The Feminine Genius of Catholic Theology

Matthew Levering

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780567196866
• eBook ISBN: 9780567432766
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

This book introduces Catholic doctrine through the crucible of the women mystics' reception of the gospel.The work of the great women theologians of the Church's second millennium has too often been neglected (or relegated to the category of 'mysticism') in textbooks on Catholic doctrine.This is a shame, because their work shows the interior conjunction of liturgical experience (broadly understood), scriptural exegesis, philosophical reflection, and doctrinal/creedal formulation.Drawing on their work, this book presents the tenets of Catholic faith in a clear and accessible manner, useful for introductory courses as well as for students and scholars interested in the contributions of women to Catholic theology. Women theologians in this book include Catherine of Siena, Theresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Simone Weil and others.

1

God the Trinity

Christians worship one God who is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Theology is primarily the study of this God. But how do we know anything about “God”? Are there other Gods to worship? What could it possibly mean to worship one God who is three? Even if one could somehow be three, cannot we simply worship the one God and leave it at that?

With these questions in view, let us begin with Catherine of Siena’s praise of the Trinity: “You, eternal Trinity, are the craftsman; and I your handiwork have come to know that you are in love with the beauty of what you have made, since you made of me a new creation in the blood of your Son. O abyss! O eternal Godhead! O deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self?”¹ To be a creature is to come into existence out of nothing: we do not have to be, and the finite existence that we have is a sheer gift. God explains to Catherine, “I am who I am [Exod 3.14], whereas you have no being at all of yourselves. What being you have is my doing; I am the Creator of everything that has any share in being.”² Supposing that the universe were an infinite set of finite existing things, even this infinite set would have to receive its existence from another. Finite being cannot cause itself: it can only come from an infinite Creator.

The love of the eternal Godhead for his creatures is expressed by Julian of Norwich. God “created everything for love, and by the same love it is preserved, and always will be without end.”³ The mystery of why any creature exists is rooted in God’s love. The love that appears in the new creation in Christ Jesus also manifests itself in the creation. The amazing abundance of the universe, the extraordinary complexity and beauty of beings, the fact that we live and move and know, all have their root in God’s creative love. After praising Christ’s Cross and his Incarnation in the womb of Mary, Julian praises God as “the blessed divinity, that always was and is and shall be, almighty, all wisdom and all love.”⁴ Since God is infinite love, he is infinite good. Indeed, says Julian, “God is everything which is good, as I see, and the goodness which everything has is God.”⁵ The goodness of finite beings participates in and points to the infinite goodness of the Creator. God’s “goodness is full and complete, and in it is nothing lacking.”⁶

With “her mind’s eye steadily fixed on the divine majesty,” Catherine cries out: “O eternal Father! O fiery abyss of charity! O eternal beauty, O eternal wisdom, O eternal goodness, O eternal mercy! O hope and refuge of sinners! O immeasurable generosity! O eternal, infinite Good! O mad lover!”⁷ These praises lead her frequently to contemplate God’s providence, his eternal plan for ordering his creatures to union with himself. She says of herself that she has “tasted and seen the abyss of supreme eternal providence.”⁸ When God creates, he does so with a purpose and a plan that he will bring to fruition, since his eternity means that he is not in time with us: he stands outside time, and therefore can be trusted to guide all time to the goal that he knows from eternity. This goal cannot be frustrated even by his rational creatures’ turning away from his love. Catherine records God telling her, “It was with providence that I created you [i.e. humankind], and when I contemplated my creature in myself I fell in love with the beauty of my creation. It pleased me to create you in my image and likeness with great providence.”⁹

Providence, like goodness, wisdom and love, belongs to what is one in God. God’s providence is the same as his love, wisdom, justice, mercy, omnipotence and other attributes of his unity. God is not a composite of diverse parts or attributes. We can speak truly about him by analogy from the finite perfections that he causes to be; but we cannot conceive of him as he is, since his infinite glory is infinitely greater than the truths that we speak about him. Catherine says, “You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea: The more I enter you, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek you.”¹⁰

In describing God’s providence, Catherine observes that we can understand it in a Trinitarian manner. She follows Augustine’s analogy for speaking about the three-and-one God. Inspired by the evangelist John’s identification of the Son of God as the “Word” (Logos), Augustine reflected upon the “threeness” and “oneness” of mental activity. He considered our mind, our mind understanding itself, and our mind loving what it understands. These three are the same mind, and yet they are distinct like the Trinity. God tells Catherine that memory, understanding, and will were given to her in order that, through her soul, God’s providence might guide her to himself. The Trinitarian image in her soul exists for the purpose of enabling her to share in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Catherine characterizes God as saying to her (and through her to all of us), “I provided you with the gift of memory so that you might hold fast my benefits and be made a sharer in my own, the eternal Father’s power. I gave you understanding so that in the wisdom of my only-begotten Son you might comprehend and know what I the eternal Father want, I who give you graces with such burning love.”¹¹ God’s providence works to lead us to the Trinity through our memory, understanding, and finally through our love. As God says to Catherine, “I gave you a will to love, making you a sharer in the Holy Spirit’s mercy, so that you might love what your understanding sees and knows.”¹²

