The Christian State of Life

395 Pages·2002·2.03 MB·English

THE CHRISTIAN STATE OF LIFE
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR
THE CHRISTIAN STATE
OF LIFE
TRANSLATED BY
Sister Mary Frances McCarthy
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
Title of German original:
Christlicher Stand
© 1977 Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln
Cover by Victoria Hoke Lane
With ecclesiastical approval
© 1983 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-7-885
Library of Congress catalogue number 82-84580
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface on the Scope of This Book
PART I
BACKGROUND
I. The Calling to Love
1. The Great Commandment
2. Obligation and Choice
3. Love and Counsel (Thomas / Ignatius)
4. Love and the Vows
II. From Original State to Final State
1. Creation and Service
2. Grace and Mission
3. Man in Paradise
4. Heaven
PART II
THE CHRISTIAN STATES OF LIFE
I. The First Division of the States of Life
1. The Process of Division
2. The Founding of the State of Election
3. On the Relationship between the States of Life
4. Image and Truth
II. The Christian State of Life
1. Christ’s State of Life
2. Mary’s State of Life
3. The Christian’s State of Life: “In Christ”
4. The Married State
III. The Second Division of the States of Life
1. The Priestly State
2. The Priestly State and the State of the Counsels
a. Way of Life and Ethos
b. The Two States of Election in the New Testament
c. On the Evolution of the Two States of Election
d. Scholasticism and the State of Perfection
e. More Recent Pronouncements
f. The Present State of the Question
3. The State of Lay Persons in the World
4. The States of Life and the Secular Orders
5. Evangelical State, Priestly State, Lay State
PART III
THE CALL
I. The Nature of the Call
1. The Divine Call
2. The Stages of the Call
3. The Forms of the Call
4. The Elements of the Call
II. The Historical Actuality of the Call
1. The Call Is Made Known
2. Recognition of the Call
3. Acceptance of the Call
4. Rejection of the Call
Key to Abbreviations
PREFACE ON THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK
WHAT IS INTENDED*
The sole purpose of this book is to provide a comprehensive meditation on the
foundations and background of St. Ignatius’ contemplation on the “Call of
Christ”,1 on the answer we must give if we want “to give greater proof of [our]
love” (Sp Ex, 97), and on the choice explicitly demanded of us: either to follow
Christ our Lord to “the first state of life, which is that of observing the
commandments”, of which he has given us an example by his obedience to his
parents; or to follow him to “the second state, which is that of evangelical
perfection”, of which he has given us an example by leaving his family “to
devote himself exclusively to the service of his eternal Father”. And this so that
we can “arrive at perfection”—which is, of course, the perfection of Christian
love—“in whatever state or way of life God our Lord may grant us to choose”
(Sp Ex, 135). In his Directory,2 St. Ignatius adds that clearer signs are needed for
entering upon the first than upon the second of these ways.
The goal of our meditation is to understand why this act of choosing a “state
or way of life” “within our Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church” (Sp Ex, 170)
is possible and necessary in the first place, and why there should be any either-or
since both ways are capable of leading us to the same “perfection of love”, just
as the same act, viewed from different perspectives, can be either absolute or
relative.
We begin, then, by affirming in its totality the significance conferred by the
Spiritual Exercises on the practice of the principal act of the Christian life—a
significance we recognize as emanating from the Gospel itself, from the personal
meeting of the believer with Jesus Christ. Far from attempting to undermine this
significance, we seek to understand it more fully, particularly within the
structural and historical realities of the Church, for it is only within these
realities—which, as they relate to calling, state and choice, have remained
essentially unchanged since the Spiritual Exercises were composed—that the
Christian is able to meet Christ concretely.
If this acceptance of the Church’s interpretation of the Gospel makes our
meditation seem naive and vulnerable, it is well to remember that there is no
aspect of this interpretation that has not been contested and the “scientific”
refutation of which has not elicited long treatises which, in the end, have also
failed to satisfy those who reject the Church’s viewpoint.
