Apocalypse of Love: Essays in Honor of Cyril J. O'Regan

by Anthony Sciglitano (Editor), Jennifer Martin (Editor)

Overview

An Apocalypse of Love is a collection of essays on the many facets of Cyril O'Regan's work to date written by both prominent and rising scholars in the fields of philosophy and theology. Essay topics included in this volume range over his entire corpus, including appreciatively critical analyses of his early and current work on Hegel, rhetorical and pedagogical styles, spiritual theology, engagement with Hegel and Heidegger, von Balthasar and John of the Cross, kenosis, Eric Voegelin, his relation to post-moderns such as Lacan and Bataille, and poetry both published and unpublished.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824599195
Publisher:	PublishDrive
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Sold by:	PUBLISHDRIVE KFT
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Anthony Sciglitano is an associate professor at Seton Hall University where he has taught since 2003. He writes on Hans Urs von Balthasar, Judaism and Catholicism, Catholic theology in the twentieth century and post-modern philosophy. His book published by Crossroad is Marcion and Prometheus: Balthasar Against the Expulsion of Jewish Origins from Modern Religious Dialogue (New York: Crossroad, 2014). He has published in journals such as Modern Theology, Nova et Vetera and Pro Ecclesia. For six years, he directed the University Core Curriculum at Seton Hall and co-edited the Core Curriculum readers. Jennifer Newsome Martin is an assistant professor in the Program of Liberal Studies (Great Books) with a concurrent appointment in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. A systematic and historical theologian, Jennifer Newsome Martin focuses on 20th century Roman Catholic theology, particularly Trinity and eschatology, the religious character of modern philosophical thought, especially in the German Idealist and Romantic traditions, theological aesthetics, religion and literature, French ressourcement thought, and the nature of tradition.

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CHAPTER 1

The Mystery of St. Joseph in the Memory of the Church

A Father Rich in Mercy

John C. Cavadini

A colleague (not from the Theology Department!) once asked me who was my favorite saint. When I responded "St. Joseph," he seemed utterly taken aback and exclaimed, "But we don't know anything about him! How can he be anyone's favorite saint?" There was a lot implied in my colleague's astonished response, and fair enough, since, considered from the point of view of bare facts about St. Joseph's life, we do not have much to go on (granting, for the moment, that there can be such a thing as "bare facts" about anyone's life). But how many such "facts" does one really need in order to find a person, even on the horizontal plane of this life on earth, so attractive that one wants to befriend him or her? One need not have a lengthy c.v. at hand to be able to strike up a friendship with someone and to feel one's life inestimably enriched thereby. The dimensions of personal attractiveness are not easily reduced to "bare facts" about one's life. Perhaps, too, a mutual friend or a trusted advisor has introduced you, providing a few essential indications of character as the basis for a possible friendship. In such a scenario, the trustworthiness of the friend or advisor introducing you is part of the appeal of the prospective friend. Even more, the perspective of the mutual friend or trusted advisor is already a factor in the potential friendship and may continue as an important part of the friendship as it develops.

In the case of St. Joseph, the trustworthy friend in the analogy is the Church, and the introduction provided is the set of memories of St. Joseph preserved in Scripture. These memories belong to the Church as a kind of personal subject. The Church is, in a way, a collective person — that is, the People of God, whom Pope Benedict XVI calls a "collective subject," in fact "the living subject of Scripture." He elaborates that "the Scripture emerged from within the heart of a living subject — the pilgrim People of God — and lives within this same subject." The individual authors of the biblical books "form part of" this collective subject, who is, he continues, "the deeper 'author' of the Scriptures" on the human level. Later on, Benedict explains how this works, making particular reference to the Fourth Gospel and the dynamics of remembering:

On one hand, the author of the Fourth Gospel gives a very personal accent to his own remembrance ... on the other hand, it is never a merely private remembering, but a remembering in and with the "we" of the Church: "that which ... we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands." With John, the subject who remembers is always the "we" — he remembers in and with the community of the disciples, in and with the Church. However much the author stands out as an individual witness, the remembering subject that speaks here is always the "we" of the community of disciples, the "we" of the Church.

