Syncretistic Catholicism

another minority report

Syncretistic Catholicism where any Anglican, Episcopal, Roman & Orthodox

consensus informs core beliefs & divergences are received as valid theological
opinions

A Field Guide to the Christs

This is a draft outline of my next project: A Field Guide to the Christs

The distinctions I will offer, below, are variously in play vis a vis References to
Christ in Patristics, Liturgy, Eucharist, Scripture, Systematics and, of course,
less rigorously & more inchoately so, in Vernacular Theology.

Such references will include, for example, Christ as Logos, Jesus, Christus,
Totus Christus, Total Christ, Cosmic Christ, Universal Christ, Christogenesis &
Christus Cosmicus, as found in such diverse authors as St Paul, St John, St.
Augustine , A. Bruggeman, Teilhard de Chardin, Ilia Delio, Richard Rohr &
Jordan Daniel Wood.

Constitutive vs Expressive References to Christ per the:

absolute primacy
protological vs historical vs eschatological
gratuities of creation vs grace
uncreated vs created grace
forma transformans vs forma transformata
omnipresence vs indwelling
ontological (physical) vs personal (relational)
shadows & vestiges vs images & likenesses
participatory vs perichoretic (perichoreseS)
ontologically constitutive vs theophanically expressive
plurality of (or multiple) incarnations
macrocosmic – microcosmic

cf. Scotus, Alexander of Hales & John of La Rochelle, Bonaventure, Maximus

Systematic References to Christ in:

Paterology
Christology
Pneumatology
Trinitology
Missiology
Cosmology
Anthropology
Ecclesiology
Sacramentology
Soteriology
Sophiology

References to Christ in the context of the Divine Relations

paternity
active spiration
passive spiration
filiation

cf. Kujan, Doran, Lonergan

References to Christ in the context of Created Supernatural Realities

human existence of Jesus

sanctifying grace
habit of charity
light of glory

cf. Kujan, Doran, Lonergan

References to Christ per the Scale of Values & Levels of Consciousness

Vital – Experience
Social – Understanding
Cultural – Judgment
Moral (Personal) – Deliberation
Religious – Charity (e.g. constituted by the participation in active and passive
spiration in the Trinity manifested through sanctifying grace and charity)

cf. Kujan, Doran, Lonergan

References to Christ with Implications for Comparative Theology &

Interreligious Dialogue
in progress but, hopefully, self-evident by now!

References to Christ with Implications for Formative Spirituality & the Life of
Prayer

in progress but, hopefully, self-evident by now!

Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created

form of reality—every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit and every human person.
Everything is christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate. ~
Ilia Delio

Teilhard’s God-world relationship could be described as “cosmotheandric,” that

is, cosmic, human and divine all at once. ~ Ilia Delio

cosmogenesis as Christogenesis ~ Chiu Bit-Shing, Abraham ofm

Lonergan’s 4 point hypothesis “identifies four created supernatural realities

through which human beings participate in the four relations among the three
divine persons. These four created supernatural realities are the human
existence of Jesus (i.e. , the esse secundarium), sanctifying grace, the habit of
charity, and the light of glory (i.e., the lumen gloriae) whereby the saints in
heaven see God. Through these four, people participate, respectively, in the four
divine relations of paternity, active spiration, passive spiration, and
filiation. Paternity, filiation, and passive spiration constitute the three divine
persons, respectively, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Active spiration is really
identical to paternity and filiation considered together.
~ Michael Kujan

