Spe salvi (In Hope We Are Saved)

Pope Benedict XVI released his second Enclyclical yesterday just in time for Advent, the season of hope and expectation. It is a worthy successor to Deus caritas est. The title is a quotation from the 8th chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans: Spe salvi facti sumus-- "For in this hope we were saved." The 76-page document, presented in 8 chapters, is a historical analysis of the Christian meaning of hope and the rise of secularist ideology. I have only read the english version once, but I will have to read it several times - as well as read the original German. The Encylical covers an enormous terrain of modern thought and historical teachings of the church.

Like in the first Encyclical, Benedict reveals his mastery of theology and modern philosophy by returning to Augustine, Bacon, Kant and Marx. But there are some delightful surprises as well: Benedict has studied the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, and cites approvingly the Negative Dialectics of Theodor Adorno as well as the work of Max Horkheimer.  Spes salvi reaches its crescendo, however, with quotations from a letter from Hell about suffering in a concentration camp written by the Vietnamese martyr Paul Le-Bao-Tinh († 1857) before moving on to meditation on the true meaning of Grace illustrated by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov!

Spes salvi is being hailed in the media as an attack on atheism.  And it is true that Benedict returns to his favorite theme of the interplay between reason and faith throughout modern history. He does not specifically cite Adorno and Horkheimers Dialectic of Enlightenment - which examines the destructive path of reason from the French Revolution to Auschwitz - but he lays the blame for most of the horrors of the 20th century at the the feet of secularist ideology.

What stood out for me at my first reading was Benedict's criticism of the notion of personal salvation, which core of American evangelical thinking, and which is preached each Sunday in the thousands of megachurches:

"How could the idea have developed that Jesus' message is narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of the 'salvation of the soul' as a flight from responsibility for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others?"

American evangelicalism is established around the question: What can God do for me? Evangelicals are told to establish a "personal relationship" with Christ the Savior, abandoning the the greater "news" of the Gospel. Benedict reminds us that early Christian prayer grew out of communal suffering:

"Being in communion with Jesus Christ draws us into his “being for all”; it makes it our own way of being. He commits us to live for others, but only through communion with him does it become possible truly to be there for others, for the whole."

Anyway, it is doubtful that many American evangelical Christians will bother to read Spes salvi, but they are missing Benedict's tantalizing glimpse of eternity.  Can the 81-year old pontiff be thinking about his own death?

"To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy."

There is something for everybody in Spes salvi - even mystics.  I would like to compare Benedict's understanding of Christian hope with Juergen Moltmann's eschotology.

Comments

[Benjamin Ometan]

I think Benedict XVI's focus is really commendable. Right from the begining of his papacy, it is clear that he intends to tell the world why Christianity is refreashingly different and unique. He had hardly began his papacy when Deus Caritas est came out, focusing on the theological virtue of love: that which is uniquely Christian about Christianity. Again he releases "Jesus of Nazareth" a book which contributes to the ongoing Historical Jesus debate. Jesus of Nazareth begins with the premise that it is not possible to capture the essence of the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth without anchoring his person in God. His reflections lead to the traditional Catholic position: the uniqueness of Christ and his relatedness to God. Now in "Spe Salvi" the Pope focuses on another theolgical virtue: hope. Firstly in the chronology of his encyclicals one sees the Augustinian in him--love is the root and crown of all virtue. The very title of the new encyclical "in hope we are saved" lends to the pressuposition that there is a connection between hope and faith. As the Cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the discipline of Faith, the theological virtue of faith had been his major discipline. Now he wishes to explain to the world the pillars on which the faith depends. He finds in Augustine the perfect model for this: Faith works by love and cannot exist without hope (Augustine, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love). It is precisely this that makes Christianity so different, and so refreashing. Christians BELEIVE that God's revelation to humankind has reached its apogee in Christ whose action on the cross prompts the Christian into an intimate relationship of LOVE with God leading him to HOPE in God's promise to make all things new. Hope here takes on an eschatological dimension which is not locked out of Christian life but is part and parcel of it. Here Benedict sounds so much like Moltmann and I am so happy that this Theology of Hope is being celebrated in the Catholic Church