"The Development of Faith in Christ in the Christological Articles of the Creed"
“Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried”
a. Righteousness and grace: “The essential form of Christian worship is therefore rightly called Eucharistia, thanksgiving. Christian sacrifice does not consist in a giving of what God would not have without us but in our becoming totally receptive and letting ourselves be completely taken over by him. Letting God act on us – that is Christian sacrifice.” (283)
b. The Cross as worship and sacrifice: “The gesture of the love that gives all – this, and this alone, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, was the real means by which the cosmic day of reconciliation, the true and definitive feast of reconciliation. There is no other kind of worship and no other priest but he who accomplished it: Jesus Christ.” (287)
c. The nature of Christian worship: “… demands that, instead of indulging in the destructive rivalry of self-justification, we accept the gift of the love of Jesus Christ, who ‘stands in’ for us, allow ourselves to be united in it, and thus become worshippers with him and in him.” (288)
“St. John summarized all this in the Ecce homo (“Look, this is [the] man”) of Pilate, which menas quite fundamentally: This is how it is with man; this is man. The truth of man is his complete lack of truth. The saying in the Psalms that every man is a liar (Ps 116[115]:11[Douay-Rheims]) and lives in some way or other against the truth already reveals how it really is with man.. The truth about man is that he is constantly assailing truth; the just man crucified is thus a mirror held up to man in which he sees himself unadorned. But the Cross does not reveal only man; it also reveals God. God is such that he identifies himself with man right down into this abyss and that he judges him by saving him. In the abyss of human failure is revealed the still more inexhaustible abyss of divine love. The Cross is thus truly the center of revelation, a revelation that does not reveal any previously unknown principles but reveals us to ourselves by revealing us before God and God in our midst.” (293)
I find this last paragraph especially compelling, particularly the line about man 'constantly assailing truth.' Lately I've become especially conscious that I am certainly doing so here; I can look back at this or this and see that it's fairly obvious I've gotten off track a bit, but how many other instances are there where I've completely missed the boat, compltetly unawares? I'm reminded of that Xenophanes fragment, something along the lines of "Even if someone should happen to utter the truth, he cannot know that it really is the truth." And then there's Jonathan Webb's comparison of the search for truthful statements about reality with the number of spears it takes to bring an elephant down. Daganabit! How many mitsakes have I made in this very paragraph? Well, we do our best, we try to do better, and then we call it a day.
a. Righteousness and grace: “The essential form of Christian worship is therefore rightly called Eucharistia, thanksgiving. Christian sacrifice does not consist in a giving of what God would not have without us but in our becoming totally receptive and letting ourselves be completely taken over by him. Letting God act on us – that is Christian sacrifice.” (283)
b. The Cross as worship and sacrifice: “The gesture of the love that gives all – this, and this alone, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, was the real means by which the cosmic day of reconciliation, the true and definitive feast of reconciliation. There is no other kind of worship and no other priest but he who accomplished it: Jesus Christ.” (287)
c. The nature of Christian worship: “… demands that, instead of indulging in the destructive rivalry of self-justification, we accept the gift of the love of Jesus Christ, who ‘stands in’ for us, allow ourselves to be united in it, and thus become worshippers with him and in him.” (288)
“St. John summarized all this in the Ecce homo (“Look, this is [the] man”) of Pilate, which menas quite fundamentally: This is how it is with man; this is man. The truth of man is his complete lack of truth. The saying in the Psalms that every man is a liar (Ps 116[115]:11[Douay-Rheims]) and lives in some way or other against the truth already reveals how it really is with man.. The truth about man is that he is constantly assailing truth; the just man crucified is thus a mirror held up to man in which he sees himself unadorned. But the Cross does not reveal only man; it also reveals God. God is such that he identifies himself with man right down into this abyss and that he judges him by saving him. In the abyss of human failure is revealed the still more inexhaustible abyss of divine love. The Cross is thus truly the center of revelation, a revelation that does not reveal any previously unknown principles but reveals us to ourselves by revealing us before God and God in our midst.” (293)
I find this last paragraph especially compelling, particularly the line about man 'constantly assailing truth.' Lately I've become especially conscious that I am certainly doing so here; I can look back at this or this and see that it's fairly obvious I've gotten off track a bit, but how many other instances are there where I've completely missed the boat, compltetly unawares? I'm reminded of that Xenophanes fragment, something along the lines of "Even if someone should happen to utter the truth, he cannot know that it really is the truth." And then there's Jonathan Webb's comparison of the search for truthful statements about reality with the number of spears it takes to bring an elephant down. Daganabit! How many mitsakes have I made in this very paragraph? Well, we do our best, we try to do better, and then we call it a day.
posted by Quin Finnegan at 10:54 PM
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