Since Christ died for everyone, and since the ultimate calling of each of us
comes from God and is therefore a universal one, we are obliged to hold that
the Holy Spirit offers everyone the possibility of sharing in this paschal mystery
in a manner known to God” (GS 22, emphasis added). The council is affirming a
doctrine—“the Holy Spirit offers everyone the possibility of sharing in this
paschal mystery”—but in the words “in a manner known to God” it is suggesting
a systematic-theological question: How can this be? ~ Robert M. Doran

sanctifying grace & the habit of charity

the grace that makes one pleasing and so to sanctifying grace, the grace of
justification. That these latter are to be acknowledged as “sanctifying graces” is
explicitly affirmed by Lonergan. There are other texts in Aquinas that make the
same point, including the texts that Jacques Maritain relies on to argue that in
the first moral act of every individual justification and elevation to a share in
divine life are at stake. But I am selecting this text because Lonergan
emphasizes its importance in Thomas’s development. Thomas is on his way
toward a theology of actual grace, and it is a theology that would acknowledge
that at least some instances of actual grace are also sanctifying graces in the
strict sense of the term, in that they include the infusion of supernatural charity.
Lonergan interprets Thomas’s text precisely in this way. Supernatural habits,
and especially of course charity, may not only be infused with baptism but also
given as one assents to at least some of the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit
by which a person is joined to God in the concrete circumstances of his or her
own life; and they may be developed due to fidelity to such promptings. ~
Robert M. Doran

Lonergan describes a scale of values that he considers hierarchical. He sets

forth five
distinct kinds of values in an ascending order of importance including vital
values, social values, cultural values, moral values and religious values. He
posits that different levels of consciousness ground the distinction between the
five different kinds of values. For Lonergan, the goal is to determine the good to
be realized at each level. He divides values according to the level at which they
are intended. He talks about vital values at the level of experience, social values
at the level of understanding, cultural values at the level of judgment, personal
values at the level of deliberation and religious values at a fifth level.
Bernard Lonergan and John Finnis on the Question of Values ~ Michael
Ambrosio

If there is a mereological whole exceeding the sum of its parts, it’s – neither a
supraindividual nor other substantial entity, but – an interpersonal reality, a
concrete social Absolute, constituted by – not a static & divisible unitary
being, but – a dynamical & multiplicative unitive process, where synergistic
hownesses remain uncountable because “ever on the move.” (eternal
epectasis?)

The many tropoi then journey toward the One concrete social Absolute, of –
not a supraindividual unitary being, but – an interpersonal unitive doing.

Worthwhile References:

A. Bruggeman

The Cosmic _Christ : Some Recent Interpretations

Robert M. Doran

Actual Grace and the Elevation of the Secular

Invisible Missions: The Grace that Heals Disjunctions

Michael Kujan
Participation in the Triune God: Engaging Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Theology
with Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis, as Developed by Robert
Doran 

Ilia Delio on the Cosmic Christ

https://christogenesis.org/reply-to-richard-rohr-cosmic-christ/

https://christogenesis.org/the-cosmic-christ-and-revolution/

https://christogenesis.org/understanding-the-christic-in-an-open-universe/

https://christogenesis.org/rediscovering-the-universal-christ/

https://christogenesis.org/the-cosmic-christ/

https://christogenesis.org/love-coming-to-fullness/

Further Pneumatological Grounding for the Spirit’s Presences in the World

Franciscan Justification, Sanctification & Glorification

Justification & Sanctification

Concerning concepts like justification & sanctification, the early OFMs worked
on an ontological account or the quiddity of grace.

Beyond introducing the forma transformans/forma transformata distinction,

they were also inquiring as to whether created grace was: a substance or an
accident; a virtue, gift, fruit or beatitude; belonged to esse primum or
secundum; as power of esse secundum, whether always in act or as a habit
not always in act, etc

But way more than engaging just ir/resistable grace motivations, in their
various accounts, the OFMs were blocking ontological inferences like
monism & monergism as well as preserving anthropological realities like
liberum arbitrium contra necessitating grace.

They were especially blocking any inference that the ends of human
divinization could ever be an hypostatic union.

In the end, the early OFMs concluded that grace belonged to esse secundum,
was an accident, always in act so not a habit or virtue.