WHAT IS PRESUPPOSED
1. We presuppose, in the first place, that there exist within the Church, in which
all Christians are called by God to take their stand3 and where there is room for
all to stand, many contrasting and mutually supplementary states of life.4 Our
concern is with the concept of “state of life”, not with the antiquity of the
expression5 or its (alleged) relationship to a medieval world view,6 but with the
concept that is (and that Ignatius considered to be) synonymous with “life”,
vita.7 We shall investigate the theological origin of this differentiation of states
as it appears and is reconciled in the life of Jesus (and Mary) and shall attempt to
locate it in the “state of fallen nature” in which the originally intended synthesis
was shattered. This topic is discussed at greater length in Part II, where we speak
of “The Christian States of Life”.
2. We presuppose also that to ensure the unity of his Church Jesus Christ, in
calling the Twelve and challenging them to a radical following of himself,
intended a primary election in which the personal element—the decision to share
his life—was the definitive one and the element of ministerial calling (the call to
the “priestly” as opposed to the lay state as the Church later distinguished them)
was a secondary stage. This sentence contains a fundamental presupposition of
our whole train of thought. In summary, it recognizes in those who are
“specially” called to follow Christ (the word “specially” cannot be avoided here)
a personal union of the state of evangelical perfection and the priestly state, but
postulates within the Church itself a temporal, and even a qualitative,
preeminence of the state of evangelical perfection over that of the ecclesiastical
ministry.8 Christ’s primary intention was not to form a hierarchy, but to win men
to that personal following of himself that leads to the reconciliation of the world
with God by a renunciatory, even a crucified, love: with him, they are to be “the
light of the world”.
Early theologians saw this fact clearly;9 Vatican Council II took it for
granted.10 Since Martin Hengel’s Nachfolge und Charisma [Discipleship and
charisma],11 it is no longer necessary to refute those minimalist exegetes who
claim that Jesus was merely a kind of rabbi, who, like so many, accepted
disciples “for the time being”, but that it was only after Easter that the
relationship came to be understood as an election that was absolute and binding
for life. For this reason, Heinz Schürmann’s foundational study, the frequently
quoted and frequently attacked “Der Jüngerkreis Jesu als Zeichen fur Israel und
als Urbild des kirchlichen Rätestandes” [Jesus’ disciples as a sign for Israel and
as a prototype of the Church’s state of evangelical perfection]12 continues to be
valid in all that is essential.
There are two corollaries to this line of thought. 1) In addition to the total
personal calling of those on whom Jesus, in his lifetime, expressly bestowed the
full powers of ecclesial office, there was also established a permanent bond
between official priesthood and personal sharing in the priesthood of Christ (in
the “state of evangelical perfection”), however flexibly and variably the Church
may have interpreted this bond throughout her history. 2) When the two
ordines13 are ordered functionally—as “services”—to the fundamental state
(Lat. status) within the Church as such (i.e., to the laos, the “people”), they thus
become both the determinant and the support of this status—and this in such a
way that the Church is first founded upon (Eph 2:20) and endures by reason of
(Rev 21:14) the office, but the office itself, in its turn, is founded upon the total
self-giving of the ecclesia immaculata (Eph 5:27), on the state of life of those
who are at least supposed to represent perfect love.14
3. We are not concerned, then, with exegetical theorizing about the origin of the
“three evangelical counsels”. Unquestionably, they—like the “seven”
sacraments—were “counted” at a later date and singled out as the constitutive
elements of the “life of evangelical perfection”—without, of course, losing their
meaning in relation to Christ as the approximation of his loving gift of himself to
the Father and to men. Admittedly, too, the three “counsels” are rooted
differently in the Gospel and in Paul. But that does not alter the fact that together
they so completely exhaust the possibilities of what can be given15 that they are
in no way subordinate to any of Jesus’ other counsels.
If the evangelists and the primitive Church extend their literal understanding
of the counsels analogously and with full justification to one that is (purely)
spiritual (cf. Sp Ex, 98), this does not prevent them from retaining the literal
interpretation as well.16 Only exegetical prejudice (which minimalizes Jesus’
call to discipleship) can reject as unbiblical the concept of a “special” (or, we
might say, a “qualitative”) discipleship.17 And even if the primitive Church as a