old.”

St. Augustine and St. Thomas
Augustine may be taken as representative of the Western Fathers. In his controversy with the Donatist Cresconius, Augustine draws upon Matthew and the Book of Revelation to prove that the number of the elect is large, but he grants that their number is exceeded by that of the lost. In Book 21 of his City of God he rebuts first the idea that all human beings are saved, then that all the baptized are saved, then that all baptized Catholics are saved, and finally that all baptized Catholics who persevere in the faith are saved. He seems to limit salvation to baptized believers who refrain from serious sin or who, after sinning, repent and are reconciled with God.

The great Scholastics of the Middle Ages are not more sanguine. Thomas Aquinas, who may stand as the leading representative, teaches clearly in the Summa Theologiae that God reprobates some persons. A little later he declares that only God knows the number of the elect. But Thomas gives reasons for thinking that their number is relatively small. Since our human nature is fallen, and since eternal blessedness is a gift far beyond the powers and merits of every created nature, it is to be expected that most human beings fall short of achieving that goal.

The Population of Hell
The leading theologians of the baroque period follow suit. Francisco Suarez, in his treatise on predestination, puts the question squarely: How many are saved? Relying on the Gospel of Matthew, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Gregory, he proposes the following estimation. If the question is asked about all men living between the creation and the end of the world, the number of the reprobate certainly exceeds that of the elect. This is to be expected because God was not rightly known before the coming of Christ, and even since that time many remain in darkness. If the term “Christian” is taken to include heretics, schismatics, and baptized apostates, it would still appear that most are damned. But if the question is put about those who die in the Catholic Church, Suarez submits his opinion that the majority are saved, since many die before they can sin mortally, and many others are fortified by the sacraments.

Suarez is relatively optimistic in comparison with other Catholic theologians of his day. Peter Canisius and Robert Bellarmine, for example, were convinced that most of the human race is lost.

Several studies published by Catholics early in the twentieth century concluded that there was a virtual consensus among the Fathers of the Church and the Catholic theologians of later ages to the effect that the majority of humankind go to eternal punishment in hell. Even if this consensus be granted, however, it is not binding, because the theologians did not claim that their opinion was revealed, or that to take the opposite view was heretical. Nor is the opinion that most people attain salvation contradicted by authoritative Church teaching.

Mention should here be made of a minority opinion among some of the Greek Fathers. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa sometimes speak as though in the end all will be saved. Origen, the most prominent representative of this view, is generally reported as teaching that at the end of time, the damned, now repentant and purified, will take part in the universal restoration of all things (apokatastasis). Three centuries after Origen’s death his views on this and several other topics were condemned by a local council of Constantinople convened by the Emperor Justinian in a.d. 563. Even in his lifetime, however, Origen claimed that his adversaries had misunderstood or misrepresented him. A number of distinguished scholars down through the centuries have defended his orthodoxy on the fate of the damned. The doctrine of the eternity of hell has been firmly in place at least since the seventh century, and is not subject to debate in the Catholic Church.

A Modern Break With Tradition: Maritain and Rahner
About the middle of the twentieth century, there seems to be a break in the tradition. Since then a number of influential theologians have favored the view that all human beings may or do eventually attain salvation. Some examples may be illustrative.

In a “reverie” circulated among friends but not published until after his death, the philosopher Jacques Maritain included what he called a “conjectural essay” on eschatology, in which he contemplates the possibility that the damned, although eternally in hell, may be able at some point to escape from pain. In response to the prayers of the saints, he imagines, God may miraculously convert their wills, so that from hating Him they come to love Him. After being pardoned, they will then be delivered from the pain of sense and placed in a kind of limbo. They will still be technically in hell, since they will lack the beatific vision, but they will enjoy a kind of natural felicity, like that of infants who die without baptism. At the end, he speculates, even Satan will be converted, and the fiery inferno, while it continues to exist, will have no spirits to afflict. This, as Maritain acknowledged, is a bold conjecture, since it has no support in Scripture or tradition, and contradicts the usual understanding of texts such as the parable of the Last Judgment scene of Matthew. But the theory has the advantage of showing how the Blood of Christ might obtain mercy for all spiritual creatures, even those eternally in hell.

Karl Rahner, another representative of the more liberal trend, holds for the possibility that no one ever goes to hell. We have no clear revelation, he says, to the effect that some are actually lost. The discourses of Jesus on the subject appear to be admonitory rather than predictive. Their aim is to persuade his hearers to pursue the better and safer path by alerting them to the danger of eternal perdition. While allowing for the real possibility of eternal damnation, says Rahner, we must simultaneously maintain “the truth of the omnipotence of the universal salvific will of God, the redemption of all by Christ, the duty of men to hope for salvation.” Rahner therefore believes that universal salvation is a possibility.

Hans Urs von Balthasar
The most sophisticated theological argument against the conviction that some human beings in fact go to hell has been proposed by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” He rejects the ideas that hell will be emptied at the end of time and that the damned souls and demons will be reconciled with God. He also avoids asserting as a fact that everyone will be saved. But he does say that we have a right and even a duty to hope for the salvation of all, because it is not impossible that even the worst sinners may be moved by God’s grace to repent before they die. He concedes, however, that the opposite is also possible. Since we are able to resist the grace of God, none of us is safe. We must therefore leave the question speculatively open, thinking primarily of the danger in which we ourselves stand.

