CHAPTER 5

Even when the overly scientific – the purely theological – has been eliminated from our teaching of the faith (and a great deal of this has already been done in our catechisms over the past few decades), the over-all picture has only been slightly changed. The return to a strong Christocentrism is still far from realization after such measures. For the breakup of this Christocentrism has only been brought about in a very slight way by a poor use of scholastic theology. If we want to determine the beginnings of the breakup in this core-area of the Christian message, we must go much further back – to the time of the struggles about the dogma of Christ.

In order to bring out with a few bold strokes the lines of development we are following here, we can say the following: from the time of these struggles on, in the very message of salvation – in the heralding of Christ, the bringer of grace – the two decisive components, Christ and grace, became ever more and more separated. In the case of Christ, His divine excellence had to be stressed in opposition to heresy. But this stress brought on the danger that He would not be presented before all else as the bearer of salvation, but would, in a certain way, be displayed with empty hands. As a result men would be more inclined to see an appearance of God in Him, who has come into the world to receive our adoration or, perhaps, to teach us by word and example. Quite naturally, then, grace and the sacraments fell into a certain isolation which made it more difficult to explain and understand them; and when grace is seen in isolation from its living source in Christ, it can easily happen that it is no longer regarded as an undeserved elevation to a participation in the life of God but rather as a puzzling condition of divine favor.

This development began in the fourth century as a reaction brought about in the area of Catholic piety by the fight against Arianism – and first of all in the Greek East. Here one can follow the course of this reaction quite clearly by noting the changes in the doxology of liturgical prayer. Up to this time the prayer of praise had been directed to God "through Christ" or "through the Son in the Holy Spirit," just as in the Latin West. Toward the end of the fourth century, however, we find that almost without exception praise is offered to God "with the Son together with the Holy Spirit" or that an even more ancient Syrian formula is being used which, patterned on the baptismal injunction, offers adoration "to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit." We see, then, that the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father – the homoousios – is being stressed even in prayer.

The West was only slightly affected by these developments at the start. The Roman liturgy has held fast to per Christum in its prayers down to the present day. Only the old-Spanish liturgy (and in part the old-Gallican), whose extant texts come mainly from the sixth – seventh centuries, shows traces of significant modifications like those in the East. Prayers are directed now to the Father, now to the Son, or they are noncommittal. The prayer-conclusions sidestep the per Christum in most diversified ways or become rather infelicitous mixed or hybrid forms.

The explanation of these extraordinary happenings is to be found in the defensive struggle against Arianism. In the East this had already begun in the fourth century; in the West it broke out in the countries where Arian Germanic tribes had seized control. The battle was particularly violent in Spain. Here it reached its climax under King Leovigild (+586) and even rumbled on after his son had brought his people back to the bosom of the Church in 589. The unusual formulation of prayers and prayer-conclusions becomes intelligible in the light of this struggle. By this remodeling of prayer-forms an effort was made to cut the ground from under the charges of the Arians that Catholics in directing their prayers to the Father through the Son seemed in practice to subordinate the Son to the Father, despite their theoretical rejection of such subordination.

This was, to be sure, a confusion of the issue on the part of the heretics. For their heresy asserted the subordination of the Son according to His divinity, whereas the Catholic prayer per Christum could only be directed to His glorified humanity, in which He is our Mediator with God. Still considerable confusion could be caused among the rank and file of the faithful by a tactic of this sort. Hence an attempt was made to meet them on this very ground. No change whatsoever in Catholic doctrine resulted from this defensive measure, and yet an entire thought-pattern did fade into the background not only in the area of liturgical prayer but most significantly in that of the proclamation of the faith: the living on of Christ in His glorified humanity – the very thought-pattern which had given the spirituality of early Christianity its distinctive stamp.

