DRIVEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OTHER WORKS BY FRANS JOZEF VAN BEECK, S.J. Christ Proclaimed: Christology as Rhetoric Grounded in Love: Sacramental Theology in an Ecumenical Perspective Catholic Identity After Vatican II: Three Types of Faith in the One Church Loving the Torah More than God? Toward a Catholic Appreciation of Judaism God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology DRIVEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE Selected Essays in Theology, 1974–2004 Frans Jozef van Beeck, S.J. SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY PRESS FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT 2006 Copyright 2006 by the Sacred Heart University Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, contact the Sacred Heart University Press, 5151 Park Avenue, Fairfield, Connecticut 06825 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beeck, Frans Jozef van. [Selections. 2006] Driven under the influence: selected essays in theology, 1974–2004 / Frans Jozef van Beeck. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-888112-14-X 1. Catholic Church—Doctrines. 2. Theology, Doctrinal. I. Title. BX1751.3B44 2006 230’.2—dc22 2006020395 for John Urban Curé de campagne and in memory of Jo Verhaar, S.J. Friends, Teachers, Friends of the Word Contents Preface ix SEEING THE MYSTERIES, ARTICULATELY Belief in God and the Sense of Privilege 3 Humanity Alive to God’s Glory: Ten Basic Questiones Disputatae in Christology and Soteriology 14 On Professing the Uniqueness of Christ 26 My Encounter with Yossel Rakover 49 A Blessed Wait for “Infinity”: Hans-Georg Gadamer 70 THINKING THROUGH MATTERS OF FAITH “Born of the Virgin Mary”: Towards a Sprachregelung on a Delicate Point of Doctrine 79 Theologia: On Not “Dropping Out of the Trinity” 112 Christian Faith and Theology in Encounter with Non-Christians: Profession? Protestation? Self-Maintenance? Abandon? 143 ABRAHAM’S FAITH AND ISRAEL’S DIGNITY Two Kind Jewish Men: A Sermon in Memory of the Shoah 169 Picking Up the Cross—Whose? Christian Resources for Growth-by-Repentance 182 Our Approach to Ecumenism, Especially in the Light of Contemporary Judaism 201 viii / CONTENTS CLOSE READING: EYE AND EAR Hopkins: Cor ad Cor 223 A Note on Ther in Curses and Blessings in Chaucer 235 Rahner on Sprachregelung: Regulation of Language? of Speech? 246 “Lost and Found” in Luke 15: Biblical Interpretation and Self-Involvement 260 OCCASIONAL COMMENTARY Apophaticism, Liturgy, and Theology 275 Twenty-Three Points on the Ordination of Women 284 Pushing or Pulling: One Theologian’s Perspective 290 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL Being a Catholic Theologian in the United States: A Preface That Got out of Hand 303 On Keeping Dogs and Strangers Out 313 Not for the Kennel: A Meditation 321 CONCLUDING DOXOLOGY A Very Explicit Te De um 335 Index 347 Preface had chosen, impulsively as usual, a title for this collection: I“Choices.” Almost immediately, a different title presented itself for my inspection. It was: “Driving under the Influence.” I approved of it, except that it sounded too active; “Driven under the Influence” would be better, especially since this collection of essays shows what I find myself to have been driven by these thirty-plus years, and how. Still, whatever the collection's title, it will give readers an intimation of every tipsy driver's experience, a feeling also conveyed by the cover image for the book, which captures the uncanny simultaneity of looking forward and backward, and the co-presence of the familiar and the mysterious. Such disorientation, combined with desire and occasional frustration in the course of one's attempts at reaching a dimly known destination in a city, returns us back surprisingly to spots that are vaguely reminiscent of places once traveled before. In any case, in the end I recalled that what to the busy writer may look like responsible, even knowledgeable choices, will strike the older author as having been favorable winds of invention—one seems to have been guided by them, but one does not quite know Whence they came or Whither they went. Is “having been guided” the same as “being offered the choice of accepting past moves?” That is, is it really a matter of “having been Chosen under the Influence?” Yes, I suppose. But now I am finding myself too close to too bold a claim. Yet in any case, God knows just how I have been driven and to what identifiable purpose, and I have enjoyed the adventure. And what’s even more, I remain curious, for “without a future there is no thought,” as Hans-Georg Gadamer told me when he was ninety-nine years old. So let readers choose for themselves and take such bearings as they find their own. x/ PREFACE A special word of thanks