Once specifying all that, still left open would be the chicken & egg question
regarding whether it was an infused disposition towards one’s reception of
uncreated grace or the result of one’s reception of the Holy Spirit.

So, this initial OFM formulation could still have let in the twin spectres of a
super/nature & a reification of created grace as a “thing.” Those inferences
were blocked, however by threading an onto-needle, where extrinsic grace, as
the Source, gifts effects that are dispositions, which are intrinsic to the soul.

Later OFMs, like Scotus, insisted that divine grace precedes a disposition &
isn’t posterior to or contingent upon same.

Additionally, some OFMs invoked additional distinctions like prevenient grace

& dispositions toward justification merited de congruo.

Same Source, though, different manifestations.

Once Scotus established that dispositions are effects not prerequisites, all
that early OFM work re the ontology of grace, while it was important for other
inference blocks, logically got backburnered re any disputes pertaining to
justification (w/Luther).

To delve more deeply into the Franciscan influences on competing

speculative accounts regarding nature, grace & freedom, two excellent
resources are Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification
by Alister McGrath [1] and especially the chapter entitled The Ontology of
Grace of Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle by Vincent L. Strand, SJ
from the volume The Summa Halensis, Doctrines and Debates edited by Lydia
Schumacher [2].

Addendum: The most thorough treatment of the un/created grace distinction

as developed by the early Franciscans may be H. Daniel Monsour’s
dissertation – The relation between uncreated and created grace in the
Halesian Summa, a Lonergan reading

Glorification

In considering any putative dis/continuities (Bavinck emphasized continuities

[3]) of ante-mortem versus post-mortem contemplation,

believing that to some extent the former anticipates the latter & that eternal
life can begin in us now as our portion here even via mystical epistemic
goods and

further stipulating to the beatific vision as the ultimate human telos,

what types of changes, ante- vs post- mortem, would account for any
discontinuities?

Since the telos of the beatific vision is constitutively inherent to being human
(as consistent with Scotus’ absolute primacy of Christ sans felix culpa [4] & as
inhering in terms of our acts & potencies, cf. Hjort), we’re already epistemically
equipped for the beatific vision by our primary nature.
Any post-mortem changes would pertain, therefore, to our secondary nature,
where grace operates & where divine presences,

because they are to the intellect as form is to matter (e.g. consistent with
Bonaventure’s illuminationist epistemology [5]),

will gift us new epistemic – not equipment for processing (e.g. as in Marcel’s
epistemology of mysticism, which is excellent [6]), but – goods to be
processed (e.g. as in Stump’s ontology of divine presence, which is also good
[7]).

While divine presencings can vary, both ante- & post-mortem, by kinds & per
intensities, and while they are ordinarily divinely calibrated in terms of both
manners & degrees of presencings, as will be commensurate with our levels
of intrasubjective authenticity via conversion & intersubjective unity via
theosis, at the same time, we mustn’t a priori rule out extraordinary
presencings that might be gifted independent of our levels of soul maturation!

There simply are no character-based, disposition-based or indwelling-based

beatific contingencies. This is not to deny a role for any otherwise
indispensable purgative processes, as called for.

Furthermore, consistent with my belief in a radical theoanthropological

continuity between our protological, historical & eschatological experiences of
divine presencings, we mustn’t a priori rule out transitory ante-mortem beatific
visions in addition to perpetual post-mortem beatific visions. For that matter,
transitory beatific visions could very well play various roles in post-mortem
purgative realities, too. (I have a logical defense vis a vis the problem of evil
that justifies these gratuitous extraordinary presencings, but it’s beyond the
scope of this musing).

We might conceive the beatific vision in terms of both a unitive harmony &
enjoyment of the perpetually novel expressions of the divine energies (e.g.
Nyssen [8]) as well as a noetic identity & enjoyment of the perpetually novel
illuminations of the divine incomprehensibility (e.g. Aquinas [8]).

With both Cajetan & de Lubac we might agree that, finally, “‘this end is hidden
from us because it is the supernatural end of our soul.”