Two paths now lay open for the further practice of a "Christ-piety." One might direct his attention to the heavenly Christ, as the consubstantial Son of God. Prayer could be directed to the Son instead of to the Father, or to the Son together with the Father. All the attributes of the Triune God might be contemplated in the Son, who would thus become the center of religious life, without any denial, previously, of His human nature. The East set out resolutely upon this path. "Christ, our God," soon became a favorite beginning of liturgical and private prayer. With growing predilection Christ as the Pantokrator, seated upon His exalted throne and surrounded by angels, looked down upon the faithful from the vault of the apse. An emphasis on devotion to the Holy Trinity followed on this stress given to the divinity of Christ, as may be seen in the prayers and religious symbols of the liturgy, in the manner of blessing oneself, and even in the architectural designs of the house of God.

But there was yet another path. Instead of directing his devotion to Christ exalted at the right hand of the Father – "Christ according to the spirit" – one could turn to "Christ according to the mesh" (2 Cor. 5:16), to a consideration of the earthly events of Christ’s life, passion and death. And this was the path to which the spirituality of the West turned from the time of the Middle Ages. This orientation must have begun in the sixth century in regions dominated by the Arian West-Goths. Reaching full development in seventh-century Spain, it became an exemplar for the British Isles and the land of the Franks where, under the Carolingians, it received the definite impress that would effectively influence the further development of the entire Christian West.

At the height of the Middle Ages, this predilection for a contemplation of the earthly life of Christ was further strengthened by a new treatment of the doctrine of Redemption. With increasing clarity the merits of Christ’s sufferings were set forth as the decisive moment – the causa meritoria -of our salvation. In the days of the Fathers, however, the emphasis had been upon the struggle in which Christ had conquered Satan through the victory of His resurrection – a victory which every Sunday, as the day of the Resurrection, recalled to mind. Now increasing love was shown for a consideration of the sufferings by which our Lord offered satisfaction for our sins. At this time the Stations of the Cross were introduced. While the East enthroned Christ, the Pantokrator, high in the apse, the West gradually modified the picture of the glorified Christ above its altars – still to be seen in the Romanesque Period – and placed there the crucified Savior who calls for our compassion.

Preoccupation with the divinity of Christ bore fruit in the West as well as in the East. As the Easter mystery lost its luster, the Christmas theme moved ever more powerfully to the foreground – the theme of the Incarnation of the Son of God. The veneration of Mary, first developed in the East, now received the impetus which, with the growth of intellectual and artistic life in the high Middle Ages, would blossom forth into the whole springtime of Marian love.

In the West, too, the attention given to Christ as the Son of God led quite naturally to an emphasis on the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. The progress of this development from region to region can readily be seen in the history of the Preface of the Trinity (from Spain, its home, to the Carolingian liturgy, thence to Rome, where, in 1334, it was prescribed for the entire Church, and in 1759 – during the Trinity-inspired Baroque Period – prescribed as the ordinary Sunday Preface). A similar, though more rapid development, is to be found in the strongly Trinitarian "Nicene Creed" which we pray at Mass. Changes were made, too, as a result of this tendency, in numerous prayer-formulas where only God and Christ had been mentioned before (such as we find, for instance, in St. Paul).

Thus it was that the mystery of the Blessed Trinity advanced vigorously – in fact, all too vigorously – to the forefront of consciousness. Undoubtedly the inner life of the Triune God is the loftiest and ultimate theme of all theology, and some day will be the object of our beatific vision in heaven; and in this sense it stands, to be sure, in the baptismal formula at our entrance into the life of grace, and we may see a humble beginning of our heavenly song of praise in the doxologies of our psalms and hymns. gut here and now – in statu viae – this mystery has been revealed particularly as a preliminary concept to the doctrine of the Savior. In any event, this tendency has led at times to various distortions of perspective, for example, requests for a special cult of each divine Person, expressions of pity for the Holy Spirit as "the unknown God," a division of the ecclesiastical year according to the three Persons, etc.

This much should be clear from the foregoing observations: in all this process there is a growing dissection of the body of faith. Much as it remains entirely unchanged – indeed, safeguarded in its most difficult mysteries – the religious interest, which had previously been concentrated on Christ our Savior, living on in our hearts, has now been distributed over a wider range of topics: the earthly life of Christ, with emphasis on its beginning and end, in crib and cross; the Mother of God, and the growing circle of Saints about her; the divinity of Christ and the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Extensively there is an enrichment in all this, but there is a danger of a certain dissolution of unity as the central-core disappears more and more from view.

