God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, Volume Two

Evil and Divine Suffering

Pool

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275590
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book constitutes the second volume of a three-volume study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering: God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, vol. 2, Evil and Divine Suffering. The larger study focuses its inquiry into the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely, then to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies, rather than defending these attestations against the dominant claims of classical Christian theism that have historically sought to eliminate such language altogether from Christian discourse about the nature and life of God. This second volume of studies proceeds on the basis of the presuppositions of this symbol, those implicit attestations that provide the conditions of possibility for divine suffering-that which constitutes divine vulnerability with respect to creation-as identified and examined in the first volume of this project: an understanding of God through the primary metaphor of love ("God is love"); and an understanding of the human as created in the image of God, with a life (though finite) analogous to the divine life-the imago Dei as love. The second volume then investigates the first two divine wounds or modes of divine suffering to which the larger family of testimonies to divine suffering normally attest: (1) divine grief, suffering because of betrayal by the beloved human or human sin; and (2) divine self-sacrifice, suffering for the beloved human in its bondage to sin or misery, to establish the possibility of redemption and reconciliation. Each divine wound, thus, constitutes a response to a creaturely occasion. The suffering in each divine wound also occurs in two stages: a passive stage and an active stage. In divine grief, God suffers because of human sin, betrayal of the divine lover by the beloved human: divine sorrow as the passive stage of divine grief; and divine anguish as the active stage of divine grief. In divine self-sacrifice, God suffers in response to the misery or bondage of the beloved human's infidelity: divine travail (focused on the divine incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth) as the active stage of divine self-sacrifice; and divine agony (focused on divine suffering in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth) as the passive stage of divine self-sacrifice.

part one

God’s First Wound: Divine Grief

Introduction to Part One:

The Structure of Divine Grief

Part one of this second volume in my study examines the first explicit moment (rather than the implicit condition of its possibility in divine vulnerability) in the Christian symbol of divine suffering, the first wound of God. I have described this moment of the symbol, following a majority of Christian attestations to divine suffering, as divine grief.1

This moment in the symbol, like all three of this symbol’s principal moments, develops through the interaction of the two presuppositions that I have already analyzed in volume one of this project.2 I repeat the most general features of those two presuppositions. First, God, whose life is love, limits God’s own self when creating; second, God creates the human in the image of the God whose life is love.

In volume one of my studies, and as a consequence of these considerations, I described the first mode of divine suffering, the first wound of God, as the initial divine response to faulted human finitude or human sin. Upon that basis, I described the formal structure of this first divine wound: God-suffers-because-of-human-fault-or-sin. The Christian symbol of divine suffering also designates this first divine wound as the distanciation or alienation of creation from God, an alienation that I have further described as divine grief.3 Also in volume one of this work, I expanded my description of divine grief in the following way. The God whose life or being is love grieves, as occasioned by the inauthentic actualization of the divine image in human life or being as love, a creaturely love that both estranges itself from God, others, and itself and hurls itself into the hopelessness of all creaturely efforts to overcome this triple alienation. Thus, as with each moment in this symbol, initially at least, I begin my analysis of this first divine wound with a focus upon its creaturely occasion. Here I have described the occasion of the first divine wound as the inauthentic actualization of human life or being as love or the beloved human’s infidelity. In this first wound of God, or divine grief, God responds in two stages: first more passively, then more actively. In my hermeneutic of the Christian symbol of divine suffering, following the majority of Christian testimonies to this divine wound, I have construed the first and mainly passive stage of divine grief as the sorrow of the betrayed divine lover, while designating the second and principally active stage of divine grief as the anguish of the betrayed divine lover.

Hence, part one of this book includes three divisions, each division containing two chapters. Division one, “Infidelity of the Beloved Human,” examines the occasion of divine grief. Chapter 1 examines the formal characteristics, while chapter 2 examines the material characteristics, of the inauthentic actualization of human life as love, the beloved human’s infidelity, human sin, or cupiditas, as the occasion of this first divine wound or divine grief. Division two, “Sorrow of the Betrayed Divine Lover,” develops an exposition of divine sorrow, the first and more passive stage of divine grief. Chapter 3, therefore, explores the formal characteristics of this first stage in the divine grieving response, while chapter 4 explores the material characteristics of divine sorrow. Division three, “Anguish of the Betrayed Divine Lover,” contains a correlative study of divine anguish, the second and more active stage of divine grief. Thus, chapter 5 examines the formal characteristics, while chapter 6 examines the material characteristics, of divine anguish.

1. The attribution of grief to God, however often it appears in biblical texts, explicitly reverses or flatly contradicts the entire classical Christian tradition. For example, see Augustine’s statement of the classical position on divine grief: “tristitia rebus amissis contabescit, quibus se oblectabat cupiditas, quia ita sibi nollet, sicut tibi auferri nihil potest” (e.g., Augustine, Confessiones, 2.6.13, [221–22]). See the following English translations of this text. “Regret wastes away for the loss of things which cupidity delighted in. Its wish would be that nothing be taken away, just as nothing can be taken from you” (Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, 32 [2.6.13]). “Grief languishes for things lost in which desire had delighted itself, even because it would have nothing taken from it, as nothing can be from Thee” (Augustine, “Confessions,” in Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 1:58 [2.6.13]). Similarly, Augustine said: “motusque voluntatis a te, qui es, ad id quod minus est, quia talis motus delictum atque peccatum est, et quod nullius peccatum aut tibi nocet aut perturbat ordinem imperii tui vel in primo vel in imo” (Augustine, Confessiones, 12.11.11 [300–301]). See Chadwick’s translation: “The movement of the will away from you, who are, is movement towards that which has less being. A movement of this nature is a fault and a sin, and no one’s sin harms you or disturbs the order of your rule, either on high or down below” (Augustine, Confessions, Chadwick, 32 [12.11.11]).

