Kevin Tortorelli OFM
Introduction
We remember the legend of the world’s childhood ‘when Adam knew that Christ was promised first without scars’.[1] We remember ‘there lives the deepest freshness deep down things’[2] that holds a mystery and tells a story. The form of grace now is based on the cross of the Lord that bears the sin of the world. It is a mystery of grace in the sense of the felix culpaof the Easter Exultet. But we also remember the earlier form of grace by which the Son mediates creation. This is the grace of Sophia. Sophia announces that love is a reunion, a coming back to where I have been as a child.[3] Sophia and the Wisdom tradition constitute this memory. In these reflections I want to examine the consciousness Sophia opens up for us. It is a consciousness different from the alternative expressed in the felix culpa, ‘the necessary sin’ of the Easter Exultet. I want to show that this Sophia tradition is a helpful context for achieving a fresh appreciation of Duns Scotus’ view on the Incarnation based on the Primacy of Christ. To that end, in what follows, I trace highlights of the Sophia tradition to which Scotus made a significant contribution.
Who is Sophia?
What is Sophia consciousness? Sophia is our ‘sister’ (Proverbs 7:4). She is related to discerning Wisdom. Through her the Lord founded the earth and established the heavens (Proverbs 3:19). Sophia is a cosmic principle by which God works out the design of creation. She teaches the Incarnation as the humanization of God. She awakens us from our slumber to recover our true self as held in God’s mercy. Sophia is the retrieval of a narrative that associates God’s very life with eros and the feminine, with play and delight, music and dance, with the natural world: ‘When he established the heavens, I [Sophia] was there… I was beside him like a master workman and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always… (Proverbs 8:27,30). Sophia as Christ continues to play in ten thousand places (Hopkins). Sophia is God’s eros become one with creation[4]. I was brought forth, I was there, beside him. Sophia is wisdom based on love. From the beginning, she longs for Incarnation.[5]
Within the economy of Trinity God we encounter Sophia. As the love or eros in God that longs for the world from the beginning, Sophia explodes the narrative of the Incarnation in a bold statement of God’s love for all things in Christ. Creation is specifically a revelation of Trinitarian life so that the world’s life is seen to be established on the foundation of Trinity God. There is the sheer impulse of self-giving (sine proprio), the life of God as Father emptying himself in letting the Other be as the eternal humanity of God.[6]
Maximus Confessor contemplated (theoria physike) this tradition of Sophia. It led him to write that we should not believe that sin caused this unique masterpiece, which is his visible world in which God manifests himself in creation, a wordless revelation.[7] Maximus repudiates the idea that the world is in itself imperfect, made up of fallen realities. Quite the contrary; the world remains good despite the ravages of sin. This is Sophia vision. It is a vision of the world itself as the sacrament of God’s wisdom and love. Sophia lets us see that the world is created in Logos/Sophia. The act of the free coming forth of the world is wholly based in the Father’s act of begetting in the Godhead.[8] Out of love for the world, the Father sends the Son to be incarnate and the Incarnate Son gives himself in order to reveal the Father’s love. These perspectives are drawn from the treasury of Sophia.
Sophia as Eros
Sophia awakens what is and always has been. Christ as Sophia is the humanity God sees and loves from all eternity.[9] For Sophia is eros become agape love. Sophia is the Eros in God that longs for the world from the beginning. Indeed, Sophia Eros longs for Incarnation from the beginning. Eros is uniquely desire toward God, intending life that enfolds the whole person and unites what is otherwise opposite, even opposed. Sophia cultivates poverty of spirit, a humility and love that is vital to attune the spiritual senses to grasp God in all things.
As Sophia, Eros becomes praise ascending, drawing the creation upwards with its desire for God. In this free bestowal of creation, Eros expresses God’s agape love in Christ for the world and for the Church, his bride and body.
Here the erotic initiative lies with God in the sending of his Son and in the Son who takes his bride to himself. On its way to becoming agape love, Eros welcomes virtue that makes Eros ethical. Virtue instructs Eros in its duties, the spirit of sacrifice, self-forgetfulness, its preferring the other. The caritas (charity) of Eros reaches to the least among us. Eros sings to us of the One Whom Eros uniquely knows: ‘Hear O Israel the Lord is One, him shall you love with all your heart, soul and mind and your neighbour as yourself’ (Mk 12:29–31; Dt 6:4–5). In this way, Eros, ever playful, becomes Faith in God.
