Cosmocentric Sacramentality

COSMOCENTRIC SACRAMENTALITY

WATER, OIL, AND FIRE

IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CELEBRATION OF BAPTISM

Dissertation Proposal

Linda Gibler

May, 2005

COSMOCENTRIC SACRAMENTALITY:

WATER, OIL, AND FIRE

IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CELEBRATION OF BAPTISM

Abstract

The Universe is God-drenched. Every being, form, and particle of the

Universe participates in sacramentality when it conveys or responds to God’s blessing. Believing that Nature is the first book of revelation and that Creation is the primary teacher, I present a cosmocentric sacramentality based on sacramentals, focusing on water, oil, and fire in the ritual celebration of baptism.

Cosmocentric sacramentality situates the human experience of sacraments within their cosmological context, which includes the depths of the history of the

Universe, the breadth of the Earth community, and the particularity of each being.

To establish this context, I trace the deep history and properties of specific sacramentals from the Beginning, 13.7 billion years ago, through the formation of

Earth, to the embodiment of the sacramentals within the person to be baptized. I then explore the biblical and patristic use of water, oil, and fire, focusing particularly on the blessings and instructions to catechumens. I complete the historic investigation of these sacramentals with the current Rite of Christian

Initiation for Adults and the blessings of water, oil, and fire used in the Easter

Vigil. Cosmocentric sacramentality establishes a deep connection between the persons celebrating baptism and the Earth community, between the moment of celebration and the history of the Universe from its beginnings throughout time.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT...... II

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / OVERVIEW...... 1

THESIS STATEMENT...... 5

LITERATURE REVIEW...... 6

ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION...... 6 PATRISTIC ROOTS...... 7 Kilian McDonnell ...... 7 Paul Palmer...... 11 CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT...... 17 Edward Schillebeeckx...... 17 Edward Kilmartin ...... 21 Kenan Osborne ...... 24 FUNCTIONAL COSMOLOGY...... 29 Thomas Berry...... 31 Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry ...... 34 John Haught...... 37 IN CONCLUSION...... 40 SIGNIFICANCE ...... 40

METHODOLOGY...... 42

CHAPTER OUTLINE ...... 44

TIME SCHEDULE ...... 46

RESEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 47

REFERENCES...... 51 Historical Background / Overview

Cosmocentric sacramentality situates the Roman Catholic celebration of sacraments within their cosmic context.1 I use baptism and its sacramentals of water, oil, and fire as a limiting focus for this dissertation, although I believe similar work could be done for each of the seven ritual sacraments and all their sacramentals. Sacraments are traditionally defined as outward signs of inward grace, through which grace is conveyed to the soul. A sacramental is a substance used in a sacrament.2

In the early church, objects used in rituals as well as all of nature were experienced as sharing in and participating in the sacraments. They were witnesses and participants. A Patristic view holds that nature shares in the same fate as humanity. Nature was exiled from the garden along with sinful humans and was restored when Jesus was baptized in the waters of the Jordan.

This God-drenched experience of Nature was lost for many reasons. One was the concentration of Christians in the cities. Away from the rivers, they had less of an experience of flowing, fresh water. In cities, pedestal fonts, instead of flowing rivers, held water for baptism. Away from the fields, the use of fire was controlled, and fire was feared instead of celebrated as in the annual practice of burning the fields after the harvest to renew their fertility. Away from orchards,

1 ‘Cosmocentric’ does not imply putting the cosmos before God but rather stresses the foundational primordiality of the cosmos, which provides the context for sacraments. 2 ‘Sacramental’ may also refer to actions and words used in a ritual sacrament.This paper, however, will focus on physical sacramentals only.

the awareness of the fecundity of olive trees retreated and oil became

commodified. As the Church moved through the medieval experiences of the

plague, Nature was less likely to be trusted. The divine image became

experienced primarily in the sky. In the churches, natural substances had to be

purified by blessings before they were fit for sacramental use.

After the Patristic Era, there is little attention paid to the nature of

particular sacramentals. Rather, the focus of scholastic interest was on the

efficacy of the material to serve divine purpose. The differences between water

and oil seem to have been forgotten, or at least no longer considered a matter of

concern.

During the Reformation, there is no evidence that the conversation about

the meaning of sacramentals resumed. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) reiterated the tradition of the use of sacramentals inherited from the Fathers but did not add anything to their understanding. It was the nature of this council to hold on to what was essential in the Catholic tradition and not to add to it or to explicate it further.

Following the inquiries of Dom Odo Casel, Edward Schillebeeckx

explored the meaning of sacraments. He does not consider sacramentals directly,

but he does expand on the meaning and experience of sacraments. Schillebeeckx

expands the use of sacrament beyond the seven ritual sacraments prescribed by

Trent to include the notion of Jesus as the primordial sacrament. He argues that

because of Jesus’s complete human response to God and God’s complete embrace

of Jesus, Jesus was the sacrament out of which all other sacraments flow.

Schillebeeckx follows this by saying that the Church is a foundational sacrament because it extends Jesus’s body in time. The Church is Jesus present to the world now, and its members are the body of the Church. However, Schillebeeckx does not limit the body of Christ to the Roman Catholic Church or even to the

Christian Churches. He holds that the entire human community of faithful people makes up the body of Christ. In his work, which the Second Vatican council embraced, the notion of sacrament was extended beyond its ritual meaning, located in the person of Jesus, and by extension, granted to the Church and to the entire human community of believers.

Later theologians such as Edward Kilmartin and Kenan Osborne posit the extension of this meaning of sacrament to the cosmos itself. Kilmartin considers an appreciation of nature that would be at the heart of a cosmic sacramentality, and Osborne tells us that every cloud is a potential sacrament. In Osborne’s thought, every thing conveys God’s blessing, but it is not until a human responds to the blessing that it is sacramental. Both Kilmartin and Osborne point to a sacramentality of the cosmos but do not fully develop the concept or explore what it might mean for an understanding of sacramentals.

Schillebeeckx, Kilmartin, and Osborne suggest two points of departure for a cosmocentric sacramentality. One is that all things are potential sacramentals. I argue that the better we know these beings, which are used and recognized as sacramentals, the better we can know God. The other point of departure is the idea that all beings can respond to God’s blessing. Sacraments are a continuum of blessing and response that began at the birth of the Universe with the urges of

evolution and continue through time and matter to the self-conscious responses which humans make when they are fully aware. I claim that all of creation participates in God’s blessing, not only humans. All creation is a potential sacrament, and every being in creation has the potential to respond sacramentally to God’s blessing.

This new understanding of sacramentals is made possible by recent

scientific insights into evolution and the cosmology of the Universe3 as well as by

a more intimate knowledge of Earth science. We have only recently been able to

tell the story of the Universe with some assurance or to trace the histories of

particular beings back through their ancestry to the Beginning4. This dissertation integrates these scientific insights and a theological appreciation of sacramentals in order to discover what they reveal about God’s blessing and creation’s response.

I focus on the cosmology of three sacramentals of baptism—water, oil,

and fire. I hope it will become clear that similar investigations and conclusions could be made with respect to all the other Roman Catholic ritual sacraments and all their sacramentals, and that this approach may have application in other faith traditions. This work will not present an exhaustive history of sacraments in the

Roman Catholic tradition. It will take a particularly deep look at Patristic experience, which laid much of the groundwork and set the parameters for future

tradition, while also providing a sufficient substantiation for the claim that this

3 Throughout this work, I capitalize words such as Universe, Earth, and Moon when they appear as proper nouns. 4 I use the expression the ‘Beginning’ instead of the ‘Big Bang’ or the ‘Flaring Forth’ and thus it is capitalized.

tradition once had, and could again have, a cosmic understanding of sacramentals.