2. See Pool, God’s Wounds, vol. 1, Divine Vulnerability and Creation.

3. A variety of Christian scriptures attest to this first divine wound. “The Lord (Yahweh) saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:5–6 NRSV [New Revised Standard Version]). “How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert! They tested God again and again, and provoked (as a parallelism with the previous statement, better translated as “pained”; the Septuagint [LXX] translates this as parw/cunan [to provoke or to arouse]) the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:40–41 NRSV). “But they rebelled and grieved his holy Spirit; therefore he became their enemy, he himself fought against them” (Isaiah 63:10 NRSV). “And do not grieve (lupei=te) the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30 NRSV). Although Ellen M. Ross has produced an excellent study of late medieval English images of the suffering Jesus, in terms of the symbol of divine grief, her study addresses the more popular forms of piety and devotion in the literature of spiritual guidance, paintings, and dramas around the image of the crucified Christ: see Ross, Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England; similarly, see Chazelle, Crucified God in the Carolingian Era. Strictly speaking, the official medieval dogma of divine impassibility still regulated as strictly as possible these forms of popular piety, thus preventing the fullest assimilation of these insights about divine compassion and suffering into the dominant and orthodox classical concept of God that had developed. More importantly, these modes of attending to divine suffering relate most appropriately to my study of the second wound of God in part two, chapters 7–12, of this book.

division one

Infidelity of the Beloved Human

Introduction to Division One:

Sin as Occasion of Divine Grief

God’s creation of humans in the divine image established the conditions of possibility for the occasion of the first divine wound. I have shown previously that the Christian symbol of divine suffering construes human being or life in the image of God as love. Furthermore, as being-in-act (ens actu), the imago Dei actualizes itself as imitatio Dei. The human never loses or annihilates the imago Dei, but certainly can distort and pervert itself as such.1 Thus, humans always actualize their being or life as love in an imitation of God either authentically or inauthentically. As Augustine said to God in his Confessions, “perverse te imitantur omnes, qui longe se a te faciunt et extollunt se adversum te.” “In their perverted way all humanity imitates you. Yet they put themselves at a distance from you and exalt themselves against you.”2 Using categories borrowed from Augustine, I have designated the authentic or essential actualization of human being as love with the term “caritas.” The inauthentic actualization of human being as love, the false or counterfeit imitatio Dei, I have designated with the term “cupiditas.”

Human life as cupiditas occasions the first mode of divine suffering, the grief of God.3 Many Christian traditions, including those that attest to divine suffering, concur in their identification of this occasion as human sin. When humans actualize themselves inauthentically, they absolutize themselves as cupiditas. In this sense, humans absolutize amor sui or self-love and displace amor Dei or love for God; they become inauthentic lovers of self (fi/lautoi) as opposed to authentic lovers of God (filo/qeoi); their conversio ad creaturam (turning around toward the creature) involves simultaneously an aversio a Deo (turning away from God).4

Human life as cupiditas, however, does not simply replace love for God with love for self. The beloved human acts unfaithfully toward the divine lover with far greater complexity, in more subtle duplicity, and as extremely sophisticated self-deception. The human who becomes unfaithful to God’s purposes for itself disorders all subjects of love, so that self-love guides and shapes all actualizations of human life as love in relation to the other subjects. Thus, in Augustinian terms, not only does the human love itself for its own sake (diligere propter se), but it also loves both God (where the self explicitly attempts to maintain a relationship with God) and other creatures for the self’s own sake. Hence, the human actualizes itself as love toward both God and other humans, as well as toward all other creatures, only for the sake of something else (diligere propter aliud): for its own self. As a consequence, the human disorders its life as love or, in Augustinian terms again, actualizes an un-ordered love (dilectio inordinata) in two senses. In the first sense, as already mentioned, the human disorders the subjects of love: the human self subordinates both God and creaturely others (neighbors) to the interests of its self-love; the human actualizes its life as love anthropocentrically (and, more specifically still, even egocentrically), rather than theocentrically. In the second sense, the human disorders the dimensions of its life as love. Generally, the human’s erotic love subordinates both the agapic and the philial loves to itself. Thus, rather than the human actualizing itself in philial love, as the dialectical unity and tension between the erotic and the agapic dimensions of human life (and, thus, philiacentrically), the self principally actualizes itself erocentrically.

Christian traditions, including and especially those that attest to some form of divine suffering, construe human life’s inauthentic actualization, or the actualization of human life as false love, the counterfeit imitatio Dei, principally as human infidelity toward God.5 Numerous Christian witnesses to divine suffering express this conv...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Prologue: Central Mystery of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering
• Part One: God’s First Wound: Divine Grief
• Part Two: God’s Second Wound: Divine Self-Sacrifice
• Appendices
• Bibliography