Antecedents

Talking with Gianni Caputa yesterday, on the way back from Nazareth, I learnt that von Balthasar was a disciple of Henri de Lubac. I know that de Lubac was himself influenced very deeply by Pierre Rousselot, whose unpublished work he edited for publication. See my paper, Tradition and Innovation in Christianity. 

I was wondering about the connection between de Lubac and Blondel. A cursory search of the net throws up a book that i actually have, though in Nashik: Antonio Russo, Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia. L'influsso di Blondel.

On the other hand, it might be interesting to explore De Smet's roots in Pierre Scheuer and Joseph Marechal. 

Persons and love

"A Gesu' interessano le persone." (Rossi de Gasperis, Sentieri di vita 2.2:114) Persons: in the final analysis, those who are able to love. That love is of course made possible by the intellectual nature, which means their ability to know and to freely decide and act. Love presuppose freedom: without freedom there is no love. And somehow, freedom is linked also to knowledge. Not in a necessarily linear way, but yes, linked. (Nihil amatum nisi cognitum, and the exception, minor and major, to this principle.) 

Authenticity, major and minor, and missio ad gentes

Thinking about Lonergan's distinction between major and minor authenticity, I was wondering: could we identify 'good conscience' with minor authenticity?

The distinction might also well be applied to missio ad gentes. We need not question the minor authenticity of people: they might well be good Hindus, good Buddhists, good Muslims. But proclamation of the Good News of Jesus raises the question of major authenticity.

Or perhaps: it may also raise the question of major authenticity - especially if the tradition in qustion has no place for such a revelation. E.g. the rationalism that seems to be to be inherent in Judaism and Islam - by which I mean that both these religions seem to me to remain within the bounds of what Catholics call 'natural theology', and there is the inbuilt temptation to say: nothing beyond, which where the rationalism thing comes in. Perhaps also Hinduism and Buddhism - though with these, especially with Advaita and Buddhism, the question of whether the finite can bear the weight of the infinite also comes in (here Ratzinger might be helpful). 

Aesthetic, moral and religious

I think we are called to move from "I like / I don't like" to "it is good to...", and then finally to "embracing it as God's will for me."

Or: from the aesthetic to the moral to the religious (Kierkegaard).

Moral conversion is from satisfactions to values (Lonergan). I would think it is from the aesthetic to the properly moral. The aesthetic is a broader and more significant category. It is more than merely 'satisfactions.' It is refined taste, for example.

And religious conversion is not necessarily theistic. Provided there is universal loving, a loving 'without limits', I think we are dealing with the properly religious (Lonergan). But it is possible to go further (not without an at least implicit intellectual conversion) and recognize not merely love but Love / God / the God of Jesus.

Specific to the Christian faith is not the gift of God's love, but the mediation of that gift in Jesus. (Lonergan)

The universal vocation to holiness

In the context of our discussion (in the course on Salesian Spirituality at Ratisbonne) about the possibility or the universal vocation to holiness:

Despoiling the Egyptians (Ex 10)
Universal belief, rather than universal doubt (Newman)
John Paul II, Fides et Ratio
The opposite: a blind and blanket rejection of all other religions is not Catholic, but perhaps Protestant, Barthian certainly.

Philosophers of gift

Massimiliano De Luca, a Salesian who works in Caserta, spoke to me of several 'philosophers of gift'. I had known about Marcel Mauss, from one of the essays in the Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology, and perhaps also Derrida, but had not heard about Ferdinand Ebner. Massimo also included Ricoeur. Something to look into.

Hedwig Conrad-Martius

Placed an order for Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, shipped by Abe Books all the way from Japan… should be here in 30-60 days. The book is one of  Ratzinger’s sources for his reflections on person and relation. The author is a woman, a phenomenologist and Christian mystic. Though Protestant, she received a dispensation to become the godmother of Edith Stein. Stein’s interest in Catholicism came from a visit to the home of Conrad-Martius.

C-M was one of the first women in German to pursue a university education. She came under the influence of Husserl, but later felt that Husserl's transcendental idealist tendency was not adequate. She herself worked out what is called an "ontological phenomenology."

Interesting that her Das Sein is one of the three sources quoted by Ratzinger when he indicates directions for the further development of his insights about the basically relational nature of all personal being. The other two sources are B. Welte, “Homoousios hemin,” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon III, ed. A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht (Würzburg, 1954), 51-80 and H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor, tr. Brian E. Daley (San Francisco: Ignatius and Communio Books, 2003), 235-55. See http://books.google.co.il/books?id=Y1l5R-eROwYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Perhaps I should work towards a second article on Person and Relation, concentrating this time on Ratzinger's sources. A sort of retrieval of Ratzinger along the lines of what I tried to do for De Smet: what is his understanding of knowing? being? objectivity / truth? Should be extremely interesting. Ratzinger has, of course, a Bonaventure-Franciscan background, fundamentally, in contrast to several of the other leading theologians of the Council who had a Thomist background.