Medieval theology is not investigated in this study because the Patristic insights into the meanings of the sacramentals—water, oil, and fire—were not developed.

I leave it to another investigation to trace the use of sacramentals in the vulgate

theology of art and architecture where sacred geometry and astronomy play such

an important role.

This dissertation is not an exhaustive theology, but rather a constructive

contribution toward cosmocentric sacramentality. Although I am not an expert in

the scientific fields from which I draw, it is the nature of developing a cosmology

such as this to make bold investigations into the Earth sciences, astronomy,

physics, biology, church history, and theology and then to come to a significant

synthesis through the exploration of the relevant portions of each of these fields.

Thesis Statement

Sacramentals convey blessing. The integration of their scientific history

and the history of their use in ritual celebrations creates new insights into the sacramentals, the continuity of rituals with the Universe, and into God, whose blessing they reveal. This integration of the histories of sacramentals builds a cosmocentric sacramentality, which locates human sacramental experience within the context of the Universe. Cosmocentric sacramentality reveals an intimate connection between the persons celebrating a sacrament and the Earth community, between the moment of the celebration and the history of the

Universe from its beginning throughout time.

Focusing on the three primary sacramentals of baptism in the Roman

Catholic tradition, I trace the history and properties of water, oil, and fire, from the Beginning, 13.7 billion years ago, through the formation of Earth, to the embodiment of the sacramentals within the person to be baptized. I then explore the significance of these sacramentals as they appear in ancient and contemporary baptismal instructions and in baptismal liturgies. While interfacing the scientific and sacramental history of water, oil, and fire, I develop a cosmocentric understanding of baptism and a cosmocentric sacramentality that embraces all beings as sacramental participants.

Literature Review

This literature review situates cosmocentric sacramentality in the Roman

Catholic tradition and in the lineage of the emerging functional cosmology.5 The

roots of a cosmocentric appreciation of sacraments are found in patristic writings

and are again seen in contemporary theological developments. Cosmocentric

sacramentality is also in the cosmological lineage of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

and Thomas Berry.

Roman Catholic Tradition

The Patristic theology of the early church provides roots for cosmocentric

sacramentality. Even though the connection to the world of matter later

complexifies in problematic directions, the notion of water, oil, and fire

5 Functional cosmology is the term used by Thomas Berry and others to describe the emerging scientific story of the Universe with its implications for mutually-enhancing relationships between humans and the Earth community.

participating in divinity in their own right was strongly part of early sacramental

experience. To show this, I discuss Kilian McDonnell’s The Baptism of Jesus in

the Jordan, and Paul Palmer’s Sacraments and Worship. McDonnell assembles

early documents that refer to baptism and the catechesis of new initiates. Palmer

has collected liturgical rites from the first to the 20th century. From different

starting points, these works combine to form a compelling, grounding view of the

early church’s experience of the world.

Edward Schillebeeckx, Edward Kilmartin, and Kenan Osborne each

extend the boundaries of thought about sacraments away from the narrow

interpretation inherited from the Council of Trent towards cosmic inclusiveness.

Although these theologians do not consider the history or the nature of

sacramentals, they do provide a context for that development.

Patristic Roots

Kilian McDonnell

In his book, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: the Trinitarian and

Cosmic Order of Salvation6, Kilian McDonnell’s purpose is to “demonstrate that the baptism of Jesus is a major mystery in the life of the early church.”7 Within

his work there are three chapters discussing the sacramentals, water, oil, and fire.

McDonnell reveals three cosmic understandings of water in Jesus’

baptism: universal baptism, new creation, and cosmic consecration. He draws

attention to a poetic text reconstructed from fragments of Melito of Sardis (175

6 Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996). 7 Ibid. x.

c.e.) that describes the Sun, Moon, and stars bathing in the ocean each day.

According to McDonnell, everything participated in baptism by water: forged

metal was dipped in water; fields were soaked by rain; land was renewed by

floods; air was bathed by rain drops. Jesus was baptized in water because

everything was baptized in water. Jesus’ baptism and baptism today are part of the

universal participation of water.

The early church also understood water as participant in new creation.

Cyril of Jerusalem (350 c.e.) notes that both Genesis and the gospels start with water and that no new age is possible without water. In Genesis, God’s spirit hovers over the primal waters as the first act of creation, and in the gospels, the

Spirit hovers over Jesus as he is baptized in the water of the Jordan. Gregory of

Nazianzus (383 c.e.) writes of Jesus carrying the cosmos out of the baptismal water on his shoulder. All of creation is renewed, re-born of water. Baptismal water, beginning with the Jordan, is the womb of spiritual re-creation.

The third understanding of water in the early church was that all water was

consecrated by Jesus’ baptism. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215 c.e.) tells us that the purpose of Jesus’ baptism was to sanctify the waters. Jacob of Serugh (ca.

451-521 c.e.) writes that when Jesus stepped into the Jordan, “the entire nature of

the waters perceived that [he] had visited them—seas, deeps, rivers, springs and pools all thronged together to receive the blessing from [his] footsteps.”8 It was

not only water that received this blessing. In the early Armenian catechesis, The

Teaching of St. Gregory (ca. 490), we see that creation itself was exiled from the

Garden when Adam sinned. The curse of separation did not fall on humans alone.

8 Ibid. 61.

Therefore, the Spirit’s blessing restored the entire created order when the Christ

entered the waters of the Jordan. Water and all of creation including humans

shared in one relationship with God.

Turning now to oil and anointing, McDonnell gives two topics to ponder:

the two anointings described by Irenaeus, and the notion of anointing with oil as

naming and acknowledgment. Irenaeus writes of two anointings of the Spirit. In

the first anointing, God anointed the Word with the Spirit before time. Through

the Word, God anointed and adorned the whole of creation with the Spirit. We are reminded of the Christological hymn in Colossians:

Christ is the image of the unseen God, The first born of all creation, For in him were created all things In heaven and on Earth Everything visible and everything invisible, Thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers— all things were created through him and for him. He existed before all things And in him, all things hold together. (Col 1:15-17)

The Word was Christ before Jesus’ incarnation. It was through this anointed

Word that God created the cosmos. Irenaeus’ use of the word “adorn” suggests

that the world was not only created, but also made beautiful through this anointing.

In the second anointing, Jesus, in his humanity, was anointed with the

Spirit within creation. Even though Jesus was fully divine from birth, he was also

fully human. Anointing his humanness mediated the anointing to all humans. And

as we have seen, all of creation shares in one relationship with God—so all of

creation was anointed through Jesus.

The next point of interest McDonnell considers is the role of recognition

and naming in anointing. According to Jacob of Serugh, the significance of the

baptism of Jesus was not found in the water, but in the heavenly revelation of

Jesus as the beloved Son of God, which accompanied his anointing. Through the

anointing of the Spirit, Jesus was shown to be Christ, the Anointed of God. Justin

Martyr (150 c.e.) was firm in his conviction that Jesus did not need anointing for

empowerment or grace—these he already had. It was through the anointing at the

Jordan that people first recognized Jesus as the messiah.

In his chapter on fire, McDonnell discusses two themes: fire as heat and as

light. We read in Matthew 3:11 that John the Baptist told his followers that the

one to come would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. According to

McDonnell, it was this that inspired Justin to write, “As Jesus went down into the

water, the Jordan was set ablaze.”9 This fire was the heat of purgation, sanctification, and transformation.

Like light, fire is the glory of God. For Ephrem (ca. 306-373), Mary

shared the same “splendorous” light as the Jordan because they both had held the

savior in their wombs. With the Feast of Epiphany, Justin makes the transition

from the light on the Jordan to Christ as the Great Light, and then to Christians as

stars.