He goes on to emphasize that "because the personal recollection that provides the foundation of the Gospel is purified and deepened by being inserted into the memory of the Church, it does indeed transcend the banal recollection of facts." It is, of course, important to remember that the memory of the Church, insofar as the memories contained are scriptural, is inspired. Benedict puts it this way: "This people does not exist alone; rather it knows that it is led, and spoken to, by God himself, who — through human beings and their humanity — is at the deepest level the one speaking."

Scriptural memories are, as it were, definitive memories in the overall remembering of the Church that comprises apostolic tradition. The main content of this memory is, of course, the mystery of Christ, the Word made flesh, as Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, sums it up:

It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (see Eph 1:9), which was that people can draw near to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (see Eph 2:18, 2 Pet 1:4). ... The most intimate truth thus revealed about God and human salvation shines forth for us in Christ, who is himself both the mediator and the sum total of revelation.

Jesus "completed and perfected revelation," and "everything to do with his presence and his manifestation of himself was involved in achieving this: his words and works, signs and miracles, but above all his death and glorious resurrection from the dead, and finally his sending of the Spirit of truth." Everything in Christ's life, in other words, participates in the mystery of his person that sums up revelation. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, "Christ's whole life is mystery. ... From the swaddling clothes of his birth to the vinegar of his Passion and the shroud of his Resurrection, everything in Jesus' life was a sign of his mystery."

It goes without saying that St. Joseph is very much implicated in such a statement. To acquire a friendship with St. Joseph means, therefore, if it is authentic, a deeper acquaintance with the mystery of the Lord, and the more intimate the friendship, the deeper the appreciation of the mystery of the Incarnation. The reverse is also true. The more one has accepted the invitation of revelation to become friends with the Lord Jesus and through him the Father, the greater possibility there is for an intimate and living friendship with St. Joseph in Christ. For the whole of St. Joseph's life and identity is saturated with the mystery of Christ, and the mystery of St. Joseph in the memory of the Church is constituted wholly by its reference to the allen-compassing mystery of Christ that it reflects.

Why don't we take the recommendation of our trusted advisor the Church and strike up a friendship with St. Joseph? Though it is spare enough in detail, what is authoritatively remembered under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is overwhelmingly sufficient as the basis for an intimate and satisfying friendship. We can begin with the two infancy narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke. They are notoriously different from each other to the point of potential, if not actual, conflict. I regard the difference between the two narratives, as uncomfortable as it can feel for those who would like an easy reconciliation between them, as providential, for it shows that these two narratives are independent traditions, and yet — astonishingly — they agree on the most essential points. Included among these are some of the most unlikely points, namely, that Mary and Joseph were husband and wife, but that before they began to live together as husband and wife, during their betrothal, an angel announced (in one narrative to Joseph, in the other, to Mary) the conception of Jesus, which, in addition, was said to have taken place through the Holy Spirit, without intercourse between Mary and Joseph or indeed between Mary and any other man. It is interesting, at least, that the Gospel of Mark does not identify Jesus as the Son of anyone but God, except when it says, simply, that he is "the carpenter, the son of Mary." These points of agreement are anything but "bare facts," though they are indeed claims on historical truth. Such matters as the virginal conception of Jesus or the appearance of angels in dreams or otherwise cannot even in principle be historically verified, and yet the independence of the two inspired traditions does verify that these memories are as ancient as any there are about Jesus and are not simply the fabrications of the evangelists. They are as likely (or as unlikely, I suppose you could say) as the truth of the Word made flesh, as the truth of the Incarnation itself, for they are the essential elements of the location of the Incarnation in place and time. The Incarnation is thus distinguished from myth, for it is located in place and time, and yet it is not reduced to mere history (if there is any such thing), for it was initiated outside of history and its significance transcends history. Between "myth" and "history" we find "mystery." And for all the special significance of our developing friendship with St. Joseph, all friendships are located in an analogous domain of mystery, for the interior essence of someone's truly historically located love is never simply reducible to its location in history, nor does that make an account of it a "myth."

