Death as Transformation

A Contemporary Theology of Death

Henry L. Novello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138277168
• eBook ISBN: 9781317154471
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

A key tenet of Christian faith is that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a unique death by which the powers of death in the world have been conquered, so that Christian life in the Spirit is marked by the promise and hope of 'new life' already anticipated in the community of baptized believers. Notwithstanding this basic tenet regarding the Christian life as a participation in the redemptive death of Jesus Christ, theology in the past, as well as much contemporary theology, tends to assign no salvific significance to the event of our own death, focusing instead on death in negative terms as the wages of sin. This work is a significant retort to theological neglect, both Catholic and Protestant, of the positive and transformative aspect of our death when conceived as a dying into the redemptive death of Jesus Christ. The development of Henry L. Novello's proposed theology of death takes place in conversation with the pre-eminent contemporary contributors to this field of theological inquiry. By offering comprehensive critiques of Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann, Novello painstakingly pieces together a positive construal of death as salvific and transformative. What is especially distinctive about Novello's work is that he develops the idea of death as a sharing in the 'admirable exchange of natures' in the person of Jesus Christ, from which emerges his theory of resurrection at death for all. The reach of the work is extended by exploring some pastoral and liturgical implications of a theology of death conceived as the privileged moment for the actualization of God's grace in Jesus Christ, and thus being created anew in the power of the Spirit.

Chapter 1 The Conquest of Death by Jesus Christ: Real Time for Living

DOI: 10.4324/9781315575957-1

In light of the biblical portrayal of human existence in terms of the dynamics of life and death, which is evident in Paul’s guiding principle of death in Adam and life in Christ (1 Cor 15:22), this first chapter sets out to investigate the manner in which Jesus Christ has conclusively conquered death, so that he is regarded by Christians as the Mediator between humanity and divinity and the ‘new creation’ in person. In respect of the task of elucidating the soteriological significance of Christ’s unique death, the cross will not be the sole focus of this chapter, for the view will be taken that a theological analysis of the life of Jesus, that leads to his violent death, is required. This entails an assumption-Christology which brings into sharp relief the significance of the fact that Jesus’ life story is characterized by total obedience to the Father’s will, for our sake. Such an analysis, it will be shown, serves to highlight weaknesses in the tradition of classical Christology; in particular, what will become apparent is the tendency of the tradition to focus on the individual person Jesus, the pre-existent Logos, without sufficiently elaborating his essential relatedness, both in his divinity and in his humanity, to the Father and to the rest of humankind, respectively. The assumptionist interpretation of the life of Jesus, in other words, will serve to underline the need to speak of the identity of Jesus Christ in consistently relational terms that convey the significance of his life in itself.

The Christology of Frans Jozef van Beeck, who has developed a kerygmatic Christology guided by a narrative theology, will be followed closely in this chapter. It will be argued that given the narrative shape of the Gospel story, the mystery of who Jesus is emerges out of the dynamic interplay of his intentions and actions on the one hand, and the response of his surroundings on the other. Hans W. Frei refers to this process as ‘intention-action’ identity description. It is not sufficient, however, to know Jesus as preacher and teacher, healer and exorcist, for beyond this his disciples must know him as the One who obediently submits to crucifixion and whom God raises to glory: this is what Hans Frei refers to as ‘self-manifestation’ description.

If the life of Jesus is recognized as having significance in itself, if his identity unfolds gradually in his sustained relationships to the Father on the one hand and to a hostile public who increasingly reject him to the point of putting him to death on the other, then such a perspective has ramifications for an analysis of the cross. The second part of this chapter will concern itself with an interpretation of Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the cross (Mk 15:34). The passion of Jesus will be portrayed as the climactic point of his life lived in personal unity with the Father in unfathomable love (Jesus’ consubstantiality with the Father), which at the same time illuminates Jesus’ identification with the concrete human condition (Jesus’ consubstantiality with humanity). These two poles of the passion narrative will lead to the adoption of a theological interpretation of the cry on the cross; that is, Jesus has fully assumed the human condition of estrangement from God of which the cross is the consummate sign, so that our humanity, by virtue of being conjoined to Jesus’ humanity, is now redeemed and comes home to God.