Finally, McDonnell states that in the Patristic tradition the role of the

cosmos in the baptism of Jesus was more than symbolic. The Patristic tradition

experienced fire and water as part of the witness of the created universe to the

baptism and ministry of Jesus. In the early Church, water, oil, and fire participated

9 Ibid. 106.

in this mediating, revelatory ministry. Water cleansed, oil acknowledged, fire

transformed.

Paul Palmer

In Sacraments and Worship: Liturgy and Doctrinal Development of

Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist10, Paul Palmer gathers the extant

liturgies, writings, canons, as well as decrees of ecumenical councils that relate to

sacraments. Although he traces the development of sacramental understanding

through Pope Pius XII (1947), most of this book reviews documents from the first

century through the eighth century when the rites of the Church became relatively

fixed such that the Gelasian Sacramentary written in the sixth century would be

strikingly familiar to contemporary churchgoers.

In his introduction, Palmer writes:

Underlying early Christian worship is the principle that matter is good, that material things, such as water and oil, wheat and wine, are susceptible of the divine influence, and even capable of acting as the instrument or vehicle of the Holy Spirit in the transformation of the human spirit…[which is] an immediate corollary of the Incarnation wherein the ‘Word became flesh’…Not only are material things the medium by which God approaches man, external rites and ceremonies are the medium by which man approaches God.11

Palmer focuses on the uses of water itself and water as a womb. Two of

the earliest references to baptism emphasized the physical nature of the water.

The author of the Didache (c.100) wrote, “Baptize in running water. But if you

have no running water, baptize in other water; and if you cannot in cold, then in

10 Paul F. Palmer, ed., Sacraments and Worship: Liturgy and Doctrinal Development of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, vol. I, Sources of Christian Theology (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1955). 11 Ibid. vii.

warm. But if you have neither, pour water over the head three times.”12 The

Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (ca.215) instructs those to be baptized to “pray

over the water” so that when they come to it, the water will be “pure and flowing.” At this point, there is no actual blessing of the water. Living water cleansed both physically and spiritually.

In St. Ambrose of Milan (ca. 390), we find the first extant reference to the consecration of water. In an explanation of the mysteries to the newly initiated, he paralleled the fountain of Marah, which was made sweet when Moses cast wood into it (Exodus. 15:23-25), and the water of baptism, which was consecrated by the proclamation of the “saving cross.” He explained the participation of water by reminding his neophytes that:

[they] have read that the three witnesses to baptism are one, water, blood, and the Spirit; for if you take one away, the sacrament of baptism does not remain. For what is water without the cross of Christ? A common element without any sacramental effect. And yet without water there is no mystery of regeneration.13

The union of word and water was formalized by St. Augustine (d. 430) in

his Treatise on the Gospel of John. He wrote, “Take away the word and what is

water but water? The word is joined to the element and the result is a sacrament,

itself becoming, in a sense, a visible word as well.”14 It is the union of word and

water that provides the efficacy of baptism. Similarly, in response to the

Reformation, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) emphatically stressed the efficacy

12 Ibid. 1. 13 Ibid. 20. 14 Ibid. 87.

12 of water in baptism. Echoing the earliest authors’ emphasis on the use of pure water, the Canons on the Sacrament of Baptism caution:

If anyone shall say that true and natural water is not necessary for baptism, and shall, therefore, twist into some metaphor or other those words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit” (Jn.3:5): Anathema Sit.15

Water’s regenerative power as womb and tomb is Palmer’s next concern.

Justin Martyr (ca. 150) described baptism as the ritual of regeneration. The first to evoke the image of womb for baptismal waters, he quoted John 3:3 which says,

“Unless you are born again, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” When

St. Cyril of Jerusalem explained the mysteries (ca.348/350), he compared the three pourings of water in baptism to the three days Christ spent in the tomb. He wrote, “At one and the same time you were dying and being born, and that saving water became at once your grave and your mother” (page 13). One hundred years later, Pope St. Leo the Great (d.461) wrote beautifully of baptismal waters and

Mary’s womb:

The beginning that He took in the womb of the Virgin, He put into the fountain of baptism; He gave to the water what He gave to His mother; power of the Most High and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, which made Mary give birth to the Savior, the same caused the water to give a second birth to the believer. For every man reborn, the water of baptism is like the womb of the Virgin: the same Holy Spirit who filled the Virgin fills the fountain.16

The story of water’s regenerative role in salvation history was told in the extended blessing of baptismal waters in the Gelasian Sacramentary (ca. 700).

Beginning with the primordial waters of Genesis, through the flood and the deliverance from Egypt, the Sacramentary recalled feats of water’s participation

15 Ibid. 118. 16 Ibid. 76-77.

in Divine majesty. In this blessing, water was made fruitful by the “secret in-

pouring” of God’s divine power. By contrast, the writer of the Didache, 600 years

previously, found water’s fecundity self-evident.

The first reference to oil that Palmer gives us refers to the two oils used in

baptism. In the rite described in The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (ca. 215),

there were two separate oils used for anointing. In preparation for the baptism, a

bishop first gave thanks over the Oil of Thanksgiving and put it in a sacred vessel.

Then he took oil and “exorcize[d] over it.” No further elaborations of this blessing

and exorcism of the oils are extant. The persons being baptized were anointed first

with the Oil of Exorcism while the bishop said, “Let all evil spirits depart far from

thee.” After the exorcism, the persons entered the water to be washed. When they came out of the water, they were anointed with the Oil of Thanksgiving in the

name of Jesus Christ.

St Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 350) referred to Jesus Christ as the good olive

tree. In this community, the persons to be baptized were first “anointed with oil

that had been exorcised, from the hairs of your head to the soles of your feet.” In

so doing, they became “partakers of the good olive-tree, Jesus Christ. For cut off

from the wild olive [they] were grafted into the good olive, and were made to

share in the prosperity of the true olive-tree.” The oil was “a symbol of

participation in Christ’s bounty.” The oil received “power great enough not only

to burn and cleanse all trace of sin, but also to put to flight all the unseen powers

of the evil spirit” by the invocation of God and by prayer. Cyril then instructed his

community on the Oil of Gladness, teaching that the Holy Spirit was the oil of

gladness because the Spirit was the author of spiritual gladness. They were

anointed with oil because they were “partakers and associates of Christ.” While the body was anointed with visible oil, the soul was sanctified by the invisible

Spirit. Having received the “antitype of Christ,” they became images of Christ.17

In the “Hymns on Oil and the Olive,” St Ephrem the Syrian (d.373) wrote that the Holy Spirit used oil to “impress his seal upon his sheep.”18 As a king

would use a signet ring to mark wax, so the Spirit stamps the baptized. This is the

first reference Palmer gives us about the indelible character that baptism confers.

Augustine developed this concept, insisting that baptism could only be received once because nothing could erase God’s seal.

Similar to the blessing of water, The Gelasian Sacramentary told the

Biblical story of oil in its blessing. After giving thanks to God, the blessing

continued:

Who in the beginning, among the other gifts of Thy bountiful mercy, didst command the earth to put forth fruit-bearing trees. Among these there sprang the olive, which ministers this rich oily liquid, the fruit of which was to serve for sacred chrism.19

God was then asked to consecrate the oil with blessing and to “commingle” the oil

with the efficacy of the Holy Spirit through the power of Christ. A person was

anointed on the head and breast during the rite of exorcism, then baptized in water and signed on the forehead with this Chrism. The final line of the blessing of

Chrism read, “[may it be] the chrism of salvation to those who shall be born of

17 Ibid. 13-15. 18 Ibid. 86. 19 Ibid. 35.

water and the Holy Spirit, and that Thou may make them partakers of eternal life

and shares in the glory of heaven.”20

And finally, the Council of Trent upholds the use of oil in the Canons on

the Sacrament of Confirmation. Canon 2 read: “If anyone shall say that those who

ascribe any efficacy to the sacred chrism of confirmation offer insult to the Holy

Spirit: Anathema Sit.”21

In all of the texts that Palmer reviewed on baptism, only four mentioned

fire. The first was from the Gelasian Sacramentary’s blessing of salt in the name

of Jesus “who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.”22

Another two references are about the paschal candle. Once again, the Gelasian

Sacramentary handed down a tradition that is still familiar today. The

Sacramentary described the part of the ritual of the Easter Vigil in which the deacon comes to the altar, “receives a light from fire that was hid away on Friday, makes the sign of the cross on the candle.”23 He then lit the candle and blessed it.

