On Volume 159, Andrew Kaethler discussed his book The Eschatological Person: Alexander Schmemann and Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue. One of the themes in the book is the link between the essentially relational nature of human personhood and the relation between divine and human natures in the person of Christ.
One of the texts that influenced Kaethler’s understanding of this fact is Joseph Ratzinger’s Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (The Catholic University of America Press, 1977, 1988). In the closing paragraphs of Part 2 of this book, we read the following:
“[T]the determinative starting point of the Christian understanding of immortality is the concept of God, and from this it draws its dialogical character. Since God is the God of the living, and calls his creature, man, by name, this creature cannot be annihilated. In Jesus Christ, God’s action in accepting humanity into his own eternal life has, so to speak, taken flesh: Christ is the tree of life whence we receive the food of immortality. Immortality cannot be accounted for in terms of the isolated individual existent and its native capacities, but only by reference to that relatedness which is constitutive of human nature. This statement about man returns us once again to our image of God, throwing light as it does so on the Christian understanding of reality at its central point. God too possesses immortality, or, more correctly, he is immortality, being that actuality of relationship which is Trinitarian love. God is not ‘atomic’: he is relationship, since he is love. It is for this reason that he is life. In this perspective, the relationship of two people which is human love shines with the radiance of the eternal mystery. The signal we derive from this view of being tells us: relation makes immortal; openness, not closure, is the end in which we find our beginning. . . .
“[P]art of the Christian idea of immortality is fellowship with other human beings. Man is not engaged in a solitary dialogue with God. He does not enter an eternity with God which belongs to him alone. The Christian dialogue with God is mediated by other human beings in a history where God speaks with men. It is expressed in the ‘We’ form proper to the children of God. It takes place, therefore, within the ‘body of Christ,’ in that communion with the Son which makes it possible for us to call God ‘Father.’ One can take part in this dialogue only by becoming a son with the Son, and this must mean in turn by becoming one with all those others who seek the Father. Only in that reconciliation whose name is Christ is the tongue of man loosened and the dialogue which is our life’s true spring initiated. In christology, then, theology and anthropology converge as two strains in a conversation, two forms of the search for love. In all human love there is an implicit appeal to eternity, even though love between two human beings can never satisfy that appeal. In Christ, God enters our search for love and its ultimate meaning, and does so in a human way. God’s dialogue with us becomes truly human, since God conducts his part as man. Conversely, the dialogue of human beings with each other now becomes a vehicle for the life everlasting, since in the communion of saints it is drawn up into the dialogue of the Trinity itself. This is why the communion of saints is the locus where eternity becomes accessible for us. Eternal life does not isolate a person, but leads him out of isolation into true unity with his brothers and sisters and the whole of God’s creation.”
Related reading and listening
- A metaphysics of realism, relationality, and personalism — John Milbank gives a survey and critique of the efforts of 20th and 21st century theologians to articulate a Trinitarian ontology that reflects reality and counters secularization. (61 minutes)
- Torrential winds of doctrine — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the “dictatorship of relativism”
- Creation as beauty and gift — FROM VOL. 67 David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 minutes)
- The sovereignty of love — In this 2022 lecture, Oliver O’Donovan explains the historical background — and present consequences — of the assertion by Jesus of two great commands. (67 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
- Culture in trinitarian perspective — An article by theologian Tracey Rowland titled “Joseph Ratzinger’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture” summarizes the ramifications of Ratzinger’s confidence that a recognition of the Trinity is the foundation of any reliable and faithful account of the relationship between faith and culture. (65 minutes)
- A remedy for relativism — Geoffrey Wainwright analyzes Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s thought on how the crisis of relativism in the West manifests in society and the arts, showing how Ratzinger grounded his response in a deep theology of worship and liturgy. (78 minutes)
- Health and personhood — Dr. Kimbell Kornu explains how the training of medical professionals should be shaped by a recognition of a Christian understanding of personhood. (22 minutes)
- The basic act and order of things — David L. Schindler (1943–2022) insists that the reduction of love to a matter of private and personal sentiment, piety, or good will — is one of the fundamental disorders of modern culture. Christians should know better. (39 minutes)
- Is irrational freedom truly freedom? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues that freedom must be understood in the context of interplay of reason and the will
- Is religious belief really true? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger asks if Christian faith is just lovely subjective consolation, a kind of make-believe world side by side with the real world
- Remembering the networks of giving and receiving — O. Carter Snead on the disabling assumptions of expressive individualism in public bioethics
- Unreason destroys freedom — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the relationship between freedom and truth
- A foretaste of the kingdom of God — Oliver O’Donovan on the sovereignty of love
- Loving relationships in community — In conversation with moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan, and with readings from his book, Entering into Rest, Ken Myers explores a central theme in O’Donovan’s work: that we are created to enjoy loving relationships in community. (27 minutes)
- Knowledge transformed by love — David K. Naugle on the reordered thinking of the redeemed
- Redefining gender — In this article from Communio, Margaret Harper McCarthy demonstrates that the attempt to eliminate the givenness of sexual difference rests on a denial of the created person’s origin in and ordination toward relations of love. (68 minutes)
- Marva Dawn on spiritual formation and being Church — This Feature presents an interview with Marva Dawn from Volume 38 of the Journal, during which she talks about concerns discussed in two of her books, related to the spiritual formation of children and a more holistic understanding of sex and intimacy. (23 minutes)
- The religion of the Logos — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on acknowledging the Source of rationality
- The Sixth Commandment and the obligation to protect public health — Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender explains why our experience with COVID-19 has made it difficult for many — citizens and officials — to honor a proper obligation to protect public health. (17 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS:
R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
- Ethics as Theology, Volume 2 — Drawing from St. Augustine and figures such as Aelred of Rievaulx, Oliver O’Donovan describes how the Church, communication, community, and friendship all significantly contribute to how we understand the role of love in both ethical and political reflection. (52 minutes)
- Loving your neighbor during a pandemic — Brad Littlejohn reflects on how best to ask and answer some of the questions raised by our current disease-ravaged circumstances, particularly questions related to Christian freedom and love of neighbor. (29 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 143 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Mark Regnerus, Jessica Hooten Wilson, John Henry Crosby, John F. Crosby, Wynand De Beer, and Sørina Higgins
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 138 — FEATURED GUESTS:
John Milbank, Adrian Pabst, Glenn W. Olsen, Rupert Shortt, Oliver O’Donovan, David Bentley Hart
- The missional mandate of truth — Joseph Ratzinger on the partnership of faith and reason in the coherence of love and truth
- The heaven of the materialists — George Parkin Grant on how sex drives out love
- A liturgically ordered (and Christ-formed) cosmos — David L. Schindler on how the renewing of our minds requires the recognition of love in the order of Creation
- Love and truth precede justice — James Matthew Wilson on the relationship between truth and love in Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate
- No such thing as pure objectivity — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on lessons for faith from physics
- A God with nothing to do — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the loss of belief in the public presence of God
- The witness of goodness and beauty to truth — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the apologetic necessity of holiness and great art
- The reasonableness of love — Terry Eagleton on the myth of the disinterested pursuit of truth
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 120 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Douglas Rushkoff, Phillip Thompson, Jonathan Wilson, James Bratt, D. C. Schindler, and Paul Elie
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 112 — FEATURED GUESTS: Christian Smith, David L. Schindler, Sara Anson Vaux, Melvyn Bragg, Timothy Larsen, and Ralph C. Wood
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 96 — FEATURED GUESTS: David A. Smith, Kiku Adatto, Elvin T. Lim, David Naugle, Richard Stivers, and John Betz