Let us now turn our attention to the Person of Christ Himself. It is quite amazing how pervasive the thought of Christ’s divinity has become, even with regard to the earthly life of our Lord. The latter Middle Ages loved, for instance, to speak of "God’s sufferings," the body of Christ was called "God’s Body." Such terminology lingers on in popular speech in many areas today. Unquestionably such expressions can be theologically justified – there is only an application of the communicatio idiomatum – and are most proper in appropriate circumstances. Still confusion can arise if these become the prevailing modes of speech all down the line, a confusion which could lead in one way or another to the thought processes of the Monophysites.

Hence, too, there is the tendency to approach this God who has appeared among us in a spirit of adoration or to see in Him the teacher of mankind – to view His life and sufferings almost exclusively from the standpoint of an exemplar of virtue (which becomes the Church’s finality as well). Praiseworthy, certainly, is the contemplation of the condescending love which was revealed in the coming of God, God’s Son, to our earth – a contemplation which should always awaken holy astonishment, lead on to adoration and compunction, and quicken moral effort. But such contemplation can rather easily allow us to overlook something of singular importance: the fact, namely, that Christ, as the New Adam, has lifted our humanity to a new being, to a new nearness to God.

The tendency we have been describing found marked expression in the late medieval conception of the role of the Eucharist in Christian life. The Mass was no longer especially viewed as the sacrificium laudis in which one offered Christ’s Body and Blood to the Father (much as this was never contested); now, through an allegorical interpretation of the ceremonies, it was seen rather as a means for portraying the sufferings of Christ or even His entire life on earth. Even the most fervent hardly dared to receive Communion several times a year. Hence a desire sprang up to see the Sacred Host. Not satisfied with the fleeting glance at the Elevation, the faithful yearned for more and more exposition, even during Mass, in order that they might adore and from this gaze gain grace and blessings. In this adoration we meet the high-point of their Eucharistic cult. The Sacrament which was primarily instituted to strengthen our grace-bearing union with Christ is seen as hardly more than the presence of God, an object of adoration. Small wonder, then, that doubts should arise about the necessity of the Sacrament of the Altar, given a knowledge of God’s omnipresence. Behind the entire problem, however, lies an acknowledgement that men have practically forgotten to see in Christ the Mediator who has come from God, not merely to receive our adoration but to enrich us – to place Himself at the head of a new humanity and lead it back to God. As He Himself has said, "The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve" (Matt. 20:28).

Every child knows, of course, that Christ redeemed us on the cross and that our sins have been forgiven in virtue of His merits. Alongside this firmly held belief one finds nonetheless another train of thought, resulting from the stress on His divinity, which partially obscures the former, namely, that He Himself is the offended God. Once again, in this way, the merciful Mediator is taken away from our field of vision. The Cross will sharply etch the gravity and ingratitude of sin, true. But will it stand out with equal force as the sign of salvation? Is it not for this very reason that poor sinners often find it so difficult to raise themselves up to confidence in God, to bring themselves to the conviction that all can be forgiven? Again in this connection, we find among the loci communes a type of homiletics aimed all too much at an immediate emotional response. This was a rhetorical development of the thought that sin is the cause of the sufferings of Christ, and these the most horrible that man has ever suffered on earth. Not only is this last thought unnecessary and at times disquieting but the basic presupposition calls for careful distinction. Sin is certainly the cause of Christ’s sufferings in the sense that the atonement of sin was its final cause, but our sins are not the efficient cause of those sufferings, and caution is unquestionably indicated in the use of rhetorical devices based on such causality, as for example, a sinner pictured as scourging Christ. In all this it is most important to remember that what one gains in a sudden emotional response may represent a loss in terms of a clear vision of the mystery of our salvation – a mystery which should always meet the eyes of the faithful as a firm refuge of hope and of love.

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