To show the continuity from the ancient to more recent ritual practice,

Palmer paralleled the Gelasian Easter Vigil with the Vigil found in the 1888

Roman Pontifical. In the Gelasian Rite we first read of the triple dipping of the

paschal candle into the baptismal font while the water was blessed. Then during

the baptism, after being washed in water and anointed with oil, each person was

given a lighted candle and told, “Receive this burning light, and guard thy

baptism blamelessly; keep God’s commandments, that when our Lord shall come

20 Ibid. 35. 21 Ibid. 119. 22 Ibid. 28. 23 Ibid. 31.

to His nuptials, thou may run to greet Him together with all the Saints in the court

of Heaven.”24

Together with McDonnell, Palmer traces the use and meaning of the sacramentals, water, oil, and fire, from their earliest usage in Christian baptism.

Rich, cosmological understandings of the sacramentals are explicit in the early

texts of the church. Although this appreciation has largely been lost in modern

practice, it provides fertile ground for retrieval and development. Because this

investigation of Patristic literature grounds this dissertation in the tradition of the

Roman Catholic Church, and because medieval theology does not develop the

understanding of the sacramentals of baptism—water, oil, and fire—I move now

to contemporary developments in sacramental theology.

Contemporary Theological Development

Edward Schillebeeckx

Edward Schillebeeckx’s task in writing Christ the Sacrament of the

Encounter with God25 was “positively and constructively to take up the study of

the Christian sacraments, with the concept of human, personal encounter as the

basis of consideration.”26 Written in the years before Vatican II, it is brimming

with enthusiasm and fresh insight. This classic work has three themes that relate

directly to this research. The first of these is the deep understanding of Christ as

primordial sacrament, the second is the vision of sacraments as the prolongation

24 Ibid. 33. 25 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963). 26 Ibid. 3.

of the incarnation, and the third is the realization that sacraments are not limited

to Christians.

The most significant insight of this book is Schillebeeckx’s understanding

of Christ as the primordial sacrament. He reasons that sacraments are the

perceptible encounter between God’s love and human response. This love and

response is perfected for the first and only time in the person, Jesus of Nazareth.

In Jesus, God’s outpouring of love is met with total “human mutual availability.”

Schillebeeckx experiences all of Christian religion as an encounter between God

and humanity in Christ the “primordial sacrament.” He explains:

In [Jesus] there was a visible realization of both sides of faith in the Covenant. In the dialogue between God and man so often breaking down, there was found at last a perfect human respondent; in the same person there was achieved the perfection both of the divine invitation and of the human response in faith from the man who by his resurrection is the Christ.27

He continues to say further that Christ is God in a human way as well as a human

person in a divine way. As a person, every act he does is an act of God, and as

God, every act is a human act. Everything Jesus does as Son of God he does as

God and everything he does as God he does as a human.28 Jesus, in his person, is

the invitation and response to divine love.

It is only as a human that Jesus is the mediator of grace to humanity. The foundation of Jesus’ mediation is the incarnation, an incarnation that did not merely happen at the Annunciation or at Christmas. According to Schillebeeckx,

Jesus’ incarnation was only complete upon his death, resurrection, and

27 Ibid. 13. 28 Ibid. 14.

18 glorification. It is this Jesus, in the fullness of his humanity and divinity, which we encounter in the sacraments. Schillebeeckx says:

Christ makes his presence among us actively visible and tangible too, not directly through his own bodylines, but by extending among us on earth in visible form the function of his bodily reality in heaven. This precisely is what sacraments are: the earthly extension of the ‘body of the Lord.’ This is the Church.29

We are told, “Christ remains man in heaven. His saving will encounters us in an expressive personal gesture of his own, though now through the mediation of his body on earth.”30 This is Schillebeeckx’s’ second point: sacraments are the prolongation of the incarnation. If the sacraments are the visible response to

God’s love and Christ is the primordial sacrament from which all others flow, the

Church is necessary for peoples’ continued experience of this mediation. Jesus is the mediation of God’s grace. His physical body is no longer available to us, but we experience the sacramental body of the Lord, which the Church has long been understood to be.

The Church is thus a prolongation of Jesus’ bodily mediation in time.

Each ritual sacrament has a three-fold dimension to it. It commemorates the past sacrifice of Christ; it is the celebration of grace received by the community during the ceremony, and it is a pledge of continued grace and the coming of the

Kingdom. This is possible only because Christ is present and continues to mediate for us. Schillebeeckx assures us that the conferral of grace in a sacramental celebration and the promise of the future are infallible because Jesus prays with us, and the prayers of the Son of God are always heard.

29 Ibid. 41. 30 Ibid. 78.

Schillebeeckx’s prolongation of the incarnation extends beyond the

Christian encounter with Christ. The third part of his thought that is helpful to my

research is that Christ’s mediation is meant for all people. Agreeing with

Augustine, who cites Paul in Romans 8, Schillebeeckx tells us that before Jesus,

“the sacramental church is already present in the life of the whole of [humankind].

All humanity receives that inward word of God calling men to a communion in

grace with himself.”31 He says that sacramentality is the properly human

encounter with God. “Church as the visible presence of grace is a world-wide reality.”32 “That which Christ as Kyrios is doing invisibly through his glorified

body in heaven for all men on earth, he does visibly for the same men through his

earthly body, the Church.”33 For Schillebeeckx, the sacramental body of Christ,

which is called the Church, is for the mediation of the encounter with God for the whole world. Although he does not explicitly state it, the Church includes all people who authentically encounter God. This is not limited to people who participate in events ritualized by the Roman Catholic Church. The world of creation was the mediator of God before the incarnation of Christ in Jesus, and remains so. “God always offers us the kingdom of Heaven in an earthly guise.”34

Schillebeeckx continues:

But the whole created world becomes, through Christ’s incarnation and the God-man relationship which is consequent upon it, an outward grace, an offer of grace in sacramental form. As a result of Christ’s visible manifestation of himself in the world—a manifestation which embraces the whole world—the preaching and the sacraments of the Church can be

31 Ibid. 7. 32 Ibid. 10. 33 Ibid. 69. 34 Ibid. 42.

regarded simply as the burning focal points within the entire concentration of this visible presence of grace which is the Church.35

Schillebeeckx’s thought leads to additional questions. Perhaps the most

relevant is this: if it is the humanness of Jesus that allows him to mediate

completely to humans, can something similar be said about his terrestrial nature,

his Earth-ness? Because of his humanness, the human Church is sacramental.

Does it follow that because of his earth-ness the Earth Community is also

sacramental? Paul and Augustine believed that before Jesus’ human incarnation,

creation mediated God to people. Is this no longer true, or is this mediation

somehow enhanced by the glorification of Jesus? Jesus is truly human; therefore,

he mediates grace to humans. Jesus is truly Earth; therefore he mediates grace to

Earth. Is the response to this mediation limited to a human response? We are told

that the whole Church prays along with Christ for God’s blessing. Paul tells us

that all of creation groans waiting for completion in God. Therefore, all of

creation prays together with the Son of God, and this prayer is infallibly heard.