The Gospels do not tell us much about what Joseph thought about all of this. They do not give us an account of what today we might call Joseph's psychology, but the Gospel of Matthew does evoke an image of a man with a rich interior life, intent on doing God's will, always on the lookout for indications of his will, and ready to obey. Matthew recounts that Joseph was disturbed by the discovery that Mary was pregnant, and considered divorcing her, though we are not told whether this was because he thought she must have been unfaithful, or that he was already aware that some mystery larger than human devising had entered Mary's life, in which he was not sure of his further place. Matthew tells us that as a "righteous" or "just" man he decided to divorce her, following the Law, the best indication of God's will that he knew, yet "quietly," yielding the benefit of the doubt in so doing to Mary or to God or both, as the Protevangelium of James seems to suggest. In obeying the Law "quietly," Joseph is obeying both its letter and its spirit, divorcing Mary not as a public vindication of his own person, but as a refusal to claim that he knows God's intentions fully and as an openness to what they might be. In this, the evangelist is saying, does his righteousness — or, we could translate, sanctity — essentially consist.

We can see that this is true to Matthew's intentions, for when the angel reassures Joseph in a dream that he should take Mary into his home, he does so without any hesitation. The Gospel of Luke, for its part, does not register even a protest, worry, or anxiety on behalf of Joseph, and we might begin to think that he is an afterthought, merely a narrative or dramatic prop, were it not that the Gospel indicates his lively involvement in his family's life as husband and father up to and past Jesus's twelfth year. This sustained involvement is described in more detail than that of any other father in the Gospel of Luke — the father of Jairus being perhaps a suggestive second (cf. Luke 8:40–56) and not counting the fathers who are characters in parables. Luke privileges the reflective "pondering" of Mary, instead of Joseph's, and provides explicit memories of the thoughts and sayings that proceed from her pondering and return us to it.

But Luke is careful to point out that the angel's annunciation is to Mary, a virgin who was betrothed, and betrothed explicitly to Joseph. Thus, while Joseph is not consulted, neither is he just an also-ran who happens along at some random point in time. It is not Mary alone, but Mary precisely as betrothed who is addressed, and so her marriage to Joseph is part of the divine plan for the Incarnation and not incidental. In this matter, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke agree, though they bring out the point each in their own way. Neither Gospel is so indiscreet as to try to reproduce the conversations between Mary and Joseph about their marriage and their vocation, though they must have discerned it together, in some manner unique to themselves. The Gospels' reticence on this point, in a way, verifies that this domain is truly spousal, truly intimate, and not for public view. Jesus enters this world embraced in an intimacy which, if not physical, is nevertheless truly spousal. It is important that we know that both Mary and Joseph are not simply passive instruments of God's will, and each evangelist implies this for one of them and verifies it for the other. God's will is accomplished in their free acceptance of it and in the bond of marital intimacy that is sealed in shared obedience to God's will.

In the case of Joseph, the two Gospel accounts converge in portraying him as having no "terms" for his involvement as husband and father, except for the terms that God offers, and they seem paltry enough. He is promised no "seed," as Abraham was, nor, more poignantly — since he is in the line of David — as David was. And though Mary is his betrothed, in neither account is Joseph even consulted about her pregnancy. Yet once he is sure it is God's will, he takes his place as her intended husband. He understands she does not thereby become his property; nor, for that matter, does he regard himself as his own private property. He becomes a husband and a father in dialogue with God's Law in its fullest dimension. He is depicted as someone whose exercise of husbandhood and fatherhood, and therefore of manhood (since these offices are exclusively those of a man) yield him no claims that he cares to exact on his own behalf. He rather exercises these offices of his manhood as instances of complete openness to God's will, without fanfare or display. And yet he is no less a man, and in fact one could argue that he is the Bible's most explicit revelation of what it means to be a man, for St. Joseph's identity is completely coincident with his roles as husband and father, without remainder.