At one point in his book Balthasar incorporates a long quotation from Edith Stein, now Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who defends a position very like Balthasar’s. Since God’s all-merciful love, she says, descends upon everyone, it is probable that this love produces transforming effects in their lives. To the extent that people open themselves to that love, they enter into the realm of redemption. On this ground Stein finds it possible to hope that God’s omnipotent love finds ways of, so to speak, outwitting human resistance. Balthasar says that he agrees with Stein.

This position of Balthasar seems to me to be orthodox. It does not contradict any ecumenical councils or definitions of the faith. It can be reconciled with everything in Scripture, at least if the statements of Jesus on hell are taken as minatory rather than predictive. Balthasar’s position, moreover, does not undermine a healthy fear of being lost. But the position is at least adventurous. It runs against the obvious interpretation of the words of Jesus in the New Testament and against the dominant theological opinion down through the centuries, which maintains that some, and in fact very many, are lost.

The conviction of earlier theologians that relatively few are saved rests, I suspect, partly on the assumption that faith in Christ, baptism, and adherence to the Church are necessary conditions for salvation. The first two of these conditions are clearly set forth in the New Testament, and the third has been taught by many saints, councils, popes, and theologians. But these conditions can be interpreted more broadly than one might suspect. In recent centuries it has become common to speak of implicit faith, baptism “by desire,” and membership in the “soul” of the Church, or membership in voto (“by desire”). Vatican II declares that all people, even those who have never heard of Christ, receive enough grace to make their salvation possible….

It is unfair and incorrect to accuse either Balthasar or Richard John Neuhaus (who wrote an article supporting  Balthasar in 2002) of teaching that no one goes to hell. They grant that it is probable that some or even many do go there, but they assert, on the ground that God is capable of bringing any sinner to repentance, that we have a right to hope and pray that all will be saved. The fact that something is highly improbable need not prevent us from hoping and praying that it will happen. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “In hope, the Church prays for ‘all men to be saved’ (1 Timothy 2:4)” (CCC §1821). At another point the Catechism declares: “The Church prays that no one should be lost” (CCC §1058).

Pius IX And John Paul II
The Church continues to insist that explicit faith, reception of the sacraments, and obedience to the Church are the ordinary means to salvation. Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864) accordingly condemned the proposition: “We should at least have good hopes for the eternal salvation of those who are in no way in the true Church of Christ.” Pius XII in his encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ (Mystici Corporis, 1943) taught that even those who are united to the Church by bonds of implicit desire-a state that can by no means be taken for granted-still lack many precious means that are available in the Church and therefore “cannot be sure of their salvation.” Vatican II said that anyone who knows that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ and refuses to enter her cannot be saved. If we accept these teachings, we will find it unlikely that everyone fulfills the conditions for salvation.

Pope John Paul II in his Crossing the Threshold of Hope mentions the theory of Balthasar. After putting the question whether a loving God can allow any human being to be condemned to eternal torment, he replies: “And yet the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matthew 25:46).” As justification for this assessment the Pope puts the rhetorical question: Can God, who is ultimate justice, tolerate terrible crimes and let them go unpunished? Final punishment would seem to be necessary to reestablish the moral equilibrium in the complex history of humanity.

In a General Audience talk of July 28, 1999, the Pope seems to have shifted his position, adopting in effect that of Balthasar. According to the English version of the text he said:

Christian faith teaches that in taking the risk of saying “yes” or “no,” which marks the (human) creature’s freedom, some have already said no. They are the spiritual creatures that rebelled against God’s love and are called demons (cf. Fourth Lateran Council). What happened to them is a warning to us: it is a continuous call to avoid the tragedy which leads to sin and to conform our life to that of Jesus who lived his life with a “yes” to God.

Eternal damnation remains a possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it. The thought of hell-and even less the improper use of biblical images-must not create anxiety or despair, but is a necessary and healthy reminder of freedom within the proclamation that the risen Jesus has conquered Satan, giving us the Spirit of God who makes us cry “Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6)

The last sentence refers to the hope of Christians for their own salvation and cannot be used to support any theory of universal salvation. But the preceding sentence indicates at least an openness to the opinion that we may hope for the salvation of all.

A Shift in Catholic Theology?
One might ask at this point whether there has been any shift in Catholic theology on the matter. The answer appears to be Yes, although the shift is not as dramatic as some imagine. The earlier pessimism was based on the unwarranted assumption that explicit Christian faith is absolutely necessary for salvation. This assumption has been corrected, particularly at Vatican II. There has also been a healthy reaction against the type of preaching that revels in depicting the sufferings of the damned in the most lurid possible light. An example would be the fictional sermon on hell that James Joyce recounts in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This kind of preaching fosters an image of God as an unloving and cruel tyrant, and in some cases leads to a complete denial of hell or even to atheism.

Today a kind of thoughtless optimism is the more prevalent error. Quite apart from what theologians teach, popular piety has become saccharine. Unable to grasp the rationale for eternal punishment, many Christians take it almost for granted that everyone, or practically everyone, must be saved. The Mass for the Dead has turned into a Mass of the Resurrection, which sometimes seems to celebrate not so much the resurrection of the Lord as the salvation of the deceased, without any reference to sin and punishment. More education is needed to convince people that they ought to fear God who, as Jesus taught, can punish soul and body together in hell (cf. Matthew 10:28).