Edward Kilmartin

In the article “Theology of the Sacraments: Toward a New Understanding

of the Chief Rites of the Church of Jesus Christ,”36 Edward Kilmartin both

stresses the need to develop an “appreciative consciousness” toward

sacramentality and explores the sacramental nature of the cosmos.

35 Ibid. 216. 36 Edward J. Kilmartin, "Theology of the Sacraments: Toward a New Understanding of the Chief Rites of the Church of Jesus Christ," in Alternative Futures for Worship, ed. Regis A. Duffy, Alternative Futures for Worship (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1987).

What Kilmartin calls appreciative consciousness is orientated toward the

mysterious, sacred aspects of our lives and the world around us. The quality of a

liturgy can be measured by the degree to which it contributes to the formation of

appreciative consciousness in its participants. Such an appreciation requires

people to recognize their own worth before God and the worth of each person. It also moves the members of the church toward concern for all those who suffer and are not able to experience their full worth. The efficacy of a sacrament is related to the individual person’s ability to participate fully within a community of people liberated to respond to the promised grace. To enhance understanding and appreciative consciousness, sacramental celebrations draw on objects and actions used in daily life. This leads to Kilmartin’s insights into the sacramental nature of the cosmos.

Kilmartin begins his reflections on the cosmos by reminding us that

Patristic theology recognized a hierarchy of values within the liturgical rites. Even

lower rites (Kilmartin does not make clear which these are) “played a role of

mediation in the saving work of Christ in the Spirit who inspires their use.”37 This

idea of a continuum of values allows that some rites, or parts of rites, manifest

God less fully than others. He goes on to say that salvation history, in this view, begins not with the incarnation of Jesus, but with creation:

Therefore, all creation bears the mark of God’s love for humanity…even to the lowest level of materiality, creation manifests God’s saving presence. To be sure, the chief liturgical rites of the Church were valued as particular concentrations of the sacramental nature of all creation. They were interpreted as the highest manifestation of God’s presence in the whole cosmos.38

37 Ibid. 157. 38 Ibid. 158.

At one end of the scale of divine manifestation was simple food. At the other end

was the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharistic meal, which was Jesus

Christ himself. Scholastic theology held a similar view of creation. Theologians

taught that the created material used as sacramentals attain meaning by more fully expressing the mystery of divine love for humanity. They “valued sacraments as a logical consequence and high point of the symbolic dimension of all creation.”39

This integrated view was lost in the West in the modern era when stress was placed on human power to use, control, and manipulate the created world for human benefit. Kilmartin says that even though the Second Vatican Council had a vision of the sacramental nature of the church:

this council did not attempt to show how the Church and its sacraments might help to correct the modern experience of reality. . . . This modern context makes it difficult to experience the cosmos as open to transcendence, in manifold ways reflecting the mystery of God’s grandeur. . . . How can sacraments be understood in a context in which the whole of reality is not itself generally experienced as exhibiting in some way a sacramental structure?40

The answer Kilmartin suggests is the realization that all hope does not lie in the

human capacity to reason. Rather, hope is better grounded in salvation history,

which is God’s action in the past, Christ present with us now, and the ever-rich

future promised in the Spirit. God’s work, not human reason, will fulfill

humanity. Kilmartin finishes his reflections on the cosmos by stating that the

sacramental structure of the cosmos is manifest by the sacramental celebrations

39 Ibid. 159. 40 Ibid. 160.

themselves. These celebrations have the “potential to broaden the Christian

experience of the sacramental universe.”41

It would have been fascinating if Kilmartin’s insights into the sacramental

nature of the cosmos had informed the rest of his article. However, in the pages

before and after this one section, he speaks of humanity as located in the world

but disconnected from it. He expresses the need for a universal sacramentality, but

he does not offer one. This work points to the need for a relevant theology that

recovers past traditions and embraces current cosmic reality. It therefore provides an historical lineage and point of departure for my work.

Kenan Osborne

In Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World: A Theology for the Third

Millennium, Kenan Osborne takes a fresh look at sacramental theology through a postmodern lens.42 A key theme that runs through this book is universal

sacramentality. This review is limited to the way Osborne develops this theme

into the beginning of a theology of universal sacramentality as well as how he

responds to previous theologies.

In Chapter One, “The Twentieth-Century Legacy of Sacramental

Revolution,” Osborne states that before the 20th century, the idea of the Church as a basic or foundational sacrament had not been part of theology or the magisterium’s teaching. The notion of the Church as a basic sacrament did not previously exist. Yet at Vatican II, the bishops overwhelmingly accepted the role

41 Ibid. 160. 42 Kenan B. Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World: A Theology for the Third Millennium (New York: Paulist Press, 1999).

of the Church as a universal sacrament. In Lumen gentium the bishops write, “By

her relationship with Christ, the Church is a kind of sacrament of intimate union with God, and of the union of all mankind.” Bringing to light the meaning of these and similar words was left to the theologians.

In Chapter Two, Osborne discusses several possible points of departure

for the development of sacramental theology. He suggests the sacramentality of

the universe could provide a relevant perspective in the postmodern world.

Through a universal perspective, issues such as the effects of globalization,

multicultural sensitivity that does not privilege the West, and inter-religious

dialogues that honor each tradition’s wisdom and path toward the sacred could be

integrated into sacramental theology. We are reminded that ecumenical means

“whole world” when Osborne tells us:

Even the issue of the church as sacrament needs to make use of the possible sacramentality of the entire world, since the church as the foundational sacrament is the entire church. No one church and no individual denomination, not even the Roman Catholic Church, can claim to be the totality of the church as basic sacrament.43 [Italics in original]

Although a few theologians have included this type of understanding of

sacramentality in their writing, none of them fully develops an appreciation for

the sacramentality of the world or of the entire universe as revelatory of the

divine. Osborne cites Kilmartin (discussed above), Chauvet (Symbols and

Sacrament, The Liturgical Press: 1987), and the recent Catechism of the Catholic

Church as examples. Kilmartin argues from the patristic and early medieval view

that all creation bears God’s love because salvation history began with creation.

He tells us that sacramental rituals were seen as “concentrations of the

43 Ibid. 50.

sacramental nature of all creation.” Kilmartin says that a narrow view of

sacraments is “indicative of a lack of ability to maintain an integrated view of the

real world.” Kilmartin calls for, but does not develop, an alternative view of the world. Osborne quotes Chauvet as saying, “Creation itself is charged with sacramentality” and that sacramentality arises “only at the intersection of these two dimensions, cosmic and historic.” Osborne laments that “it would have been intriguing had this element of creation been more expressly stated throughout his book.”44 Of the Catechism, Osborne notes that “The world-encompassing

sacramental economy, which is touched on in the first section of the catechism,

loses all significance when the individual sacraments are presented in the same

Catechism.”45 We still await an integrated, cosmic appreciation of sacramentality.

After discussing the history and the current state of sacramental theology,

Osborne turns his attention to the sacramentality of the universe. In Chapter

Three, “Sacramental Structure in the World at Large,” and in what follows,

Osborne insists that, “sacramentality is possible whenever God acts and there is

also a subsequent human response to this action of God. Only in such a dual

dimension is the sacramentality of the world possible and meaningful.”46 If

blessing and response is the dynamic of sacraments, then one can “speak of a

possibility of sacramentality wherever and whenever God acts.”47 However, he

cautions:

The world by itself is not simply sitting somewhere in space as a cosmic sacrament. A cloud is not just somewhere in the sky as a cosmic

44 Ibid. 52. 45 Ibid. 52. 46 Ibid. 74. 47 Ibid. 74.

sacrament. ...God’s creative action may be in every cloud and tree and river, but the sacramentality aspect takes place only when this action produces a subsequent reaction from some human person. One can see many trees yet see or experience nothing sacramental. ...Only divine action and human reaction in a concrete situation form the basis for possible sacramentality.48

Osborne insists that it is the personal experience of worldly sacramental moments that lend meaning to the ritual sacraments. He says, “Only if individual human beings experience worldliness in sacramental moments will the dramatic liturgies of religions have any meaning.”49

In Chapters Four and Five, “Jesus and Primordiality” and “The Church as

Foundational Sacrament,” Osborne rejects the insights of Edward Schillebeeckx

(discussed above) and others who say that Jesus and/or the Church are basic

sacraments. He says, “…not even the universe or cosmos, in itself or in any part

of itself [including Jesus], can be called or considered sacramental per se, much

less primordially sacramental.”50 Osborne stresses that no one place, part, or person in the universe is privileged to the exclusion of any other. The Roman

Catholic Church is not a privileged place or community of sacramentality.