is due to my good friend, Anthony J. Cernera, president of Sacred Heart University, and all those from Sacred Heart who worked so patiently with me in accomplishing this labor of love, especially David L. Coppola, executive assistant to the president; Sidney Gottlieb, director of editorial and production work for the Sacred Heart University Press; Roberta Reynolds, manager of Creative Services; and John DeGraffenried, assistant professor of Art and Design. SEEING THE MYSTERIES, ARTICULATELY Belief in God and the Sense of Privilege The Bible does not support the view that God is God in the same way at all times. —Karl Barth Monotheism ne survey after another confirms that most people in the United OStates believe in God; most of them attend “the church of their choice” often enough to count as churchgoers. The United States has more houses of worship per capita than any other country (as President Bill Clinton reminded us in his 1995 State of the Union address). Close to seventy percent of the population prays, regularly or irregularly, as Andrew Greeley has shown. Factoids like these regularly make the headlines. This is curious. If belief in God is established so widely, why treat it as news? With believ- ers in the majority, wouldn’t we expect monotheism to be treated like any other majority phenomenon: as a matter of course and a generally credible thing? Yet believers in God typically feel that our common belief in God is not what it could or should be. Do they find it easier to believe in God than to believe that others believe in God? Is this behind the often-heard, very emphatic politically-tinged professions of faith in God “and in Jesus Christ as my personal Savior”? But then again, if God is such a sure thing, why do many of us turn irresolute (or just blandly tolerant) when asked what difference our belief in God actually makes? Not until he was an undergraduate at Harvard did Avery Dulles realize that if God existed, that was “the most important thing in the world.” Just how many of us make this discovery, never mind acting on it? The wag who joked that Unitarians believe “in at most one God” could have cast his net a lot wider. Isn’t it odd that our belief in God is as lackluster as it is widespread? But this 4 / Frans Jozef van Beeck raises another question. How on earth did this flat, anemic monotheism ever emerge and take root? Objection! Isn’t our belief in God simply the biblical faith we have inherited from the Christian Churches and ultimately from Israel? Good question. Answer: it is advisable to call this common assumption firmly into question. For this belief in one God, who has created the world but who otherwise remains nameless and dwells above all times and places, is a recent development; not till the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism did it become widespread. It strikes Jewish believers and Christians (especially Orthodox, Catholics, and classical Protestants), not to mention Muslims, as pretty frigid. This faraway, one-size-fits-all God, who never changes colors and thus rarely if ever inspires people to show theirs, is so ghostly, and especially so neutral, that He or She (why not It?) strikes us only as of some kind of “Super-reality.” But such an unde- finable, superessential Entity, which is what it is forever and ever, hardly appeals to anyone; no wonder it is hard to appeal to, let alone to call upon in prayer and praise. This Being only gets more incomprehensible as you give it more thought; while it may appeal to our sense of mystery, it remains mainly baffling. “It” could well be adorable, but who is to tell? It is faceless—a God without Countenance; thus, not a God of visions and dreams. While inviting discussion, this God hardly ever elicits real talk; it certainly is not a God who gets prophets to talk (or preachers to “say it”). It inspires neither deeply-felt prayer, nor, for that matter, liturgy—whether of the solemn kind, with noble organ tones, or of the exuberant kind, with singing and dancing and clapping of hands in the Lord’s presence. This God is a remote Supreme Being, equivalently absent, as deadly silent as the silent spaces of the universe, of which Pascal wrote that he found them frightening. At best (as the ancient Stoics thought), it is a kind, reasonable gas that permeates all things with its subtle presence (but which nobody has anything much to do with, really). Or perhaps (in the manner of the Romantics or the modern Humanists) it is the Higher Being, preferably to be approached philo- sophically—in which case it mainly serves to make us, modern, self-conscious human beings aware of our own immortal, profoundly spiritual nature. (So God may have drifted out of our ken, but we are turning out to be more deeply religious.