The Demography Of Hell
The search for numbers in the demography of hell is futile. God in His wisdom has seen fit not to disclose any statistics. Several sayings of Jesus in the Gospels give the impression that the majority are lost. Paul, without denying the likelihood that some sinners will die without sufficient repentance, teaches that the grace of Christ is more powerful than sin: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Passages such as these permit us to hope that very many, if not all, will be saved.

All told, it is good that God has left us without exact information. If we knew that virtually everybody would be damned, we would be tempted to despair. If we knew that all, or nearly all, are saved, we might become presumptuous. If we knew that some fixed percent, say fifty, would be saved, we would be caught in an unholy rivalry. We would rejoice in every sign that others were among the lost, since our own chances of election would thereby be increased. Such a competitive spirit would hardly be compatible with the gospel.

We are forbidden to seek our own salvation in a selfish and egotistical way. We are keepers of our brothers and sisters. The more we work for their salvation, the more of God’s favor we can expect for ourselves. Those of us who believe and make use of the means that God has provided for the forgiveness of sins and the reform of life have no reason to fear. We can be sure that Christ, who died on the Cross for us, will not fail to give us the grace we need. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, and that if we persevere in that love, nothing whatever can separate us from Christ (cf. Romans 8:28-39). That is all the assurance we can have, and it should be enough.

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Avery Cardinal Dulles on Love, the Pope, and C.S. Lewis

August 20, 2009
The late Cardinal Avery Dulles

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles

Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, has two clearly distinct parts. In the first it deals with the nature of love and of charity, the highest form of love; in the second it treats the charitable activity of the Church. Most of the commentaries have focused on the second part, which raises interesting questions about the relation of Church and state, charity and justice. But the first part also merits careful study, for the encyclical is not primarily concerned with ethical problems but rather with communicating a philosophical worldview in which the Church’s ethical teaching concerning love, marriage, and sexuality is intelligible.

In a famous 1908 study of the theology of love in the Middle Ages, the French Jesuit Pierre Rousselot identified two basic approaches: the more self-centered and the more altruistic. Some medieval thinkers emphasized love as desire (amor concupiscentiae); others emphasized love as benevolence or friendship (amor benevolentiae or amor amicitiae). Rousselot did not find two clear-cut schools in the Middle Ages, but he did find two tendencies. Theologians heavily influenced by Aristotle, such as Thomas Aquinas, argued that creatures who are imperfect continually seek to perfect themselves by embracing what is congenial to their nature. Rousselot called this theory of love “physical” in the sense of natural. The opposite theory, which emphasized self-forgetfulness and sacrifice, Rousselot called “ecstatic.” He found it in certain writings of the Victorine and Cistercian schools and especially among the Franciscans (Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus).

St. Thomas, though he exemplified the natural theory, was more successful than others in reconciling the two points of view. Taking his departure from Aristotle, he held that everything seeks its own good, but he added that God was the common good of the whole universe and that human beings, by their spiritual nature, were open to union with God. “Just because every creature belongs to God naturally by everything it is,” wrote St. Thomas, “it follows that by the very movement of its nature a man or an angel must love God more than itself.” Human beings, in particular, are made in the image of God and thus tend to the divine likeness as their own perfection. St. Thomas, then, while remaining fundamentally in the Aristotelian tradition, escaped the trap of egocentrism.

Some twenty years after Rousselot, the Swedish Lutheran theologian Anders Nygren gave a different analysis in his well-known book Agape and Eros. He agreed that there are two types of love: the self-seeking, which he called eros, and the self-giving, which he called agape. Holding that only agape was truly Christian love, he argued that such thinkers as Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, under the influence of Neoplatonism, had taken the wrong path. They improperly commingled the biblical idea of agape with the Greek philosophical idea that the soul was in quest of the divine as the supreme goal of its innate longing. Medieval theologians, therefore, mistakenly thought that God drew all things to himself by his infinite goodness. In Nygren’s estimation, Augustine and the whole medieval tradition failed to grasp the true Christian idea of agape, which meant a totally free gift, unmotivated by any need or desire on the part of the recipient. For Nygren, we are faced by a clear choice between two types of love; no compromise or synthesis between eros and agape is possible.

Writing in France about 1939, Denis de Rougement, son of a Swiss Protestant pastor, also drew a sharp contrast between eros and agape. The idea of eros as a frenzy or divine delirium, he maintained, was characteristic of the mystery religions, Plato, and the Neoplatonists. Love as a dark passion continued to make its appearance in various forms of Manichaeanism and medieval legends such as that of Tristran and Isolde. Whereas eros seeks to escape from the flesh and flee into a world beyond, agape represents God’s embrace of this world and is symbolized by the marriage of Christ and the Church. De Rougement, like Nygren, confronts us with a stark choice between eros and agape.

And yet, as Martin D’Arcy points out in his fine work The Mind and Heart of Love, Nygren and de Rougement have different conceptions of both eros and agape. De Rougement characterizes eros as an irrational passion that is always discontented with earthly and temporal existence; it moves the lover to a total surrender of self and absorption into the All. For Nygren, on the other hand, eros is an intellectual and possessive form of love. As for agape, de Rougement sees it as an affirmation of this world and an acceptance of human limitations, including human life in its concrete conditions. Nygren, on the other hand, sees agape as an act of sovereign freedom, arbitrary in nature, totally unconcerned for human needs and values.

In summary, Christian thinkers tend to integrate the love of desire with the love of generosity or friendship. They grapple with the problem of showing how a love originating in desire can rise to the point of becoming purely disinterested and sacrificial. The Protestant thinkers we have examined set up an unbridgeable gulf between eros, as a passion arising from below, and agape, as a totally altruistic gift from on high. Catholicism, here as elsewhere, stands for a both/and; Protestantism, for an either/or.

In Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict does not narrate the history of the problem but goes directly to the issues, taking eros and agape as the two principal forms of love, thus accepting the problematic of Nygren (though he reaches a different solution). He begins by distinguishing various meanings of eros. Citing Friedrich Nietzsche as a champion of eros as a passion for the infinite, he asks whether Nietzsche was right in charging that Christianity has poisoned and destroyed eros, forbidding us to taste the happiness God has prepared for us.

Nietzsche, Benedict says, is not wholly wrong. The Old Testament firmly rejects eros, if by it one means the “divine madness” that flourished in the fertility cults of ancient paganism and in rites such as temple prostitution. Biblical religion declared war on this intoxicated and undisciplined eros because, instead of elevating its votaries to the divine, it degraded them and stripped them of their dignity. Christianity equally opposes the modern tendency to equate eros with sexual and sensual self-indulgence, turning the body into a mere instrument of pleasure, an object to be bought and sold. The body in this hedonistic view is separated from the spirit and reduced to the status of a thing to be exploited at will.

Quite different, however, is the idea of eros that prevailed in classical philosophy, including in Plato and the Neoplatonists. Accepting this view in modified form, Christian spiritual writers have maintained that all men and women are born with a longing for a beatifying vision of God. They harmonize biblical passages on the ecstasies of Moses, the prophets, and Paul with the Neoplatonist mysticism that found its way into the patristic tradition.

Eros in this theological sense, according to Benedict, is not incompatible with agape. Eros inclines us to receive the gifts of God; agape impels us to pass on to others what we ourselves have received. Eros, then, corresponds to the ascending moment in the spiritual life whereby we turn to God, from whom every perfect gift descends. Eros and agape belong together as two phases of the same process. If we did not receive, we would have nothing to give; and if we were not disposed to give, we would be spiritually unprepared to receive.

In their highest expression, the two types of love reinforce each other. Contemplation of the divine gives us the spiritual strength to take upon ourselves the needs of others. Pope Gregory I explained how Moses, by engaging in dialogue with God in the tabernacle, obtained the power he needed to be of service to his people. Similarly, to become sources from which living waters flow, we must drink deeply from the wellsprings of life. The more deiform we become, the more capable we will be of agape. Conversely, the more concerned we are with service to others, the more receptive will we be to the gifts of God. This will become more evident if we examine what revelation has to tell us about the divine love, the next stage of our investigation.

For Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, God was the supreme object of love, but he was not himself a lover. Biblical revelation, however, gives us a totally different picture of God. John in his first letter makes the bold statement “God is love.” According to Christian theology, all God’s actions regarding the world are motivated and ruled by love. He does not create because of any need in himself but solely out of desire to share something of his own perfection with creatures. God’s action in salvation history is dominated by the mercy and forgiveness that proceed actively and freely from him.

Benedict describes even divine love in terms of agape and eros. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God is and displays agape. His goodness communicates and diffuses itself. But because God lacks nothing, some theologians deny that there is anything in him corresponding to eros. The encyclical gives a more nuanced answer. It says that God’s love for man “may certainly be called eros.” (In a footnote, it cites Pseudo-Dionysius as calling God both eros and agape.) Because Scripture describes God’s love by metaphors such as betrothal and marriage, the pope thinks it important to recognize that God has a true affection for the persons he loves. But, Benedict adds, God’s eros for man is also totally agape.

The pope is careful to note that God’s love is not selfish and acquisitive. It is not the “ascending” love usually called eros. It corresponds neither to the egocentric desire described by Nygren nor to the dark passion described by de Rougement under the name of eros. But God’s love for creatures includes an element of desire (concupiscentia). He lovingly wills that persons still on the way to salvation achieve the blessedness to which they are called. In saying that God’s eros is also agape, the pope recognizes that God’s desires for his creatures are for their good, not his own.

When reading the English translation, I was surprised to find that the encyclical describes God as “a lover with all the passion of true love.” After speaking of God’s “passion for his people,” it later calls God’s love “passionate.” I asked myself with some anxiety whether the pope was contradicting Thomas Aquinas and the normative theological tradition, which denies that there can be any passion or passivity in God. But, on consulting the original Latin text, I found that the pope never uses passio or its cognates in this context. In the passages just mentioned, he calls God’s marital affection for his people not a passio but a cupiditas (desire) that is fiery (flagrans), not passionate, and has the vehemence (impetus), not the passion, of true love.

This being said, we must recognize that the pope is on guard against allowing the realism of the Bible to be attenuated by the detachment of the philosophers. In his early book Introduction to Christianity, Professor Ratzinger, as he then was, charged that the philosophical idea of God was too self-centered and intellectualistic. God’s love, he contended, was not an unfeeling idea. Now, as pope, he insists that God, far from being self-enclosed, involves himself in the world he has created. The prophets speak of God’s relationship to Israel as that of a bridegroom to a bride, or a parent for a child, and the New Testament depicts Christ as the bridegroom of the Church. These metaphors imply bonds of deep affection.

It is by no means accidental, the pope believes, that Holy Scripture fixes on the metaphor of marriage to express the relationship between God and Israel and later between Christ and the Church. Among creatures, he declares, eros begins with a kind of passionate seeking but leads on to a communion with the other that can satisfy the lover’s craving and supply what the lover lacked. The Song of Songs was accepted into the Hebrew canon because it was read as an allegory of the soul’s mystical marriage with God. Marriage could not fulfill its purpose except by being a permanent and exclusive bond, making the two lovers “one flesh.” “Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love.”