Osborne reminds us that:

finite, relative, temporal, spatial individualized and subjective elements—all the Christians involved—are responding to the foundationality and unsurpassability of God, who is concretely revealing God’s own self in a highly individualized collectivity of subjectivities. Christians, of and by themselves, have nothing that can be called foundational and unsurpassable.51

48 Ibid. 75. 49 Ibid. 75. 50 Ibid. 101. 51 Ibid. 135.

All moments of sacramentality are individual events that are not weighed against each other. Not all moments of sacramentality are the same so, Osborne says,

“there can be degrees of foundational sacramentality.”52 What is foundational is the revelation of God that calls forth a response.

God’s ongoing presence in all of creation “allows for sacramentality as an event to be present elsewhere in our human world.”53 The church is “church in the sense that, in its collectivity, it is responding to the prior act of a revealing

God.”54 God’s action is primary, human action is derivative.

In chapter six, “Postmodern Sacramentality,” Osborne summarizes his views on “the pan-cosmic possibility of sacramentality:”

1. Without a relationship between sacramentality and creation, sacramentality becomes epiphenomenal and even magical.

2. Because of the ongoing presence of God in creation, there is the possibility of sacramentality throughout the cosmos, in which people of all religions participate.

3. The world reflects God to individual people who respond. Without a response there can be no sacrament. Sacraments are participatory. Each human response is different; there is no generic or privileged sacramental experience.

4. Jesus in his humanity as a sacramental event discloses only a fraction of what God is in totality.

5. The Church, as a locus and community of sacramentality, discloses only a fraction of what God is in totality.

6. The primordial presence of God throughout the cosmos is the foundation of all sacramentality.

52 Ibid. 121. 53 Ibid. 135. 54 Ibid. 136.

In his work, Osborne clearly expands the boundaries of sacramentality beyond the seven ritual sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church and beyond the

idea that Jesus or the Church is the primordial sacrament. His view includes the

potential participation of every aspect of the cosmos. This expansive view leads to

further considerations such as: Did God’s sacramental presence to the world begin

when the first human person was capable of response? Do other-than-humans

participate with God in sacramentality?

In summary, Schillebeeckx, Kilmartin, and Osborne re-open the doors

which were closed at the Council of Trent, to a broader, more participative view of sacraments. The development of a cosmic appreciation of sacramentals flows from Schillebeeckx’s understanding of all humanity as part of the body of Christ, the foundational sacrament. That development is followed by Kilmartin’s idea of appreciative consciousness and then by Osborne’s insistence that every being or thing is a potential sacrament.

Functional Cosmology

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw the earth as sacramental. He saw each

thing as shinning with the indwelling spirit of Jesus. His experience of God in

matter was Eucharistic. In “Mass on the World”55 Teilhard relays an experience of offering mass without the usual sacramentals of chalice, paten, wine, or bread.

55 Pierre. Teilhard de Chardin, "Mass on the World," in Hymn of the Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).

Without these elements, he instead offered the whole of creation to God for transubstantiation. He writes:

Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my blood.56

In doing this, Teilhard sees the entire world, all its people, forces, being, and matter as transformed into the body and blood of Jesus. He tells us that “at the touch of the supersubstantial Word the immense host which is the universe is made flesh.”57 Through God’s incarnation “all matter is henceforth incarnation.”58 This sacramental awareness of the indwelling of Divinity in all matter is the basis of Teilhard’s religious experience. He says speaking to God:

As for me, if I could not believe that your real Presence animates and makes tractable and enkindles even the very least of the energies which invade me or brush past me, would I not die of cold?59

The sight of everything around him as the body and blood of the Word shining from every element and event required a constant faith. If his faith should “flag” the light would recede and the world would again seem darkened. This desire not to lose sight of the presence of the Word in matter caused him to pray for faith to discover and sense God in every creature.

Teilhard tells us about his relationship with God by revealing how he relates to Jesus. He says in part:

‘Lord.’ Yes at last, through the two-fold mystery of this universal consecration and communion I have found one to whom I can

56 Ibid. 23. 57 Ibid. 24. 58 Ibid. 24. 59 Ibid. 25.

wholeheartedly give this name . . . Always from the very first it was the world, greater than all the elements which make up the world, that I was in love with; and never before was there anyone before whom I could in honesty bow down. And so for a long time, even though I believed, I strayed, not knowing what it was I loved. But now, Master, today, when through the manifestation of those superhuman powers with which your resurrection endowed you you shine forth from within all the forces of the earth and so become visible to me, now I recognize you as my Sovereign, and with delight I surrender myself to you.60

As with most people, God may have been many things to Teilhard, but this

sacramental vision of the infusion of God into matter was Teilhard’s fundamental

way of relating to God and experiencing the world. He says:

For me, my God, all joy and all achievement, the very purpose of my being and all my love of life, all depend on this basic vision of the union between yourself and the universe. . . . I have no desire, I have no ability, to proclaim anything except the innumerable prolongations of your incarnate Being in the world of matter; I can preach only the mystery of your flesh, you the Soul shinning forth through all that surrounds us.61

Teilhard held this God-drenched vision of matter in his spiritual and his more

scientific writings. His spirituality, which holds the world of matter close to his

heart, provides the foundation through which those who were influenced by him could see matter as more than soulless or mechanical. Because of Teilhard’s clarity of vision and power in writing, his vision of God and matter was inherited by Thomas Berry who has passed it into the lineage of functional cosmology.

Thomas Berry

With an experience of the world similar to Teilhard’s, Thomas Berry saw

that the destruction inflicted on Earth which had become possible because western

culture had lost an integral relationship with the Earth community. In The Dream

60 Ibid. 33. 61 Ibid. 36-37.

of the Earth,62 a book which has become a touchstone for cosmologically minded

people, Berry offers a critique of our disenchanted universe and stresses the need

for a functional cosmology that will guide and discipline our human use of

knowledge, skill, and resources for the benefit of the entire Earth community.

In “Christianity and the American Experience,” an essay in The Dream of the Earth, Berry points to four ways in which Christianity has contributed to a worldview that allows nonhuman nature to be seen as spiritually valueless. The first point he makes is that Christianity identified the divine as transcendent to the natural world. Berry says that by relating to God as remote “we negate the natural world as the locus for the meeting of the divine and the human.”63 The divine is

taken away from an intimate relationship with the natural world. The second point

is that Christian “insistence that the human is a spiritual being with an eternal

destiny which is beyond that of the members of the created world.” Humans

became isolated within nature. The third point that Berry makes about the loss of

meaning in western spirituality is:

the inner principle of life in natural beings was taken away in the Cartesian period. The concept of crass matter emerged as mere extension, capable only of externally manipulated and mechanistic activity. We entered into a mechanistic phase in our thinking and in our basic norms of reality and value. 64

The fourth point is the Christian belief in a historic millennial age. Berry says,

“While the millennium was originally considered as a spiritual condition to be

brought about infallibly by a divine providence, it was later interpreted simply as

62 Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988). 63 Ibid. 113. 64 Ibid. 114.

an age of human fulfillment to be brought about by human skill in exploiting the

resources of the earth.”65

These four parts of western spiritually have allowed for belief in a

disenchanted world. Divine transcendence removed God from nature, the

uniqueness of the human soul left nature distant from humans and soulless. All

this, paired with a millennial promise, left humans to build their promise from the

“crass” materials of nature. Since everything would be transformed by divine will

through humans, nothing had significance unless it was transformed to meet

human needs. As a result the natural world became diminished in its beauty,

reduced in its ability to elicit psychic experience, and lost “unique modes of

divine presence.”66

This world view lead to a technology that nature could not withstand.