When Catherine recognizes this triad, an image of the Trinity, in her created mind, she comments, “Then, when I considered myself in you, I saw that I am your image. You have gifted me with power from yourself, eternal Father, and my understanding with your wisdom—such wisdom as is proper to your only-begotten Son; and the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from you and your Son, has given me a will, and so I am able to love.”¹³ The power that God has given her is her soul or mind, from which flows understanding and will. Just as the mind generates understanding, so also, analogously, the Father generates his “only-begotten Son,” who is the Word. When the mind understands something, it loves that thing insofar as the thing is good. Love proceeds from the mind and its understanding, since one has to know something in order to love it. As Love, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

But don’t the processions described here make it impossible for God to be truly one? If there are two processions in God—the procession of the Word and the procession of the Holy Spirit (Love)—how does this not overthrow the divine oneness? Sticking with the analogy from the mind, the answer is first that the mind and the mind understanding (or the mind loving) are the same mind. There is a real unity: when the mind knows itself in its entirety, what the whole mind knows is none other than the whole mind. Second, we speak about God in two ways: with regard to substance, and with regard to relationship. When Jesus says “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10.30), the unity pertains to the divine substance. When he says “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (Jn 14.31), he speaks not about the one divine substance but about his relationship as the divine Son to the Father. The processions in God establish relationships: the relation of the Father to the Son (the Father’s generation or begetting of the Word), and the relation of the Father and Son to the Holy Spirit (the Father and Son’s spiration of the Holy Spirit). As constituted by relation to each other in God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons (the relations are toward each other) who are the one God (the relations are in God).

Hildegard of Bingen interprets one of her visions as signifying the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. She describes the vision as follows: “Then I saw a bright light, and in this light the figure of a man the color of a sapphire, which was all blazing with a gentle glowing fire. And that bright light bathed the whole of the glowing fire, and the glowing fire bathed the bright light; and the bright light and the glowing fire poured over the whole human figure, so that the three were one light in one power of potential.”¹⁴ The images in the vision pulse with energy, warmth, life, and love. The “bright light,” Hildegard explains, signifies the Father. The Father is the personal source, the fount of the Godhead. Standing in the light of the Father is “the figure of a man the color of a sapphire.” This “figure of a man” is the Son. Hildegard thereby underscores that the eternal Son, begotten from the Father, is from eternity ordained to become incarnate as Jesus Christ. Hildegard does not explain why the Son is “the color of a sapphire,” namely blue. Since the “gentle glowing fire” signifies the Holy Spirit, perhaps the Son’s blue color is intended as a contrast with the bright light (yellow) and the fire (red), so that the interwoven beauty of the whole is emphasized. The Son stands in the Father’s light, and the Father’s light also bathes the Holy Spirit’s fire. In turn, the Holy Spirit’s fire bathes the Father’s light, and both the Father’s light and the Holy Spirit’s fire bathe the Son.

With the image of the Father, Hildegard associates truth and plenitude, “without any flaw of illusion, deficiency or deception.”¹⁵ With the image of the Son, she associates innocence and obedience, “without any flaw of obstinacy, envy or iniquity.”¹⁶ With the image of the Holy Spirit, she associates life and light, “without any flaw of aridity, mortality, and darkness.”¹⁷ In this way she seeks to illumine their distinct Personhood in the Trinity, without claiming that truth, innocence, and light are not possessed equally by all three divine Persons. She also connects the Father with justice, the Son with fulfillment, and the Holy Spirit with enlightenment. Truth accomplishes justice; obedience brings about the promised fulfillment; light inflames our hearts and minds. The three are interrelated and inseparable. Commenting on her observation that “the three were one light in one power of potential,” she states that “this means that the Father, Who is Justice, is not without the Son or the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit, Who kindles the hearts of the faithful, is not without the Father or the Son; and the Son, Who is the plenitude of fruition, is not without the Father or the Holy Spirit.”¹⁸ Where one divine Person is present, so are the other two.

Even though the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always present together, only the Son became incarnate. But the Incarnation did not thereby lack the presence of the Father and the Holy Spirit. It was by the Holy Spirit that the Son became incarnate; and the Son was sent by the Father into the world. In turn, the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, “poured the true light into the world,” since he poured forth the Holy Spirit upon his people.¹⁹ The Holy Spirit leads us in Christ to the Father. The actions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation also reflect the personal properties that distinguish them in the Godhead. For example, the Son “was begotten of the Father in Divinity before time began, and then within time was incarnate in the world in Humanity.”²⁰ The Son’s eternal generation by the Father is reflected by the Son’s temporal birth.

As we have seen, Hildegard sees “the figure of a man the color of a sapphire” in her vision of t...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 God the Trinity
• 2 Jesus Christ
• 3 Creation and providence
• 4 Sin
• 5 Sacraments
• 6 The Church
• 7 The virtues
• 8 Mary and the saints
• 9 Prayer
• 10 Eternal life
• Conclusion
• Index