The extravagance of God’s love, according to Deus Caritas Est, is dramatically shown forth in the Incarnation and Redemption. “God so loved the world,” says St. John, “that he gave his only Son.” The gospel parables express the way in which God goes in search of the lost sheep. The death of Jesus on the cross is love in its most radical form.

Pope Benedict notes that as love grows it becomes less covetous and more concerned with the good of the other. The first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might. Our love of God must be continually purified. In order to love God with a pure, unselfish love surpassing our affection for any creature, we need the help of divine grace. Love of God in the sense of friendship with him could not be commanded unless it were first given. Twice in his encyclical, the pope refers to the statement in John’s first letter, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.”

Besides emphasizing the priority of grace, Deus Caritas Est is remarkable for the emphasis it places on the palpability of God’s love as it comes to us through the Incarnate Word. This emphasis is also characteristically Johannine. John in his first letter speaks of how he and others have seen and heard the Word of Life whom he proclaims. Benedict dwells on the many ways in which God makes himself tangibly present to us: through the love story encountered in the Bible, through the public life of Jesus culminating in the mystery of the cross, through Christ’s risen life; through the saints who reflect his loving presence; through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist; and through the Church’s whole life of prayer and worship. All these manifestations of God’s extravagant love for us evoke on our part a response of generous and grateful love
for him.

In the final sections of Part I, Benedict speaks of the ways in which the mutual love between God and humanity results in new relationships of love within the human family. Jesus links the first commandment given in Deuteronomy with the commandment to love one’s neighbor given in Leviticus. The two commandments, says Pope Benedict, are so intertwined that they become one.

St. Thomas Aquinas, who works in terms of an Aristotelian virtue ethics, explains that charity is a single infused virtue but that it expresses itself in two distinct acts: love of God and love of neighbor. God is to be loved simply because of himself, but creatures are to be loved because they actually or potentially reflect divine perfections or because they are means that lead to God.

Working more from Scripture and experience, Pope Benedict reaches similar conclusions. Love of God and neighbor, he says, support each other. Religion becomes rigid and formalistic if it is divorced from communion with our neighbors. Relations with our neighbors, conversely, have no depth unless we can find in them the image of God. If we have learned to encounter others based on a genuine communion with God, we can truly love those whom we do not like or even know. We become capable of looking on them from the perspective of Jesus Christ and, as it were, with his eyes. Thinking and willing in union with the Lord, we experience a spiritual communion of minds and hearts with others who are also in communion with him.

Love of neighbor and love of God are most strikingly realized in the Church as the body of Christ. The sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are social in nature. Besides uniting us vertically, as it were, with Christ, they unite us horizontally with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Holy Communion draws us out of ourselves and thus toward union with all other Christians. In the words of Saint Paul, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” It is impossible, says Benedict, to possess Christ simply for ourselves, for we belong to him only in company with all who have ever belonged to him. Every authentic celebration of the Eucharist therefore passes over into concrete acts of love.

Part I of the encyclical ends on this note. The concluding sentence reads, “Love is ‘divine’ because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a ‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’ ” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Deus Caritas Est, in its first part, maps out the elements of a rather complete theology of love. In my estimation, the encyclical should be classified as a theological rather than a philosophical document. The sources it cites as authorities are for the most part biblical and patristic. When it cites philosophers, it does not treat them as authorities. It speaks of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, but in each case the purpose is to point out how they failed to attain the full truth of biblical revelation. Patristic theologians such as Augustine, Gregory I, and Pseudo-Dionysius, by contrast, are always cited with the intention of reaffirming their views.

Interestingly, the encyclical makes no reference to scholastic authors, not even to Thomas Aquinas. The pope does not disagree with St. Thomas, so far as I can see, but he concentrates on the biblical and patristic roots, perhaps to make his theology more accessible. It is also noteworthy that the encyclical does not mention modern scholars who have traced what they have called the “problem of love” in its medieval and modern history. The pope, I suspect, does not wish to embroil himself in the scholarly disputes between Protestants and Catholics, or even among Catholics themselves. On the whole, his position resembles that of Rousselot, but he does not mention Rousselot or follow his debatable reading of St. Thomas and the medieval tradition.

Benedict instead moves the question forward by showing that the positive features of eros and agape can be combined in the highest expressions of human and divine love. In order to effect this synthesis, he is of course required to exclude certain sensual and demonic forms of eros. Although some authors prefer to say that God’s love is not erotic, the pope prefers to assert that eros in God coincides with agape.

A further question is whether the reality of love is exhausted by eros and agape. Pope Benedict mentions a third Greek term, philia (“friendship”), but he does not indicate whether it is reducible to the other two. In his well-known 1960 book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis has chapters not only on eros and agape but also on friendship, which he treats as a distinct species of love. Friends, he says, are not oriented primarily toward one another, as lovers are, but toward a common task or area of interest. Erotic love is exclusive and jealous, whereas friendship is open and inclusive. Two friends are normally pleased to find a third and a fourth to join them.

