This introduction to Christian theology is easy to follow, with each verse of the Creed (here, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed) explained in turn by three authors: an Orthodox monk, a Christian esotericist and an author and publisher of metaphysics, whose first book on the Christian mysteries obtained the imprimatur of the Diocese of Paris. These contributors share a common goal: to share with as many people as possible the most sublime elements of Christian revelation they have come across.
In the second part, the potential christification of human life is shown, with reference to love, mystical theology and the spiritual life.
Finally, a conclusion points to the current challenges facing theology, which stem from the gap between a lived theology and an overly academic theology.
In his preface and afterword, Professor of Dogmatic Theology Johannes Hoff positions the ambition of this book within the academic evolution of theology, particularly in Anglo-Saxon circles.
Contents
PART ONE. OF GOD
Chapter I. God the Father
Chapter II. Creation
Chapter III. God the Son
Chapter IV. From the Fall to the Incarnation
Chapter V. The Virgin Mary
Chapter VI. From crucifixion to resurrection
Chapter VII. The parousia and the pleroma
Chapter VIII. God the Holy Spirit
Chapter IX. On the Trinity
Chapter X. The Church
Chapter XI. On the communion of saints
Chapter XII. Sacraments
Chapter XIII. Death, the end of the world and the Kingdom
PART TWO. OF HUMAN LIFE
Chapter XIV. Of Love
Chapter XV. Man capable of God
Chapter XVI. Mystical theology and the spiritual life
CONCLUSION. CURRENT CHALLENGES FOR THEOLOGY
Excerpt
On the uniqueness of the more than all
God is
If God is unknowable as such, his existence seems self-evident to us, as it did to the founder of science, Aristotle, whose reasoning leads to a necessary Cause of causes. This is because the possible sequence of successive second causes1 rests on the necessary existence of a first cause. “If nothing is first, absolutely nothing is cause”2, he writes, meaning that science itself, as knowledge through causes, would become illusory. From then on, we might even wonder whether believing in the obvious is still a matter of belief.
Contrary to the false opposition between knowing and believing – there are those who know and those who believe! -We can neither know what we don’t believe in, nor believe in what we don’t know anything about. So there isn’t a line running from ignorance to belief to knowledge, but the order of knowing is necessarily joined by the order of wanting. We decide to adhere to knowledge. In this case, we believe in – we know – the obvious existence of God as such, before needing to know more about Him.
One God
Against all expectations, it would be better here to forget the name “monotheism”, a word born, at the same time as “ethnology”, in the colonialist and ethnocentric XIXe century of the “superior races”. Thus, analyzing the “inferior races” (the “savages” of the XVIIIe century became the “primitives” and then, under the pen of Tylor3, the “inferior races”!), one theory was that, starting from animism, these peoples passed to fetishism, then to naturism, then, having become “semi-civilized” (sic), reached polytheism and, finally, monotheism4. Others, on the other hand, have imagined the opposite theory of an Urmonotheismus: a “primitive monotheism” that could degenerate, in a phase of decadence, into dualism or polytheism5, a theory based on cases of irrefutable “monotheisms”: “You, the only God, outside of whom there is no other” (Hymn to the Sun by Pharaoh Akhenaten, 1350 BC). However, counter-examples to each of these evolutionary theories have rendered them both obsolete, so it’s time to abandon the overly conjectural historicist perspective.
All the more so since we have the irrefutable evidence of the uniqueness of the superlative: “the greatest”. This “greatest” is necessarily the only one of its kind6. This banality, experienced even by peoples with a “prelogical mentality” (to use Lévy-Bruhl’s unfortunate expression7), puts this recognition of a unique “Greatest”, a unique God, within everyone’s reach, in every time and place. And this experience, following in the footsteps of many others such as S. Anselme and Descartes, is one that everyone can make their own.