We are not informed by the Gospels as to whether Joseph's "terms" had included an expectation of sexual intercourse with Mary at some point, or indeed what Mary thought about it, though we are given some clues. Mary's protest in Luke that she "does not" or "had not" known man implies something more than simply that she had not yet had sex, because, as the Old Testament shows and as the Lucan example of her kinswoman Elizabeth continues to show, God is perfectly capable of working a miraculous or otherwise wondrous conception through marital intercourse. The commonsense answer to Mary's question would be that through future sex with her husband Joseph, God would raise up the Savior. Her question seems to verify the angel's description of her as "full of grace," because she seems to be fully open to a possibility within God's domain that would go beyond what she has or could have glimpsed, another possibility, perhaps undiscerned as yet. This, oddly enough, tallies with the corresponding openness we have seen in St. Joseph, implied in Luke, and specified in Matthew. Matthew, furthermore, goes to the trouble of making it explicit that Joseph did not engage in sex with Mary before or during Mary's pregnancy, even though by that time it would probably not have been forbidden. The Gospels do not mention anything explicit beyond this statement, but they do make it clear that the sex life of Mary and Joseph was something intimately relative to the mystery of the overarching designs of God in the birth of Jesus, and that Mary and Joseph both came to understand that this would involve a unique degree of renunciation or bypassing of married sex. The Gospels allow them to continue their discernment unobserved by the reader, as part and parcel of pondering the dimensions of the awesome mystery of which their marriage is a part and thus of the uniqueness of their marriage.

The Gospels ask of us, the Church, the same attitude of openness toward the uniqueness of this marriage. The clues provided justify the ancient discernment of the Church that these spouses never had sex, and that this renunciation was part of the trueness of their true but unique marriage, rather than militating against it. The Protevangelium of James (usually dated to around 150 A.D.) testifies to the antiquity of belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary, and, contrary to the insults often heaped upon the text, not only proclaims the doctrine, but cautions against an overly hasty assumption about what it might mean. The birth of Jesus takes place in the midst of an obscuring heavenly light, so that its exact character cannot be ascertained. Salome puts her hand to the flesh of Mary to see if her hymen is intact, a gesture reminiscent of that of Doubting Thomas in the Gospel of John (John 20:24–29) and so indicating that the doctrine is in some sense tied to the mystery of the new creation in Christ. She does discover that Mary's hymen is intact, and yet as a result her hand withers, though it is immediately healed. She is not judged overly harshly, but just harshly enough to allow the reader to see that though it is true, the reader should be warned against assuming he or she has or could fully grasp the mystery of the childbearing of the Virgin, a physical truth yet, like the resurrection itself, is not fully reducible or even fully specifiable in its physical dimensions. Karl Rahner's warning to his readers some 1,800 years later — that "there are physical events which, however naturally they may appear to be the direct consequences of the constitution of man, yet must be recognized by the more penetrating and comprehensive eye of faith" — is fully congruent with this text.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments,
Foreword: A Personal Reflection Lawrence S. Cunningham,
Introduction Jennifer Newsome Martin,
Chapter 1. The Mystery of St. Joseph in the Memory of the Church: A Father Rich in Mercy John C. Cavadini,
Chapter 2. Kenosis, Starting from the Trinity Jean-Luc Marion | Translated by Tarek R. Dika,
Chapter 3. Balthasar's Theology of Christ's Impasse and "Dark Night" Danielle Nussberger,
Chapter 4. Theology in the Middle Voice: Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant on Natural Ends Corey L. Barnes,
Chapter 5. Haunted by Heteronomy: Cyril O'Regan, Hegelian Misremembering, and the Counterfeit Doubles of God William Desmond,
Chapter 6. On Hegel: Sorcerers and Apprentices David Walsh,
Chapter 7. Christian Theology after Heidegger Andrew Prevot,
Chapter 8. Delighting in the Truth: St. Augustine and Theological Pedagogy Today Todd Walatka,
Chapter 9. Philosophical and Theological Historiography in The Red Wheel Brendan Purcell,
Chapter 10. O'Regan as Origen in Alexandria Ann W. Astell,
Chapter 11. "As love, the giver is perfect": Love at the Limit in the Thought of Cyril O'Regan Jay Martin,
Chapter 12. The Unity of Cyril O'Regan's Work: Narrative Grammar and the Space for a Post-Modern Theology Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr.,
Poetic Epilogue Cyril O'Regan,
"On the Nile",
"Waiting for the Barbarians I",
"Requiem for Marguerite (d. 1310)",
Contributor Biographies,