Humans became a force on the planet with no balances. Because the sacredness of the Earth was disregarded, Earth’s resources were used for supposed human gain and turned humanity into a planetary force. Berry reminds us, “We now begin to realize, however, that the planet Earth will not long endure being despised or ignored in its more integral being, whether by scientists, technologist, or saints; nor will it submit forever to the abuse it has had to endure.” 67

Berry suggests that the construction of a new spiritual context for the

dawning ecological age is needed. This spirituality would be grounded on experience of the universe, and particularly the Earth as the primary educator,

healer, commercial establishment, law giver, and the primary locus of divine

65 Ibid. 114. 66 Ibid. 115. 67 Ibid. 119.

presence. This new spirituality would be based on the characteristic of Earth

itself. It would honor the uniqueness of each individual and the bondedness of

each being with every other being in the universe. He insists that:

the greatest single need at the present is the completion of the story, as told in its physical dimensions by science, by the more integral accounts that include the numinous and consciousness dimensions of the emergent universe from its primordial moment. Once that is done, a meaningful universe, a functional cosmology, is available as a foundation for the range of human activities in the ecological age. 68

Because of the richness of what we are learning about the Universe through the

revelations of science and the emerging ecological consciousness, “a new vision

and a new vigor are available to Christian tradition.”69

Teilhard provided a sweeping vision of a numinous world. Berry shifted

the view to be Earth centered and added a critique of the human systems

responsible for ecological degradation. Berry sees the way into a new ecological

era through the creation of a functional cosmology, based on knowledge of the

Universe as an integral community.

Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry

In The Universe Story,70 Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry proclaim the

story of the Universe, reveal some of its integrative principles, and provide a

vision for the “Ecozoic Era.”

68 Ibid. 120. 69 Ibid. 122. 70 Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era--a Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).

Swimme and Berry celebrate the history of the Universe as a story that begins with the Flaring Forth, continues through the formations of stars, galaxies, and planets to the formation of Earth and the emergence of life. It traces human life from its tribal beginnings through modern industrial society. This epic story is situated within a critique of the industrial society’s effect on the Earth community. Swimme and Berry offer this story as a foundation for developing a functional cosmology which would “enable the human community to become present to the larger Earth community in a mutually enhancing manner.”71

Adding the dimension of time to the cosmological principle of homogeneity, Swimme and Berry develop the cosmogenetic principle. This principle says that every point in the Universe is similar in its composition of matter and energy and that the modes of development are the same in every place at all times. This principle holds that the Universe is not a fixed reality by rather a cosmogenesis, a cosmos perpetually involved in its own ongoing transformation.

The cosmogenetic principle also identifies three characteristics of transformation that apply to every time, place, and level of the Universe; differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion. Differentiation is the movement away from homogeneity. As the Universe develops, it becomes more diverse.

Plasma of subatomic particles formed clusters that became atoms, then stars and planets, then oceans and rock, and eventually plants and birds and humans. New levels of complexity emerge within each differentiated form. Additionally, each differentiated individual is autopoietic. It has a self-organizing principle which allows it to participate directly in its own creation and ongoing transformation.

71 Ibid. 3.

Galaxies and robins organize their constituent parts into coherent selves that change with time. But if each being of the Universe is unique and self organizing, it is also related to every other being of the Universe. This principle is communion. Relatedness is essential to existence for “nothing is itself without everything else.”72 Galaxies are gravitationally bonded in clusters and robins rely on healthy soil to give home to the worms they hunt. Without the dynamics of differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion, galaxies and robins would not exist.

While telling the story of the Universe and how it emerges, Swimme and

Berry provide a vision of the Ecozoic Era. The central theme of the Ecozoic is the

Universe is a “communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects.”73 The damage inflicted on the planet will begin to heal as humans enter into “mutually enhancing”74 relationships with members of the Earth community. Through this deeper intimacy, humans will come to understand that they share a common destiny with all the beings of the Earth community.

To transition into this the Ecozoic Era, Swimme and Berry say:

The human professions all need to recognize their prototype and their primary resource in the integral functioning of the Earth community. The natural world itself is the primary economic reality, the primary educator, the primary governance, the primary technologist, the primary healer, the primary presence of the sacred, the primary moral value.75

In order to see the Earth as primary there is a strong need to “awaken a consciousness of the sacred dimension of the Earth.” Swimme and Berry tell the religious professions that their basic concern is to “preserve the natural world as

72 Ibid. 77. 73 Ibid. 243. 74 Ibid. 251. 75 Ibid. 255.

the primary revelation of the divine.” The primary sacred community is the

Universe.

John Haught

In The Promise of Nature,76 John Haught asks “whether the religions of

the world, and in particular Christianity, have the resources to contribute anything

of substance to the resolution of our current ecological predicament.”77 After an

explication of the essential parts of an “ecologically wholesome” religion, Haught

concludes “the survival and flourishing of the earth is dependent on the survival

and flourishing of religion” which is sacramentally balanced and grounded in

eschatological hope.

Haught suggests four distinct aspects of an ecologically wholesome

religion: sacramental, mystical, silent, and active. He explains:

the sacramental way invites us to enjoy the natural world in a spirit of gratitude for the gift that it is. The mystical way, on the other hand, exhorts us to relativize nature, that is, to keep it in perspective. The way of silence, as exemplified by Buddhism or the Jewish Sabbath, ask us simply to let the world be itself, lest in our arrogance we end up reducing it to what corresponds only to the human will. The active component of religion, however, persuades us to change the world. And herein there seems to lie a problem, environmentally speaking.78 [italics in original]

Haught hurries to say that the activist impulse of biblical religion... “is culpable

only where it has lost touch with the sacramental, mystical and silent aspects that

are also essential to biblical religion.”79 He tells us that the most important thing a

76 John Haught, The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). 77 Ibid. 2. 78 Ibid. 83. 79 Ibid. 84.

religion can do for the ecologically crisis is to “make sure that its mystical, silent and active tendencies always remain very close to the sacramental.”80

A sacramental religion uses concrete symbols, usually from nature, to talk

about the sacred. It relies on these symbols to reveal the unspeakable sacred

mystery. Haught tells us that “a sacramental vision makes nature, at least in a

fragmentary way, transparent to divinity.”81 Sacramentalism, then, can ground an

ecological ethic because the integrity of the symbols must be maintained if they

are to remain transparent to mystery. Nature is intrinsically valuable because it is

capable of mediating the hidden mystery of the divine. To support sacramentality, it is necessary to advocate “the welfare and intrinsic value of our natural environment.”82 When a religion loses touch with its sacramental heritage, it risks

insensitivity to the natural world.

But is sacramentality enough? Haught argues:

A purely sacramental or creation-centered theology of nature cannot easily accommodate the shadow side of nature. By focusing on ecological harmony it expects us to see every present state of nature as an epiphany of God. This is a projection which neither our religion nor the natural world can bear. ...A sacramental theology is all by itself unable to accommodate the fact of nature’s fragility.83

To address the problem of nature’s fragility Haught turns to the biblical mandate

of hope in future fulfillment.