Thus we find everywhere the “jealous God” (Exodus XXXIV, 14): “I am the First and the Last, and there is no God besides me” (Isaiah, XLIV, 6), or “There is no God besides Allah”, Brahman and Parabrahman (the Absolute from which everything proceeds), Tao (Supreme Being, Mother of the world), etc. In Christianity, we recognize a single God, “by nature, by substance and by essence”, “a single true God, immense and unchanging, incomprehensible, Almighty and ineffable” (Latina). Christianity recognizes only one God, “by nature, by substance and by essence”, “one true God, immense and immutable, incomprehensible, Almighty and ineffable” (Lateran IV: DS 800).
Father God
Many, if not all, religions have said that God is “Father” (or even “Mother”), which is an obvious analogy with human life. However, what will be fundamental to Christianity here is that it will be said that He is just as much “Son”8, in fact, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: Three Persons, but one Essence, one Substance or Nature absolutely simple (Lateran IV: DS 800)9. Not only is God Son, but He incarnates Himself in Jesus Christ, “annihilating Himself, taking the condition of a slave” (Phil II, 7), washes the feet of His disciples (Jn XIII, 4-5), presents Himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Mt XI, 29) and accepts crucifixion and death. This is how it came to be said: “The crucified Messiah, a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the pagans” (1 Co I, 23). It is this God-Son who, through His death and resurrection, makes man’s filiation: He became man so that man might become God (S. Irénée de Lyon). Thus, the Father passes through Him to create the world, and man passes through Him to return to the Father: “He who has seen me has seen the Father”, He will say, since “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn XIV, 9-10). And this project of making man participate in the divine dates back to his creation, with the Fall itself seen as the passage through which imperfect man must pass in order to become God by grace (Saint Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John).
Footnotes
- See glossary.[↩]
- Métaphysique I, a c. 2, translated by Jean-Marie Vernier, S’ouvrir à la métaphysique, Paris: Hora Decima, 2022, p. 18.[↩]
- Ethnologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917).[↩]
- Some have added a pre-polytheistic phase: polydemonism, and a post-polytheistic phase: monolatry.[↩]
- Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954), ethnologist and linguist; after Andrew Lang (1844-1912), writer and ethnographer.[↩]
- “The Supreme Being must necessarily be unique, that is, without equal. […] If God is not unique, he is not God” (Tertullian, Mk I, 3).[↩]
- Sociologist and anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939).[↩]
- See chapter VI. From crucifixion to resurrection, section 2. On the vertical identity of Christ-Verb-Son.[↩]
- See Chapter IX. On the Trinity, Section 1: The person is only a relationship.[↩]
Notice of publication
Three authors, one of them a monk, have come together to create this “introduction to theology”, offering complementary sensibilities and perspectives, and all keen to share the most sublime Christian theology they have ever glimpsed.
The unity of their approach to theology is revealed as you read the many short presentations: theology is nothing if it is not mystical, if the presentations veiled by words do not give access to truths of faith, directly touching the heart of the believer.
After a first part focusing on God through the various elements of faith in the Creed, a second part looks at the potential of human life, beyond theology, for genuine christification; finally, a conclusion will point out the current challenges to theology that flow from this.
In his preface and afterword, Johannes Hoff positions this work in the context of current theological research, highlighting the vast field open to meditation and discussion.
In questa raffinata monografia, due laici cattolici e un monaco ortodosso si addentrano negli insondabili misteri della dottrina cristiana, guidati dallo sguardo luminoso della Fede. Oggetto delle loro profonde meditazioni, sospese tra riflessione teologica e slancio spirituale, sono gli articoli del Credo, pilastri eterni su cui poggia l’intera architettura del cristianesimo.
È un itinerario esigente ma imprescindibile, che ogni lettore potrà intraprendere al fianco degli autori, con la consapevolezza che le verità qui dischiuse non rappresentano un punto d’arrivo, bensì uno stimolo per proseguire oltre, verso un’intima e personale ricerca del divino. La teologia, infatti, assolve la sua missione più alta nel condurre l’uomo al cospetto di Dio, dissolvendo le ombre del dubbio che potrebbero smarrire il viandante lungo il cammino della fede.
A suggellare l’opera con autorevolezza e profondità, il teologo Johannes Hoff firma l’introduzione e la conclusione, offrendo il saldo fondamento cristiano che permea l’intero volume e ne rafforza la portata speculativa e spirituale.