Eros peers through the lattices. On Easter morning Mary Magdalene peers into the empty tomb. She recalls the passionate Eros of the Song of Songs: ‘I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer’ (Song of Songs 3:1). Mary asks the gardener, ‘Have you seen him whom my soul loves?’ (Song of Songs 3:2–3). At the mention of her name, ‘The voice of my beloved! … My beloved speaks, the low, soft voice of the turtledove (Song of Songs 2:12) coos in the cold despair of Easter morning’. Mary Magdalene would embrace Jesus, ‘I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go’ (Song of Songs 3:4). Only Eros can express the grace of Easter, a love and joy that is intoxicating and infectious. Sophia Eros is at home in the garden of the Resurrection as she was once at home in the garden of Paradise.[10]
Immaculata
Mary enters the world and history as full of grace, radically without sin. She is a new creation, a new mode of existence as pure readiness for the Word of God.[11] Her existence as Sophia and seat of wisdom expresses the love that is the Incarnation. Historically and doctrinally, Scotus’ teaching on Mary, this radically new creation, required an equally radical renewal of the theology of the redemption to accommodate her truth. This means that salvation or redemption does not depend on sin since the redemptive act here has preserved Mary from sin. With this insight, Scotus nudged redemption away from negativity and ‘fired France for Mary without spot’. An important conclusion follows from this, namely, that the Incarnation appears as the greatest act of divine initiative and love quite apart from human fallenness.[12] Mary was destined to be the Mother of Christ even before the fall. Mary thus is the first to be redeemed, a mother among the redeemed. The Immaculata enjoys the deepest solidarity with us. In her radical innocence she suffers deeply with us. Her Immaculate Conception has prepared her for this mission.
Consistent with Mary as Immaculata, Christ loves the Church and in his love he has cleansed the Church to be immaculata as well. With Sophia vocabulary, Christ presents the Church to ‘himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such things, that she might be holy and without blemish’ (Eph 5:25–27).[13] The whole context here is nuptial in the Sophia love of husband and wife that alone and uniquely expresses the bond between Christ and the Church. In the beginning is God’s Word, the Church’s spouse, who will become flesh for her (Jn 1:1–14).
Hopkins
It was Scotus who most swayed Hopkins’ spirits to peace. Hopkins cherished Scotus’ view that the sacrifice of the Son is God’s first thought of the world. Hopkins is concerned with the actual world order because it is founded on what he called the great sacrifice (Phil 2:5–11). It is the primary way in which the self-emptying Trinitarian life can be manifest externally.[14] This sacrifice is the eucharist as cosmic, temporal and sacramental. ‘The eucharist, the great sacrifice, is a reality before the Incarnation.’[15] Similarly, the creation is an implication of the decree of the Incarnation that permeates the creation as its source and exemplar.[16] In the spirit of Scotus, Hopkins identified the Incarnation not as a reparation for human sin but as a way of manifesting the love which the Creator also manifested in his choice of this world over other possible ones.[17]
Scotus
Finally, this Sophia tradition reaches to Scotus. He frames the question of the motive of the Incarnation within the Primacy of Christ. He asks: ‘Was Christ predestined to be the Son of God?’ From the love that is God, Scotus concludes that Christ is first predestined by God as the Summum Opus Dei, God’s Masterpiece. This predestination is absolute and unconditioned. It is not caused or occasioned by sin.[18]
The question whether Christ would have come if Adam had not sinned seems by and large to have fallen flat. It attracted little interest against the view that as a matter of fact the Incarnation took place as it did, in order to provide the means of grace and redemption against sin.[19] And there apparently is an end of the matter. But, by vigorous contrast, the Primacy of Christ begins with the actual order of things. It embraces the view that the Primacy of Christ, not the fall, was the cause of Christ’s Incarnation. Equally, the Primacy of Christ leads one to question whether the redemption of the human race is the adequate and principal reason for the Incarnation. Luminously, the Primacy of Christ holds up the truth that the cause of the Incarnation of the Word is the predestination of the human race to divinization by grace. In other words, the Primacy of Christ achieves a unique focus by teaching that the Word’s becoming flesh is located entirely in the context of the absolute predestination of Christ.[20]
With Scotus, the reality of redemption is fully retained because the Cross of Christ the Lamb is inscribed in the creation of the world from the beginning (Rev 13:8).[21] But Redemption from sin is subordinate to the primary purpose of God, his communion with us in sharing the life of love, grace and glory.