Aristotle and other ancient philosophers praised friendship as the highest form of love. Cicero, among others, wrote a treatise on it, as did medieval authors such as Aelred of Rievaulx. In the gospels, Jesus calls his disciples friends and expects them to be ready, as friends must be, to lay down their lives for one another. The virtue of friendship has fallen into neglect since the rise of the romantic theory of love in the nineteenth century. Even today, friendship is little esteemed. Friendship with persons of the same sex, Lewis remarks, is sometimes disparaged as a hidden form of homosexuality. But Lewis shows that the properties of friendship and sexual love are very different, even contrary to each other. Perhaps, at some future time, Benedict will supplement Deus Caritas Est with a deeper examination of friendship.

The doctrine of the encyclical could also be developed by a discussion of the Latin term caritas, which appears in the title but is absent in the first part of the encyclical, except in several quotations from Scripture. For Augustine, St. Thomas, and their followers, caritas, or charity, is the highest form of love. It is an infused theological virtue, inclining us to love God and our neighbor with an affection that is a participation in the love proper to God.

C.S. Lewis communicates the same idea in less technical language. Eros and agape (which he prefers to designate as “Need-love” and “Gift-love”) can exist, he says, on either the natural or the supernatural plane. When, with God’s help, our Need-love rises to the point where we recognize our total dependence on God’s love for us, it can become a form of charity. And so likewise, when our Gift-love is so graced that it goes out to include persons who are naturally unattractive and unlovable, it deserves to be called charity in this theological sense of the word. Pope Benedict, it seems, has something similar in mind when he says that love at its most perfect combines in itself the qualities of eros and agape.

At the end of The Four Loves, Lewis makes an important statement that he does not develop at the length it deserves: Grace can arouse in us a higher kind of love than either eros or agape as he understands them. God, according to Lewis, “can awake in man, towards Himself, a supernatural appreciative love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true center of all human and angelic life.”

Earlier in the book, Lewis had drawn a helpful contrast among three forms of love: “Need-love cries out to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says ‘We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.” Corresponding to what the Scholastics called amor complacentiae, it rejoices in the consummate perfection of the divine. As Lewis’ citation from the Gloria indicates, the Church’s earthly liturgy contains anticipations of the hymns of the angels before the throne of God. They no longer seek from him anything that they do not have, nor do they intend to give him anything he might desire. They worship and praise him with loud hosannas, not because they thereby benefit either God or themselves but simply to express their love.

In Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI makes no mention of appreciative love, nor does he discuss the love of the saints in heaven. Nevertheless, from his writings on the liturgy, one may suspect that he would be open to the idea that caritas tends to an eschatological fulfillment that, in the opinion of Lewis, transcends the earthly realizations of eros and agape alike.

 A “Fan Page” for the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.  is  at http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/Dulles/ with articles, videos, etc.

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The Old and New Testaments

June 29, 2009
Avery Cardinal Dulles

Avery Cardinal Dulles

No sophisticated reader today needs to be told that the Old Testament did not drop down ready-made from heaven. It recounts the stages by which a people, originally rather primitive and barbaric, were gradually educated in the ways of God. Christians find in it a divinely intended record of the providential process by which Israel was gradually led toward the fullness of revelation in Christ.

Just as we have preparatory revelation in the Old Testament — in some cases very inadequately grasped by a “stiff-necked” people — so too we have preparatory ideas of revelation. The Old Testament contains legends and sagas which would not pass any contemporary tests for historical accuracy. It likewise preserves here and there the traces of primitive mythical thinking. None of it is the work of critically reflective minds in the modern sense. For the Christian, moreover, the Old Testament does not rank as a revelation complete in itself, but only as a part of the whole process of revelation leading up to the New Testament.

Conversely, the New Testament does not stand by itself; it is organically linked to the Old Testament as the matrix out of which it grows. The same themes are resumed and amplified on continually higher planes until at length all the lines converge in Christ, who in turn illumines — and is illumined by — the entire prehistory that points toward him, though in a veiled manner.

A Variety Of Conceptions About Revelation In The Old Testament
In the Old Testament, which in some respects resembles a great museum, we find a fascinating variety of conceptions about revelation. In some of the early books we may detect evidences of superstitious resort to magical practices — divination, dreams, lots, and omens. In facing decisions regarding wars, alliances, and internal political matters, the Israelite leaders were accustomed to consult Yahweh; and this in practice meant obtaining oracular statements from the priests. The priest would normally don a kind of waistcloth called the “ephod” and employ mysterious instruments known as the “urim and thummim” — possibly small sticks or stones which were so marked as to indicate affirmative or negative replies (see Exodus. 28:30; 1 Samuel 30:71., and so forth). Israel differed markedly from other nations in the ancient Near East in that it did not indulge in elaborate divinatory techniques such as hepatoscopy [examination of the livers of sacrificed animals as a technique of divination]. Still more remarkable is the Israelite prohibition of images, which most of the surrounding nations regarded as principal bearers of revelation

Stages Of Salvation History In The Biblical Tradition

(1) The Call of Abraham (Genesis. 12:1-7). The call comes to Abram quite suddenly, it would appear. This revelation, so far as the records disclose, did not rest upon previous events. It is sheer promise, and looks forward to a future fulfillment that is to answer the present word and thus complete the revelation itself by a concrete historical embodiment. The revelation involves Abraham in a partnership with Yahweh, and in this covenant Abraham’s posterity is destined to share (see Genesis. 17:1-4). In the revelation to Abraham attention is focused on the word, which comes gratuitously because God in His mercy wishes to call a particular people to a happier destiny. There are “theophanies” in the Abraham cycle, such as the apparition of the three men in Gen 18 1ff, but in these stories attention is concentrated not on the visible manifestation but on the word God appears in order to speak, and his word is given to inaugurate a new era of history. In later patriarchal narratives, such as the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, God continues to show His favor to Abraham’s posterity and thus proves his fidelity to his pledged word.

