Who Is a Christian?

My former approach to theological/philosophical/literary reading was to sit with book and pen: reading, furious note taking, more reading, more frenetic marginalia. But since I have had a baby (or two or three or four) sitting on my lap for the past six-and-a-half years, I no longer have a free hand to take intensive notes. Instead I have taken to earmarking the pages in my books that deserve repeating, re-reading,  pondering. As it turns out, I have earmarked *every* page in my most recent book selection, Who Is a Christian?, by Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Von Balthasar especially takes aim at the ambivalence of academic Christians. By parodying the academy's patronizing language, Von Balthasar outlines the dichotomy between the "backward-striving Catholic" and the "'modern man' (truly a mythical giant!)" and thereby urges every scholar "to take the Word of God for what it is, namely, a call to an absolute decision…'He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters'" (Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23). And here is where Von Balthasar pointedly critiques the academic world that would divorce faith from reason, that would eradicate religious conviction from scholarly critique: "In scholarly neutrality one can at best labor only on the margins, and those who tarry too long in the margins seem either to have evaded the decision or to have decided in the negative and to be covering up the fact with scholarly activity" (36).

Von Balthasar offers a clarion call toward Christ-centered scholarship. Encouragingly, my discipline of literary theory has begun to explore the themes that we Catholics have embraced for over two millennia: a priori virtues such as love (i.e. Alain Badiou); the importance of bare life (homo sacer), Pauline wisdom, and Benedictine communal living (i.e., Giorgio Agamban); and Christological reconciliation or, in immanent terminology, "hegemonic relationality" (i.e., Ernesto Laclau). These scholars, operating in the margins of Christian belief, adamantly refuse to search beyond the material threshold into the transcendent possibility of an infinite God-creator…but even these self-styled "moderns" cannot explain from where love or conversion or community or reconciliation derives in a purely physical cosmology. They concede that St. (the excision done by "modern" man) Paul spoke quite elegantly if not beautifully and accurately about what it means to love (1 Corinthians 13). And they also insist upon a relationality that reconciles itself unto itself, but heaven forbid, don't mention Jesus---so they say. I even read one scholar write about the failure of Jesus owing to Jesus's inability to wed his radical anti-clericalism to a state-sponsored longevity, as though Christ's death was the death-knell to his radical mission. Hello!? It is precisely because of his death and *resurrection* that Jesus of Nazareth became not only the historical figure that he is today but the Savior of the World. As much as these scholars want to deny Christ (and as much as those who study these texts seek to compartmentalize their Christian belief from their academic reputations), Christ is *always* the answer, looming in the margins of secular scholarship, ready to fill the space with His preeminent light: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6). Even these skeptical, atheistic, relativistic, intellectual, and "modern" theorists cannot help but turn again and again and again to the teachings of our Church. And then they laud themselves for discovering something which first they denied, then they mocked, then they profaned, then they eventually (re)discovered after centuries of disdain, and now they hubristically profess to "backward-striving Catholics" the truths that the Church has held constant from the very beginning. Yet, it is hopeful to see that Christ is again the center of scholarly attention (blessed be to God!) however much the name of Jesus still is ignored, vilified, or treated as an annoying non sequitur to the more enlightened work of immanent research. Indeed, the actual name of "Jesus" is rarely employed by these authors so as to avoid the visceral reactions such iteration imposes: "At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend" (Philippians 2:10). To avoid the intrusion of Jesus, scholars simply avoid uttering his name altogether. As such, they unwittingly offer the highest homage to Jesus's name not unlike the sacred tetragrammaton of ancient Judeo-worship whereby pious Jews honor their/our God by not speaking His name.