With de Lubac, we must insist that “but for us, unlike Cajetan, it is not the
absence of any desire that is the reason for ignorance: rather it is the depth
of our desire.” [9]

Hence, we’ll enjoy, in eternal epectasy, the perpetually novel expressions of the
divine energies as well as the perpetually novel illuminations of the divine
incomprehensibility. It’s already begun!

1 – Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification by Alister

McGrath pdf link

2- The Summa Halensis, Doctrines and Debates, Edited by Lydia Schumacher

3 – Revisiting Bavinck and the Beatific Vision by Cory C. Brock pdf link

4 – Writings of the Subtle Doctor on the absolute primacy of Jesus Christ by

Fr. Maximilian Mary Dean, Hermit

God freely creates all rational creatures to share in His glory and to be glorified
in Him in varying degrees

5 – Bonaventure’s Critique of Thomas Aquinas by Brendan Case

6 – Toward an epistemology of mysticism: Knowing God as mystery by

Theresa Tobin pdf link

7 – Omnipresence, Indwelling, and the Second-Personal by E. Stump pdf link

8 – Face to face, the beatific vision according to Gregory of Nyssa and
Thomas Aquinas by Victor Hjort pdf link

there is an inherent telos for all humanity pointing to its fulfillment in the beatific
vision

9 – Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace by NJ Healy pdf link

Supplement

To delve more deeply into various Franciscan contributions to the competing

speculative accounts regarding nature, grace & freedom, among the best
resources I’ve been able to access are

1) Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification by Alister

McGrath

2) The Summa Halensis, Doctrines and Debates edited by Lydia Schumacher,

especially Vincent L. Strand, SJ’s contributuon entitled The Ontology of Grace
of Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle

3) H. Daniel Monsour’s dissertation – The relation between uncreated and

created grace in the Halesian Summa, a Lonergan reading

To more quickly focus on the points most salient to our universal divine
presence concerns, I would direct those interested in Monsour’s dissertation
(re uncreated and created grace in the Halesian Summa) to his repeated use
(13 times) of the phrase “already wholly present God.” He invokes it as a
reference to “the just” in the context of how uncreated grace, the Holy Spirit,
precedes transformata, i.e. the habitus of Godlikeness, and isn’t, rather,
posterior to or contingent upon same.

While Monsour’s Halesian account of sanctification is integral to my own

pneumatological account, a question yet begs regarding how anyone comes
to a state of justification, e.g. by cooperation with baptismal grace.

So, we must inquire further to ask to whom are the channels of grace open &
how might they variously access its assistance to finally attain their inherent
human teloi, including both the penultimate purgative restoration & ultimate
unitive beatific vision?

Often, the best strategy for cutting to the chase in matters of great
theoanthropological moment is to put forward such questions in limit cases,
which can more quickly & most sharply expose the theological tensions that
are in play, e.g. How many angels can …?

One limit case that well suits the needs of my pneumatological approach in
this particular Franciscan context is the one discussed by the International
Theological Commission in its publication – The Hope of Salvation for Infants
Who Die Without Being Baptized.

To more quickly turn our focus to the points most salient to our immediate
concerns, I’ll repeat the strategy that I employed for Monsour’s dissertation,
wherein I pointed to repeated occurrences of the phrase “already wholly
present God.” [Use your browser’s in-page “search” feature.]

In the ITC’s document regarding “The Hope of Salvation,” I would direct all to
those 13 paragraphs therein which cite “GS 22,” which is a reference to
Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution On the Church in the Modern World,
Gaudium et Spes.

Below is a sampling of those paragraphs in the ITC document. They speak for
themselves (not that they aren’t susceptible to weasel wording sophistries).
They are too important to my central concerns – to whom are the channels of
grace open & how might they variously access its assistance vis a vis our
already wholly present God – to leave the work of looking them up with the
reader. And, to those who’d invoke a distinction of a mere divine
omnipresencing over against an indwelling, still, whatever distinctions are in
play vis a vis divine presencings, there’s no coherently defensible way to
invoke them to support a concrete natura pura.

