The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part II

This is the second installment in an eight-part series that reflects on fundamental Catholic beliefs as expressed in the Creed. This series is based on a set of talks given at Faith, Hope and Charity Parish in Winnetka, IL. There will be four main topics, each divided into two sections: (1) “Reflecting on the Mystery of God”; (2) “Gazing on the Face of Christ”; (3)” Being Church in a Secular Society”; (4)” Living in Hope: What Catholics Believe about Death and Eternal Life”

Reflecting on the Mystery of God (II)

In the first installment of this reflection, we explored the experience of God that is communicated in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. As Christianity moved out from Palestine into the larger Graeco-Roman world, it discovered the need to articulate the Good News of Jesus Christ in ways that could be understood in new contexts. Christian believers and theologians had to meet the challenge of inculturating the Gospel in a world that was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Moreover, Christians realized that they had to do more than just “translate” the faith. They had to think deeply about what they believed; they needed to explore the implications of the Christian confession of faith. Believers were compelled to ask: What do we really believe about God in light of the revelation in Jesus Christ?

In the midst of this development, the Church experienced a number of controversies that called for clarifications of the faith. Some of these controversies became quite technical. When we read about them today, they can strike us as involving esoteric philosophizing that seems very distant from our concerns. Nevertheless, believers in the early Church were convinced that these conflicts related directly to the life of faith. These debates involved reflection on the experience of salvation from God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. They also arose from their attempt to be faithful to what the Scriptures said about God. If you have ever participated in a group bible study, you know that different people can interpret the same Scripture passage or story in many diverse ways. This happened in the early Church with regard to the biblical testimony about God. So Christians needed to clarify what they really believed – what united the Christian community in its beliefs.

These controversies also involved the ways in which Christians prayed. There is an ancient Latin saying that is very illuminating: lex orandi, lex credendi. This dictum means: “The law of praying is the law of believing.” In other words, the theological clarification of Christian belief about God often involved reflection upon the ways in which believers addressed God in prayer, particularly in the Church’s liturgy. For example, in their doxology (prayer of praise), Christians praised the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. They began to ask themselves, What does this prayer say about God? The late Catherine Lacugna, a fine scholar from Notre Dame, put it succinctly: “The most enduring and most intellectually perplexing doctrinal disputes have always been those entangled with liturgical practices” (Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, vol. 1, ed. J.Galvin and F. Fiorenza, 162).

From the beginning, Christians had two fundamental convictions: (1) There is only one God; (2) Jesus is divine. The question at hand was, how do we hold these two truths together? The greatest controversy of the early Church about this belief arose in the fourth century. It is called the “Arian controversy” because it was initiated by the preaching of a priest from Alexandria (Egypt) named Arius. This conflict raged for at least sixty years. Arius taught that the Son of God (the second Person of the Trinity) was divine only in a diminished, subordinate sense. The Son is not coeternal or coequal with God; rather the Son was a kind of intermediate being. Arius wanted to preserve the utter transcendence of God. He and his followers could not bear the thought of God becoming intimately involved in creation and history – in all of the “muck and mire” of human existence. But their teaching imperiled Christian belief in a real incarnation.

In light of these ideas, the Council of Nicea (the first of the great ecumenical councils of the Church) met in 325 and affirmed the true divinity of the Son. It expressed this teaching through the first installment of the Creed that we profess at the Eucharist every Sunday. The Council of Nicea taught that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is “one in being” with the Father. The Son is truly God, coequal and coeternal with the Father; it is not the case that the Son is divine in some secondary or diminished sense. In Jesus we have truly seen the human face of God. While some of the language of Nicea’s teaching may be difficult for us to understand, the central idea is very important for our faith. Important theologians like Athanasius of Alexandria, the most eloquent exponent of the teaching of Nicea, argued that all of this has to do with the experience of salvation in Christ. Ultimately, salvation means sharing in the very life of God, participating in the divine life as God’s sons and daughters. That is a gift that can only be given by God. If we profess that Christ offers us this gift, he must have been truly divine. Christians believe that through the incarnation the Son of God, who is truly divine, really shared in our human life. God chose to offer salvation not by sweeping in from on high, with the “heavenly army.” Rather in Christ God saved us from within – from within the beauty and the struggle, the joy and the pain, of human life.

This initial installment of the Creed said very little about the Holy Spirit. In the second half of the fourth century, further controversy arose about the divinity of the Spirit. Christians had prayed to the Spirit as divine for a long time, but careful theological reflection about the Spirit’s relation to the Father and the Son had not yet taken place. In the fourth century, some groups in the Church spoke of the Spirit as an intermediate being who stands between God and creatures. They did not think that the Holy Spirit is truly divine. In response to these views, theologians like Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea argued that the Spirit must be divine. If we receive communion with God through the Spirit, the Spirit must be God. Communion with God is a gift of God. Basil wrote that the Holy Spirit must be accorded the same glory, honor and worship as the Father and the Son. This controversy led to the second ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 381. At this Council, the Creed that we profess on Sundays was completed. It speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the Lord and Giver of life” who is worshiped “with the Father and the Son.”

Christian belief in God, then, involves a Trinitarian monotheism. We profess that there is one God in three Persons. It is sometimes difficult for us to experience the relevance of our belief in God as triune, even though we profess that belief every time we make the sign of the cross. It can almost sound like arcane “theological arithmetic.” But for Christians of the early Church, belief in the Trinity really mattered. This belief arose not from theological speculation; rather it originated in the experience of God’s self-revelation in history. They experienced salvation from God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. This was the way in which God had given himself as One to be known and loved. Thus this must be who God is in God’s very self.

Our belief in God as triune is, in fact, directly relevant to our everyday lives. We envision God as a communion of life and love. Even though the “inner life” of God is a mystery beyond our comprehension, the way in which God has revealed himself shows us that God is this living, loving personal communion. God is all about relationship. Cardinal Walter Kasper once wrote that our belief in the Trinity means that God is not “a solitary narcissistic being” who suffers from his own completeness (Jesus the Christ, 306). Rather, God exists as a communion of love in God’s very self, a love that overflows to creation out of the fullness of God’s being. God is perfect freedom in love within himself and in his dealings with creatures. As Kasper puts it, in the Trinity it is revealed that the true meaning of being is the selflessness of love.

The true meaning of being, the very heart of life, is the selflessness of love. Christian belief in God as triune is meant to shape the way in which we envision our lives. If we have been created in the image and likeness of the triune God, we are called to form loving, life-giving relationships with other people. Our lives are all about relationship. We are invited to work to build communion with others, even with those whom we find difficult to understand and accept. We are challenged to struggle for reconciliation where there has been conflict and hurt, in order that communion may be established. We are called to become Godlike by reaching out in love to other people, especially to those who feel alone or forgotten.

Robin Ryan, CP