The individuating account of Jesus Christ presented in the first two parts of this chapter will serve as the point of reference for the thematic reflection on the person of Jesus Christ to be found in part three. The intention will be to illustrate how a literary interpretation of the Gospels on the one hand, and an understanding of person as relation on the other, can work together to shed light on the Gospel story. A more conceptual language is required to clarify the relationship between Jesus and God, and Martin Buber’s thesis developed in his celebrated work I And Thou will be adopted in order to continue the inquiry into the christological question. In the conceptual framework of Buber’s I-You relationship, it will be shown that Jesus’ divinity is appropriately spoken of as the modus essendi of the man Jesus in his total openness and receptivity to the Father in unfathomable love, which reveals the divine nature as pure grace. This in turn implies that human freedom is to be thought of as essentially relational, that is, to be free is not a matter of self-determination, but of trusting wholly in God’s sovereign call to obedience which establishes proper and right relations in the created order. In the third part of this chapter the person of Jesus will thus be spoken of as the total and definitive actualization of our deepest potential as beings created in the divine image, which will lead to the conception of the man Jesus as the representative of our true relational identity before the living God. The section will conclude with a discussion of the divine self-emptying with the intention of showing the inadequacy of the notion of ‘surrendered attributes’ and how the affirmation of the fundamentally relational character of Jesus’ identity accords well with a Barthian or Rahnerian divine ontology which claims that no disjunction exists between God’s ‘being’ and God’s ‘act.’

Finally, the fourth part of this chapter will consider what the argument developed in the previous three sections tells us about the traditional notion of ‘representation.’ What does it mean to say that Christ is our Representative? It will be argued that while the notion of representation should be distinguished from that of ‘substitution’, nonetheless the two are to be seen as intimately related to one another inasmuch as the latter serves to highlight the exclusive and objective aspect of Christ’s atoning death endured ‘once and for all’ (2 Cor 5:14), while the former serves to draw attention to the inclusive and subjective element of Christ’s atoning death endured ‘on our behalf’ (2 Cor 5:15, 17). The world of substitution is therefore not to be regarded as a depersonalized world characterized by the loss of the dimension of time; rather, when set in relation to the inclusive aspect of Christ’s death, what emerges is a personalized world where Christ’s representation makes available to us ‘real time’ for living. To the fundamental question of personal identity rooted in human existence, the final section of this chapter will give the answer, together with Dorothee Sölle: I am irreplaceable, yet representable.

Realistic narrative and the development of Jesus’ individuality

In order to pave the way for an analysis of Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the cross, we must first recognize the import of a theological analysis of the life of Jesus which culminates in his death on Calvary.¹ In recent decades we have witnessed not only the introduction of an historical approach to the Bible, but also a literary approach that draws attention to what a text means on its own terms: content and form are inseparable.² Christology is strengthened when it includes literary interpretation analogous to the ways Christians at worship listen to the Gospels as aesthetic wholes and respond to them in their proclamation of who Jesus is. Thus we find a thinker such as Frans Jozef van Beeck stressing that the Gospel story is not a history but a ‘witnessing story’ that attests to the actions of Jesus and of God through his person, and the response of those committed to following him.³ The thought of van Beeck draws on the work of David Kelsey who has argued that what we know about the Gospel story’s central protagonist is not known by ‘inference’ from the story; rather, ‘he is known quite directly in and with the story, and recedes from cognitive grasp the more he is abstracted from the story’, hence the Gospels are to be treated as ‘identity descriptions’ of the man Jesus.⁴ In the Gospel narratives persons are viewed as agents, they enact their intentions, so that their identity arises out of their interaction with one another within the changing circumstances of their lives. In light of this realism that draws us into the world of the Gospels, Hans Frei sums up the literary approach by saying that what the Gospels tell us ‘is the fruit of the stories themselves.’⁵ While the Gospel narratives are not to be seen as historical accounts of the life of Jesus, nevertheless we must appreciate that they do have a ‘history-like’ quality which conveys the identity of the man Jesus.⁶