Excerpts that cite Gaudium et Spes from the International Theological

Commission in its publication regarding infants who die without being
baptized

It is important to recognise a “double gratuity” which calls us into being and

simultaneously calls us to eternal life. Though a purely natural order is
conceivable, no human life is actually lived in such an order. The actual order is
supernatural; channels of grace are open from the very beginning of each
human life. All are born with that humanity which was assumed by Christ
himself and all live in some kind of relation to him, with different degrees of
explicitness (cf. LG 16) and acceptance, at every moment.

Because, by his Incarnation, the Son of God “in a certain way united himself”
with every human being, and because Christ died for all and all are in fact
“called to one and the same destiny, which is divine”, the Church believes that
“the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way
known to God, in the paschal mystery.

The Second Vatican Council teaches that God does not deny “the assistance
necessary for salvation” to those who, without any fault of their own, have not
yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but who, with the help of grace,
“strive to lead a good life”. God enlightens all people “that they may at length
have life” (cf. LG 16). Again it teaches that grace is “active invisibly” in the
hearts of all people of good will.

The following words, in particular, seem truly universal in their scope. “For since
Christ died for all, and since all are in fact called to one and the same destiny,
which is divine [cumque vocatio hominis ultima revera una sit, scilicet divina],
we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made
partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” (GS 22). This profound
sentence of Vatican II takes us into the heart of the loving purpose of the
blessed Trinity and stresses that God’s purpose exceeds our understanding.

His Resurrection is the source of humanity’s hope (cf.1 Cor 15:20); in him alone
is there life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10); and the Holy Spirit offers to all a
participation in his paschal mystery.

There is a fundamental unity and solidarity between Christ and the whole
human race. By his Incarnation, the Son of God has united himself, in some way
(“quodammodo”), with every human being (GS 22).[119] There is, therefore, no
one who is untouched by the mystery of the Word made flesh. Humanity, and
indeed all creation, has been objectively changed by the very fact of the
Incarnation and objectively saved by the suffering, death and resurrection of
Christ.[120] However, that objective salvation must be subjectively appropriated
(cf. Acts 2:37-38; 3:19), ordinarily by the personal exercise of free will in favour
of grace …

The teaching of St Paul would urge us to redress the balance and to centre
humanity on Christ the saviour, to whom all, in some way, are united.[124] “He
who is the ‘image of the invisible God’[125] is himself the perfect man who has
restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured
ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not
absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare” (GS
22). We wish to stress that humanity’s solidarity with Christ (or, more properly,
Christ’s solidarity with all of humanity) must have priority over the solidarity of
human beings with Adam …

Because all people live in some kind of relation to Christ (cf. GS 22), and the
Church is the body of Christ, all people live also in some kind of relation to the
Church at every moment. The Church has a profound solidarity or communion
with the whole of humanity …

Questions about nature, grace & freedom were raised, but not explicitly
answered, in Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World (Gaudium et Spes) and its Declaration on the Relation of the Church with
Non-Christian Religions (Nostra aetate), as well as in the International
Theological Commission’s publication, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who
Die Without Being Baptized. The same questions would pertain to the
presence of Christ’s grace outside the formal bounds of the church as
asserted by Pope John Paul II.

To grapple with these unanswered questions, anthropologically &

metaphysically, I have mostly turned to the personalist, existential & critical
realist neo-Thomisms of Clarke, Maritain & Lonergan, respectively.

Other theologians who’ve most inspired me – but whom I approach using

more of contemplative & phenomenological heuristic, such as in the context
of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises – include those from the nouvelle & certain
transcendental Thomists, whose accounts don’t seem rigorously metaphysical
to me, e.g. nouvelle – Maréchal & de Lubac and transcendental – Rahner.