(2) Exodus and Sinai. This is unquestionably the central event in the Old Testament, and hence commends itself to special scrutiny. The cycle begins with the “inaugural vision” and the call of Moses in Exodus 3. The attention of Moses is drawn by a theophany, the symbolic vision of the burning bush. The sign is a miraculous one: the bush, though afire, is not consumed. But God, here again, appears only in order to speak. He identifies himself historically as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and goes far beyond all previous self-revelations by imparting knowledge of his own name (Yahweh). The vision both looks back to patriarchal times and points forward in hope to the future. God’s speech is, as in the case of Abraham, a summons to action. Moses is called to play a decisive role in salvation history. The ultimate aim of this revelation, as of others, is soteriological. Most proximately, it aims to liberate Israel from its Egyptian servitude.

The theophany of Mount Sinai completes what was begun in the initial call of Moses. In Exodus 19: if. Moses receives God’s law for his people amid thunder and lightning, clouds of smoke and trumpet blasts. The revelation essentially consists not in these phenomena but in the word of God: the ten debarim (words) of the Law. And the purpose of the Law is to bring the whole people into a covenant relationship with Yahweh so that they may indeed be “my very own out of all the peoples, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (Ex. 19: ff.). Thus the Sinai revelation is ultimately directed to the entire nation and is intended for their salvation.

(3) The Prophets. In a wide sense of the term, Moses himself is a prophet, and he might indeed be called the very prototype of Old Testament prophecy, insofar as he has a direct and familiar relationship to God. Whereas other prophets may know God in dreams and visions, Moses is privileged to speak to him face to face (Numbers 12:6-11.).

In Old Testament usage, the term nabi (a term of obscure etymology which is generally translated “prophet”) covers a wide variety of personages who receive divine communications and inform others of God’s hidden plans and emotions. In the earlier traditions preserved for us in the books of Samuel and Kings, we learn of “speaking prophets,” such as Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha. They are gifted with clairvoyance and frequently fall into ecstasies; many of them also perform remarkable miracles. Some of the prophets of this period entered prophetic guilds (the “sons of the prophets”) which seem to have been, in part, hereditary.

In the eighth and seventh centuries, with the advent of the so-called “writing prophets,” prophecy receives what is often referred to as its “classical” form. Clairvoyance and other preternatural phenomena become rarer, and prophecy assumes more clearly its religious role of recalling the nation to fidelity to its covenant promises. Sixteen of our biblical books — the four major (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel) and the twelve minor prophets — are attributed to prophetic authorship. The greater part of these books, it would seem, were written not by the prophets themselves, but by their disciples.

As a study of these works will show, prophecy does not essentially consist in the prediction of future events. The prophets are God’s spokesmen, who receive his word, and pass it on for weal or woe. They are, par excellence, the mediators of the word, and in view of the central place of the word of God in the Israelite view of revelation, special attention must be given to the prophets for a biblical theology of revelation.

The prophets commonly attribute their calling to a sudden action on the part of God, not preceded by any kind of human preparation. This call revolutionized their lives, and demanded utter obedience on their part. A number of rather detailed descriptions of the prophetic call are preserved in the Old Testament. Isaiah in chapter 6 tells of his inaugural vision, including the cleansing of his lips by a burning coal. Jeremiah, in the opening chapter of his work, attributes his vocation to a sovereignly free choice on the part of God: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). When the prophet remonstrates that he is only a youth, the Lord exhorts him to courage: “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10)1 The prophet’s word is powerful since it participates in the omnipotence of God, from whom it comes.

In numerous Old Testament passages allusion is made to severe bodily effects that ensue from the prophetic vision. Ezekiel describes how he sat on the ground overwhelmed for seven days after his call (Ezekiel 3:15) Daniel testifies that after one of his visions he was left pale and trembling, and fell into a deep slumber (Daniel 10:8f.). On another occasion (Daniel 8:27) he was overcome and lay sick for some days. Isaiah writes that his loins were filled with anguish, and that pangs seized him like those of a woman in childbirth (21:3). Jeremiah gives a poignant description of how the prophet feels the power of the word within him, demanding utterance. “There is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). While these descriptions are in some cases pseudonymous, and are presumably influenced by stylistic conventions, they undoubtedly contain some valid historical indications of the revelatory experiences of the Hebrew prophets.

Accompanied though it is with unusual psychic phenomena, the prophetic message, at least in the classical prophets, does not have to do with recondite matters pertaining to the world beyond. Unlike many of the medieval mystics, who preferred the cloister, the prophets were normally concerned with political and military matters and participated actively in national affairs. The content of their message reflects a keen perception of the contemporary historical situation, appraised in the light of the Covenant, and does not impart information that would seem to be intrinsically beyond the realm of natural knowledge. When the prophets use promises and threats they do so not in order to show their clairvoyant powers, but in order to bring about repentance and reform.

(4) Deuteronomy. The Deuteronomic literature of the eighth century, which seems to reflect a confluence of the priestly and prophetic currents in the Northern Kingdom, represents a new stage in the theology of revelation. Deuteronomy extends the concept of the “word of God” to include the whole corpus of Israelite legislation — religious, civil, and criminal — rather than just the original ten “words” of Sinai, or even the messages of the prophets. The torah, attributed in its entirety to the great legislator, Moses, is presented not simply as a set of abstract regulations, but as an effective vehicle of God’s will, which it makes present to men. “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14).

