By contrast, his "Introduction to Christianity", written before he became Pope, is a dense and thorough text, of considerable length, and not a book anyone would mistake for simplistic.
Spe Salvi, the Pope's Second Letter, might seem to be a brief text of the Christian Inspirational variety. In Spe Salvi the Pope says Hope comes from God and only Hope in God's future deliverance can sustain humanity; what could be more straightforward? If that is all the books says it hardly seems worth the effort of reading! (But it says much much more).
Through 107 pages of text of simple language a very few footnotes, the Pope enunciates as profound, and radical, an analysis of Christian belief as any ever written. (Indeed, some might wonder if the analysis was strictly orthodox.)
Much of the text discusses whether Christianity is concerned with the saving of individual souls or communities of souls. The emphasis is placed on the connectedness of individuals, through prayer and the Church, with individual salvation being a lesser issue; implicit in this view is that the Church cannot consist of individuals who, once saved, retreat from the world. The world is to be built up by a community and the community needs salvation.
The view of purgatory is especially illustrative here -- in prayers for the departed the person praying cannot be in some way interceding in the purification of the departed's soul -- nevertheless prayers for the dead have a good effect because there is a continued bond between the living and the dead. The living and the dead form a community of believers which jointly moves to salvation.
But salvation, and Hell itself, have a different meaning than commonly understood.
Eternal life is simply a word (poorly) describing an indescribable connection with God -- temporal considerations do not enter into the concept -- and Hell is not a place of eternal punishment but rather the absolute separateness of evil from God. Simplistic views of Heaven about and Hell below are not even worthy of allegorical discussion.
The Pope seriously considers the concerns for justice and describes with some sympathy the works of Marx and Engels; they were moved by a spirit of sympathy for individuals and the community. He finds the flaw in their analysis came not from an evil motive but rather from the erroneous belief that humanity could be perfected. Hope for a perfected humanity will never be sufficient because humanity is imperfect and cannot be perfected. Only from God can come a true Hope, a Hope that will not be disappointed.
But while God is beyond human description, and evil seems to triumph, the rejection by Hockheimer and Adorno of a search for a just God cannot be appropriate. While a radical rejection of images of God might go so far as to reject even an image of a just God, humanity's Hope in this world comes from the straining forward to what perfection can be found in God. Only by trying to become attuned to God and to live in the Hope of God's future just judgment can humanity move forward.
The Pope draws much of his thinking from Jewish sources and notes the links between Church doctrine and Jewish tradition. Some have aid Christians are optimistic but Jews are hopeful -- candidly I never understood what that meant -- but the Pope seems to have taken the concept of Hope and made it central to his view of the Christian life. Optimism is meaningless; Faith from Hope leads to salvation.
Spe Salvi is not easy to find in Canada (perhaps it has flown off the shelves at Chapters/Indigo? I rather suspect the stores didn't order enough copies) but it is easy enough to order from the internet. While not an easy read the book is worth reading, and rereading, several times.
James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
No comments:
Post a Comment