Haught says, “The perspective of hope allows us to be realistic about what

nature is. We do not have to cover up its cruelty. We can accept that the fact that

80 Ibid. 87. 81 Ibid. 78. 82 Ibid. 77. 83 Ibid. 111-112.

the cosmos is not a paradise but only the promise thereof.”84 Nature is unfinished.

Like the entire cosmos, nature is “an adventurous journey toward the complexity

and beauty of a future perfection.”85 Billions of years before humanity emerged,

the cosmos was already “seeded with promise.” The promise we see in nature

now is an unfolding of the same promise and “carries with it the whole universe’s

yearning for its future.”86

Eschatological hope is embedded within the emerging story of the

Universe. Christianity will be carried into the fulfillment it hopes for

companioned by nature. Haught concludes, “What makes nature deserve our care

is not that it is divine but that it is pregnant with a mysterious future.”87

In summary, Berry and Swimme provide an Earth-centered critique of

industrial society and build the foundation for a functional cosmology. They tell the story of the Universe and give principles to understand it as an evolving cosmogenesis. They also situate humanity within the Universe and Earth community and call on all the professions to re-vision their work using Earth as the primary model so that humans can learn to live in mutually enhancing relationships with the Earth community. Within this context, they advise that moving into an Ecozoic Era requires an awareness of the sacredness of Earth.

Haught takes up the problem of religion’s role in moving into the future by asking why religion should care about nature. He offers a sacramental-eschatological theology which sees nature as promise. The Universe was seeded with promise

84 Ibid. 111. 85 Ibid. 110. 86 Ibid. 109. 87 Ibid. 110.

from its beginnings and this promise continues to unfold in Christianity’s yearning for future fulfillment. Religion should care about nature because it mirrors the divine and because it holds the promise of the future.

In Conclusion

Cosmocentric sacramentality is grounded in Roman Catholic tradition and

in the lineage of the emerging functional cosmology. A survey of Patristic instructions to catechumens and the blessings used during the rites of baptism

reveal the deep participation of the created world in sacramentality. In the early

church, all aspects of creation were experienced as participants in manifesting and

responding to divine blessing. Contemporary Catholic theology extends the

meaning of sacraments from seven ritual moments to the Roman Catholic Church herself and then to all people. These extensions invite the additional inclusion of

other-than-humans in sacramental responsiveness. Working in the opposite

direction, a functional cosmology begins with the sacredness of the Cosmos and

the Earth community and then asks how human religious institutions participate

within that sacredness. Situated within both of these traditions, this dissertation

develops a cosmocentric sacramentality through the integration of the

cosmological and the sacramental histories of water, oil, and fire.

Significance

A cosmology of the sacramentals of baptism is an original contribution to

Roman Catholic sacramentality. Its significance lies in an understanding of water,

oil, and fire that leads to a cosmocentric appreciation of baptism and of the world

as sacramental. This deeper appreciation for the role of natural beings in one

sacrament has significance for other sacraments and a relationship with the world.

Drawing on the history of sacramentals, this work lays the groundwork for a

cosmocentric, sacramental spirituality.

This work provides new insights into baptism in the Roman Catholic tradition. By tracing the rich histories of three sacramentals of baptism—water , oil, and fire—new information is uncovered that is useful to theologians and ministers involved in the preparation for and celebration of baptism. This has the potential for sacramental participants to experience the sacramentals more deeply.

When this happens, their role of revealing God is deepened, and the intimacy in the celebration stretches back to the Beginning, moves through the present celebration and on into the future. Because sacramentals are no longer understood as being static, the celebration of baptism is also experienced as a particular moment in the continuing blessing of God and the response of the Universe and

Earth community.

This work also provides a model for a similar development for the other

Roman Catholic sacraments and all their sacramentals. Bread and wine, gold rings

and white garments, as well as the silver of a chalice, the marble of an altar, and

the oak of a set of pews could all be studied with openness to their histories and to what they reveal about their role in the worshiping community. Although it is beyond the range of this dissertation to investigate, the model presented for understanding sacramentals may be useful in other traditions as well.

A spirituality of learning from the sacramentals that make worship

possible would be carried over from ritual sacraments into daily practice.

Sacramentals used in baptism would carry their meaning into the homes and lives

of baptismal participants. When we begin to believe that natural objects have a

history of participating in blessing and response, it is likely we will notice them

more frequently when we encounter them and perhaps recognize them as

revealing God.

Methodology

Cosmological Inquiry is the research method complied for this dissertation. This methodology is an extension of transpersonal social sciences’ research methods such as Intuitive Inquiry and Inquiry Informed by Exceptional

Human Experience.88 Cosmological Inquiry applies the intuitive skills of

transpersonal social sciences to other-than-human subjects. It views these subjects

within their 13.7 billion year history as well as within their embedded

relationships in the current Earth community. The knowledge gathered from and

about these subjects then becomes a cosmological lens to assess and enhance

current understandings. Cosmological Inquiry applies contemplative attention, a

cosmological lens, and an integrative hermeneutic to other-than-human subjects.

88 For a complete discussion of these research methods, see William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson, Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Scienes: Honoring Human Expereince (London: Sage Publications, 1998).

In this dissertation, I use Cosmological Inquiry to integrate the scientific and theological histories of the principle sacramentals of baptism—water , oil, and fire. I first tell the scientific story of each sacramental and then turn to the theological history of the sacramental as it is revealed in Patristic and current

blessings and instructions. I look at the stories through a sacramental lens, which

notices blessing and response, and then look at the stories through a cosmological

lens, which notes an appreciation of deep time (cosmogenesis), the unique

properties of the sacramental (differentiation and interiority), and the lateral

relationship between the use of an element in a ritual and in daily life

(communion).

Believing that Earth is our primary teacher and that Nature is the first

book of revelation, I gather insights from water, oil, and fire through

contemplative attention. Approaching these subjects as teachers animates my

investigation. Intentional focus, appreciative attention, and prolonged

concentration are the primary techniques I use to learn from and not merely about

water, oil, and fire.

Using Cosmological Inquiry, this work is informed by care-filled attention

to water, oil, and fire and the integration revealed by a cosmological gaze at their

histories.

Chapter Outline

Preface My interest in this study Acknowledgments Introduction Thesis Statement Significance Chapter Summary I. Overview Historical background Definitions sacrament, sacramental, cosmology, functional cosmology, cosmocentric Literature Review Methodology Cosmological Inquiry II. Water Scientific Story History Cosmic Earth Properties Water in Life Water in Humans Church Story History Biblical Patristic Contemporary Easter Vigil Cosmocentric Sacramentality III. Oil Scientific Story History

Cosmic Earth Properties Oil in Life Oil in Humans Church Story History Biblical Patristic Contemporary Easter Vigil Cosmocentric Sacramentality IV. Fire Scientific Story History Cosmic Earth Properties Fire in Life Fire in Humans Church Story History Biblical Patristic Contemporary Easter Vigil Cosmocentric Sacramentality V. Cosmocentric Baptism Three Anointings Earth Community as participants in baptism VI. Cosmocentric Sacramentality Promise of Nature All beings potential sacramentals Continuity of sacramentality Cosmogenesis as sacramentality Comprehensive Compassion Uniqueness of humans Appreciation Resonance-reverberation

Time Schedule

April, 2005 Dissertation proposal accepted

May, 2005 Finish complete first draft

March 3, 2006 Recommended defense date

March 3, 2006 Last date to file graduation application packet with registrar

April 3, 2006 Final approval by the chairperson of the dissertation

committee

April 3, 2006 Last day to submit dissertation to the AVP designate

May 8, 2006 Last day to file final approved dissertation with the library

May, 2006 ☼ ☼ ☼ Graduate ☼ ☼ ☼

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