I was also particularly taken by Von Balthasar's emphasis on the "doubly intensive theological effort" (42) of the Catholic theologian who must allow for an infinite number of additions to Church pedagogy while also preserving the constant teachings of the Church's past. Where other "modern" approaches even in Christianity favor a "method of subtraction" (ibid.) whereby the solution to moral conundrums results in a relaxation or subtraction of moral laws, Catholics view such theological strain as an ever-deepening relationship between God the Father and we His children. "But how very important it is, as a precondition of such an enterprise, for both parties to the dialogue to have God before them and not at their backs!" (43). Rather than conforming ourselves to God's law, our modern culture demands God's law to change to ourselves. Contrary to the spirit of the times (i.e.,  the serpent-like dialectic of the Hegelian zeitgeist), the Church does not waver from the unchanging truths of God's laws and seeks instead to understand the pedagogical unfolding of God's unchanging laws. "Instead, they must be striving toward him, as the ever greater and more mysterious One, the One who, in the words of Saint Augustine, is 'infinite, in order still to be the object of our search' (Tractate 63, I) (ut inventus quaeratur immensus est)" (ibid.).

Later in the text, Von Balthasar begins to answer the question of the book's title, "Who Is a Christian?"  Rather than looking to the minimalist Christian (i.e., someone who is baptized, someone who fulfills his Easter duties, etc.), he encourages us to look to the maximalist of Christian living, the person who lives according to Christ's example par excellence. Von Balthasar writes, "Anyone wanting to study the essence of a Christian by analyzing a person who cannot really make up his mind whether or not to be one---a person who to some extent understands the demands it makes but lacks the courage to fulfill them; who clearly knows or senses that he does not manage to cut a sufficiently clean figure to convince himself or others---is investigating the wrong object" (57). How often do we hear people objecting to the hypocrisy of Christianity after identifying the tepid or fallen-away Christian as a paragon of said Christianity? "Anyone trying to discover the true nature of a horse or a donkey by examining a mule will run into difficulties" (ibid.), to say the least! Rather than looking to the most wishy-washy of Christian identifiers, why not look to the most convicted, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, or Saint Teresa of Avila, or Saint Padre Pio, or, best of the best, Mother Mary? "Who is a Christian? If we are to advance toward an answer, then we must not waste time on the lower or outer fringes…but must go straight to the center" (58). Such centrifugal radiation reminds me also of C. S. Lewis's contention in Mere Christianity that the Christian must begin with the innermost concentric circle of the self before converting the world of concentric circles far-removed (a commentary against Mrs. Jellyby's telescopic philanthropy to be sure, a la Charles Dickens's Bleak House).

Finally, Von Balthasar speaks profoundly about the tension between worldly markers of success and the elemental power of Christian life. Von Balthasar's words resonate with me especially during a time in my life when very few of my family, friends, or colleagues seem to understand or appreciate my value system of vocational motherhood over academic rank, university affiliation, and intellectual competition. Von Balthasar writes, "What in a worldly sense would seem to be progress and development should in her [i.e., the Church] be immediately suspect of being flight from her true essence. Large numerical increase, honors, wealth, cultural and political positions of power should awaken in her a sense of unease and a fear of having been forgotten by God….The most essential elements of her powers---prayer, suffering, the obedience of faith, the (perhaps not fully utilized) willingness to serve, humility---elude all statistical analysis" (125-26). Von Balthasar further equates "the Church" with "the self": "No longer can any layperson today begin a sentence accusingly with the words, 'the Church ought to…,' without at the same time asking if he himself is doing what she ought to do" (126). Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

Now that Von Balthasar has answered his question, "Who is a Christian?", he then offers the final chapter of his beautiful text to the powerful effects of prayer. He reclaims the profanation of the secular world by arguing that "Pro-fane means outside the sanctuary (fanum). The 'pro' means that we are not yet inside it but also that we stand always in front of it and are moving toward it. So it is in every encounter with another person: it takes place before the sanctuary, but it would not take place at all if the Christian could not see through the profane to the holy and, in this perspective, did not also stride toward it. In the striding, the difference between the profane and the sacred is made manifest" (130). For what do we strive?  Through humility, hope, obedience of faith, and especially prayer, we stride toward Jesus, toward Christ in all our human frailties and stumblings, always foreigners in a foreign land, desperately seeking the kingdom of God and our inheritance through Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection. Homo sacer indeed!