1 We shall follow closely Frans Jozef van Beeck’s treatment of the life of Jesus in his Christ Proclaimed: Christology As Rhetoric (New York, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 360–75. The author recognizes the literary character of the Gospels and its implications for Christology, and draws on the works of David Kelsey and Hans Frei. The Christology developed by van Beeck is a kerygmatic Christology, for Christology is seen as flowing out of the Church’s worship and witness to the risen Lord present in the Spirit. 2 An excellent example of the incorporation of historical study into theological work is Edward Schillebeeckx’s Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, tr. Hubert Hoskins (London: Collins, 1979). Part Two of this work, ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ’, reflects an historical approach to the christological question. 3 Christ Proclaimed, p. 327. The kerygma is viewed by van Beeck as first and foremost the Christian ‘homologia’, that is, testimony in the form of ‘narrative recital’ of the great things God has done in our midst through Jesus. There are three characteristics of kerygma: it attests to a present and future person, not just to a past figure; it speaks about God as well as Jesus Christ; and it tells not only about Jesus’ actions but also about the responses of the witnesses who proclaim the great things God has done for us. 4 David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 39. Terrence Tilley explains that a narrative theology is more fundamental than a propositional theology since ‘propositional theology is derivative from narratives as literary criticism is derivative from literature.’ Terrence W. Tilley, Story Theology (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1985), pp. 11–17, at p. 14. Propositional theology cannot carry the Gospel message, but it is nevertheless an indispensable guide in exploring ways of telling the stories of Christianity anew. 5 Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. xiv. 6 Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 10. In this work Frei argues that since the rise of the historical-critical methods we have become aware of the fact that the Gospels are not biographies of the life of Jesus; we cannot read them as we would a history. This has resulted, though, in the tendency to go behind the Gospels in order to extract their meaning; we no longer consider them on their own terms. We must return to treating the Gospels according to their verbal sense, that is, we must recover the narrative character of the Gospels.

Therefore, when we examine the Gospel story we find that one of its fundamental characteristics is that it takes the shape of ‘realistic narrative.’ That is to say, the man Jesus is portrayed as leading a personal life which is conveyed by a story in which his intentions and actions, on the one hand, and the circumstances of his surroundings, on the other, are involved in a dynamic interplay which lead to a climactic point. In order to fathom who Jesus is we need not proceed in the same way a biographer or historian goes about his or her task, nor do we need to know about ‘the personality, inner motivation, or even the ethical quality of Jesus.’⁷ All we need is the Gospel story which presents the identity of the man Jesus by means of the constant interplay of intention and circumstance, which shows that he was fundamentally obedient to the Father who ‘sent’ him. It is the great merit of Hans Frei to have restored the role that realistic narrative plays in biblical hermeneutics. Let us listen to what Frei has to say about the Gospel story’s depiction of Jesus’ obedience to the Father’s will:

His obedience exists solely as a counterpart to his being sent and has God for its indispensable point of reference. Jesus’ very identity involves the will and purpose of the Father who sent him. He becomes who he is in the story by consenting to God’s intention and by enacting that intention in the midst of the circumstances that devolve around him as the fulfilment of God’s purpose. The characterizing intention of Jesus that becomes enacted – his obedience – is not seen ‘deep down’ in him, furnishing a kind of central clue to the quality of his personality. Rather, it is shown in the story with just enough strength to indicate that it characterized him by making the purpose of God who sent him the very aim of his being.⁸

7 Van Beeck, Christ Proclaimed, p. 361. 8 Frei, The Identity of Jesus, p. 107. Many works have appeared since the 1970’s on narrative theology, including: George Stroup, The Promise of Narrative Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981); Michael Goldberg, Theology and Narrative (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1982); Terrence Tilley, Story Theology (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1985); Ronald F. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Robert A. Krieg, Story-Shaped Christology: The Role of Narratives in Identifying Jesus Christ (New York, Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1988); and Hans W. Frei, Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

The central point which Frei is making here is that the enacted intention of Jesus to obey the Father’s will meshes with external circumstances devolving around him, so that Jesus becomes who he is through the specific actions and circumstances surrounding his public life, especially his last days. The identity of Jesus in the Gospel story is not given simply in his inner intention, but in the enactment of his intentions which coincide with circumstances partly initiated by him, partly imposed upon him. The Gospel narrative as story should therefore be taken in its own right as testimony to Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Father, which is of a piece with his intention to do what had to be done for our sake, that is, to reconcile us sinners to the Father so that we might enter into permanent union with the Father as our final end. The following paragraphs will endeavour to illustrate that when the Gospels are taken as realistic narrative, then the identity of Jesus is not given from the very beginning but develops as the drama of the Gospel story unfolds.

When we examine the Synoptic Gospels we quickly realize that the identity of the man Jesus is never presented unequivocally. From the outset, of course, Jesus identifies with the kingdom of God (Mk 1:15), yet...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Permissions
• Introduction: The Open-Ended Nature of History
• 1 The Conquest of Death by Jesus Christ: Real Time for Living
• 2 The Proper Role of the Holy Spirit: Ecstatic Gift of Divine Communion
• 3 The Positive Character of My Death as Assumed by Christ’s Death: Perspectives on Death in Contemporary Theology
• 4 Death as Sharing in the Admirable Exchange of Natures in the Person of Jesus Christ
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index