The Deuteronomic interpretation of history dominates a number of the historical books (including Judges, Samuel, and Kings), which portray the course of events as the working out in time of the covenant relationship between God and Israel. The idea of history as a medium by which God manifests his attributes and attitudes may be found in some of the most ancient creedal statements embedded in Deuteronomy (for example, Deuteronomy 26:5-6). Elsewhere, history is viewed as the effective unfolding of the promises and threats previously contained in God’s word. As time goes on, the hopes of Israel gradually become centered on the monarchy, which is made a center of cult. The books of Chronicles, from another point of view than the Deuteronomic writings, seek to legitimate the cultic offices founded by David

(5) Messianic and Apocalyptic Expectation In much of the historical literature the Davidic dynasty is idealized with strong religious overtones As the fortunes of this dynasty fade under the divided monarchy, the prophets focus the expectations of Israel on some great future intervention of God analogous to his past actions A blessed era is foretold in which there is to be a new David, a new Moses, a new Covenant, or a new Exodus. This eschatological Messianism, which reaches its highest expression in Deutero-Isaiah and Jeremiah, to some degree prepares for a new form of revelational literature Apocalyptic, which becomes widespread under the depressing circumstances of the Babylonian Captivity and the Maccabean period, is exemplified by Daniel and much of the intertestamental literature Unlike classical prophecy, apocalyptic ceases to look upon the catastrophes of history as effects of God’s punitive will, indeed, it abandons all effort to find meaning in history “History, so far from being the medium in which religious ideas could be expressed, had become literally a marking time until the eschaton should come. The view of revelation characteristic of the Apocalypses, while differing sharply from the prophetic, in some ways resembles the sapiential. The apocalyptic seers seek to interpret dreams and visions and thus to penetrate the secret counsels of God. Unlike prophecy, which is proclaimed openly to all, apocalyptic makes much of esoteric knowledge.

(6) Wisdom Literature. Since much of the Israelite sapiential material consists of collections of homely maxims built upon experience and common prudence, this brand of literature might be thought not to pertain to revelation. But the older traditions look upon wisdom as a charism bestowed at God’s good pleasure. In the patriarchal stories, Joseph is depicted as outstripping the sages of Israel thanks to the illuminations imparted to him from on high (Gen. 41:16.38). Later, Solomon is held forth as a prodigy of inspired sagacity (1 Kings 4:29). Job’s would-be comforter, Eliphaz, attributes his counsel to direct inspiration from heaven. In fact, as Gerhard von Rad observes, he gives the fullest description of the psychology of prophetic revelation that occurs in the Old Testament (Job 4:12-17).

The great wisdom collections, such as Proverbs, Qoheleth, Sirach, and Wisdom, while resting upon ancient sources, were compiled in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The editors, convinced that all human wisdom comes from God and that the. summit of wisdom consists in obedience to him, interpret the patterns of experience in the light of their religious faith. Insofar as this Jewish wisdom rests unequivocally on the self-manifestation of God through history, prophecy, and law, it too may be said to contain revelation, at least indirectly, by reflection.

(7) Psalms. According to our modern way of thinking, we should be inclined to say that the Psalms should be reckoned not as revelation, but as a human response to it. But this distinction is perhaps artificial since it may be argued that revelation does not achieve itself until it is formulated in human words. In any case, the Israelites saw a close link between prophecy and psalmody, as may be seen, for instance, in the canticles of the prophetesses Miriam (Exodus. 15:20- 21) and Deborah (Judges 5).In the. last words of David, as narrated in 2 Samuel, the “sweet psalmist of Israel” claims inspiration for himself: “The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me, his word is upon my tongue” (2 Samuel 23:2). As inspired hymns of prayer and praise, the psalms are revelatory to us — as they were to the Israelites — of the power, majesty, and fidelity of God, which they celebrate. Many of the psalms incorporate oracles and responses from Yahweh into theft structure.

Summary Of Old Testament Revelation
Summarizing the Old Testament view of revelation, one may say that Yahweh progressively manifests himself, through word and work, as Lord of history. He freely raises up spokesmen of his own choosing, whether patriarchs such as Abraham, national heroes such as Moses, or prophets and seers such as Samuel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel He entrusts them with messages which they are to deliver to others, often to the whole people Although the universal significance of Israelite religion is sometimes suggested (especially in Deutero-Isaiah), the horizons are for the most part particular, insofar as the revelation is addressed to a single nation

The Israelite faith is also inchoative, insofar as it is in tension toward a greater and definitive manifestation yet to come While often accompanied by miraculous theophanies, dreams, and visions, revelation for the Old Testament writers is primarily to be found in the “word of God” The word, however, is not mere speculative speech. It refers to the concrete history of Israel, which it recalls and interprets. It commemorates God’s previous dealings with his people and includes promises for the future, thus arousing faith and hope. The word of God, moreover, is powerful and dynamic, it produces a transforming encounter with the Lord who utters it, and imposes stringent demands on the recipient. It opens up to him a new way of life, pregnant with new possibilities of punishment and deliverance. Revelation is ultimately aimed to bring blessings upon the whole nation, including peace, prosperity, and holiness.

The above is taken from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles’ Revelation Theology.

An obituary written by Joseph Bottum is here.

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