Conclusion
Our purpose here has been to deepen appreciation for Scotus’ teaching on the Incarnation as the highest good, the completion of creation, by recourse to the neglected initiatives of the Sophia tradition. I hope some measure of success has been met with in these reflections. Sophia names a tradition of love, wisdom, discernment, playfulness, eroticism, the Immaculata and poetry. In this Sophia tradition stands Scotus’ teaching on the Primacy of Christ, sine proprio, whose love expresses the deepest truth behind which there is nothing. Sophia orchestrates all these dimensions of love in service of Christ. At the end of the day these verses express the Sophia vision that is very much in the spirit of Scotus:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.[22]
In the beginning … with Sophia, the Lord’s Delight, playing before him always (Proverbs 8:27,30).
[1]Thomas Merton, Dry Places, quoted in George Kilcourse. Ace of Freedoms: Thomas Merton’s Christ (Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1993), 34, 63.
[2]Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, God’s Grandeur quoted in Christopher Pramuk, Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton (MN: Collegeville Liturgical Press, 2009), 171.
[3]Pramuk, 20, quoting Merton.
[4]Pramuk, 20.
[5]Pramuk, 133.
[6]Pramuk, 236, 242.
[7] Merton & Hesychasm, The Prayer of the Heart, ed. by Bernadette Dieker & Jonathan Montaldo (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2003), 424–25. The quotation is found in Merton’s Lectures on Ascetical and Mystical Theology, Gethsemani, Summer, 1961.
[8]Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology III: Creator Spirit, trans. by Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 108 and vol. V, Man is Created, p.56.
[9]Pramuk, 219.
[10]For a wide-ranging discussion of eros see Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics V, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 264-84.
[11] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology V: Man is Created, trans. by Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 176–83. See also, Philippe Yates, ‘The Primacy of Christ in John Duns Scotus: An Assessment’, A Pilgrimage Through the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition, ed. by André Cirino OFM & Josef Raischl OSF (Phoenix, AZ: Tau Publishing, 2012), 161–62, 169–70.
[12]Mary Beth Ingham CSJ, Understanding John Duns Scotus Franciscan Heritage Series, vol. 9 (NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2017), 146. Also, Séamus Mulholland OFM, A Gasp of Love: Duns Scotus: Franciscan Theologian and Mystic (Darlington: Franciscan Publishing), esp. 259–76.
[13]In my view, the teaching of the Church as Immaculata benefits from the context of the Pilgrim Church, e.g., in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, of Vatican II.
[14]Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Glory of the Lord A Theological Aesthetics III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986) 380–81. I have limited my remarks here to the great sacrifice, but a full discussion of Scotus and Hopkins would involve, e.g., haecceitas in connection with instress and inscape.
[15]Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, III, Lay Styles, 382.
[16]David Anthony Downes, The Great Sacrifice. Studies in Hopkins (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983), 105–06.
[17]John Llewelyn, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Spell of John Duns Scotus (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), 5.
[18]Eric Doyle OFM, ‘John Duns Scotus and the Place of Christ’, Clergy Review 57 (Oct. 1972), 775–80. Re-printed in My Heart’s Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor, Theologian, ed. by Joseph Raischl OFS & André Cirino OFM (Phoenix, AZ: Tau Publishing, 2013), 235–36,248.
[19]So, Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2018), 132, ft. 12, 137. Italics in original text. Here the question of the motivation for the Incarnation seems a non-starter.
[20]Eric Doyle OFM, ‘John Duns Scotus and the Place of Christ’, 674. My Heart’s Quest, 249. For a recent and thorough discussion of the Primacy of Christ in Scotus, see Séamus Mulholland OFM, A Gasp of Love, esp. 95–108.
[21]Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics VII: Theology of the New Covenant, trans. by Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 214, quoting Bulgakov.
[22]T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (New York: Harcourt Bruce & Company, 1963), 208.