For his part, Lonergan, anthropologically, observed our cognitional structures.

His cognitional theory grounded his metaphysics and pneumatology. It
dovetails quite well with my Charismatic sensibilities & Gelpi’s
theoanthropology of conversions. Gelpi’s social relational metaphysic of
experience also fits well with Bracken’s metaphysic of intersubjectivity (both
Peircean influenced).

For his part, Rahner’s epistemology was vague, his cognitional account
grounded in his metaphysics. What I most appreciate about his take is that,
theologically, he offered a divine self-communication account, where created
graces are constitutively related to uncreated grace via quasi-formal
causality. That account squares quite well with Lonergan’s theology of the
divine missions.

A caveat, though, from Burrell:

So we can see that what is needed is a theoretical grasp of these matters which
does not purport to be an explanation, in the sense of attempting to show “how
it works.” For there is no mechanism at work — the act of creation is not itself a
motion, so we must move beyond recourse to imaging the forces at work. The
name I like to give such a strategy is “grammatical,” without thereby conceding
that “it is all a matter of language,” but rather insisting that one needs to be
guided by the entailments (positive and negative) of the assertions one can
make, and that is all. In short, one needs to know where questioning here comes
to an end, and the proper sort of knowing in such matters will involve an
“unknowing” which acknowledges that one simply cannot go on. While both
Maritain and Lonergan display a keen awareness of this feature of theological
inquiry, one cannot help but recognize that Lonergan has translated that
constraint into the grammar of his own treatment better than Maritain was able
to do. I have already offered my hypothesis to locate the source of this
difference: in Maritain’s continued dependence on a commentary tradition
which failed to understand such matters, while his mentor and Lonergan’s
understood them exquisitely.

Jacques Maritain and Bernard Lonergan on Divine and Human Freedom by

David B. Burrell, C.S.C.

Regarding Rahner’s divine self-communication account, where created graces

are constitutively related to uncreated grace via quasi-formal causality, as
married to Lonergan’s theology of the divine missions, taken together, those
Trinitarian theologies of Being in love can serve as the basis for our
formulations of psychological analogies, which can help us better understand
the Trinity.

Per Kujan, Lonergan’s 4 point hypothesis “identifies four created supernatural

realities through which human beings participate in the four relations among
the three divine persons. These four created supernatural realities are the
human existence of Jesus (i.e., the esse secundarium), sanctifying grace, the
habit of charity, and the light of glory (i.e., the lumen gloriae) whereby the saints
in heaven see God. Through
these four, people participate, respectively, in the four divine relations of
paternity, active
spiration, passive spiration, and filiation. Paternity, filiation, and passive
spiration constitute the three divine persons, respectively, as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Active spiration is really identical to paternity and filiation
considered together.

Participation in the Triune God: Engaging Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Theology

with Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis, as Developed by Robert
Doran by Michael Kujan, Ph.D.

Regarding those questions about nature, grace & freedom that were raised in
Vatican II and in its wake, I commend Robert M. Doran’s Actual Grace and the
Elevation of the Secular and also Doran’s Invisible Missions: The Grace that
Heals Disjunctions.

Note: Often, when otherwise self-described panentheists are talking about

various divine-human co-constitutive theophanic (expressive) hownesses of
our secondary natures, where grace operates, they get misinterpreted as if
they are, instead, talking about the quidditative whatness of our primary nature,
where the analogy of being applies. They can thus be facilely & mistakenly
labeled as pantheists. This risk is greater for vernacular theologians, who don’t
(by definition, right?) employ the rigorous & nuanced academic definitions that
are so often required in order to disambiguate words with equivocal
meanings. Those meanings, however inartfully expressed, can often be
discovered by how they’re presented in other contexts within any given
author’s oeuvre.

In short, there are enough real heretics in the world that we need not conjure
them where they don’t exist. ~ Matthew J. Milliner

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