The Primal Embrace
O Lover,
A landmark theological question debated in the late Medieval and Renaissance periods was this: if human’s “fall” had not occurred, would the Incarnation of the Christ have taken place? In other words, was Your enfleshment/life/teaching/passion/resurrection of the Christ intrinsic to who You are, something that would have taken place whatever else transpired, or was it damage-control in reaction to human brokenness? Was, and is, the Christ event a window into who You are in and of Yourself, ever and always, or strategy for disaster relief? Was the Incarnation active and intrinsic to You, or reactive and extrinsic? Was Your Self-disclosure in the Christ rooted in Your very heart or a necessary response to a tragedy? In short, was Bethlehem “Plan A” or “Plan B”?
The question in point is no mere abstraction or esoterica for me. The side which largely won that historical debate, one championed by Aquinas and permeating much of the Mass to this day, variously focused on the biblical strand of sacrifice in its understanding of the Christ, particularly the cross. Terms such as satisfaction, substitution, propitiation, expiation, and ransom were and remain part of this view shorthanded by the word “atonement.” The towering implicit question raised is this: what does this view say about who You are? Do You require satisfaction of Your anger, assuagement of Your wrath, the blood of a sacrificial proxy to offset human botching, enforcement of a contract which we humans broke?
It is no coincidence that our question received an increasingly affirmative response during the very flowering of mysticism. Severely neglected today is the fact that an astonishing list—e.g., Duns Scotus, William of St. Thierry, Meister Eckhart, Jan van Ruusbroec, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, Juan de la Cruz—espoused a “minority report” in rooting the Incarnation in Your intrinsic relationality, solidarity, Identification, and Self-emptying: the Abyss of Your Love. With William and Eckhart in particular the relentlessly lavish overflow of Your interior triune life is central to everything having being. Thus understood, the cosmos, the lovechild issuing out of Your Circular Dance of Love (perichorésis), is unqualifiedly good. Whatever the theorizing as to the source of evil, mystics like Julian and Catherine of Genoa teach that with You there is neither wrath nor the punitive. Thus Matthew Fox in the title of his book Original Blessing (1983) challenges the Augustinian notion of “original sin” as central to heílsgeschichte (“salvation history”).
So what is at stake in the responses to our question? Is Your disposition trustworthily and decisively depicted in the collage of glimpses embodied by Jesus, most notably the Fourth Gospel? Or are You finally to be understood in terms of wrath, satisfaction, and sacrifice, this in the name of divine “justice”? Across the decades my own response to our query has been gradually assuming form, for via Your Christ I continue to be the recipient of glimpses of Your disposition, ever and always. O Lover, when demoralized by the latest headline, I see in the Cosmic Christ embodied glimpses into You as the Tsunami of encompassing Love; when barging through yet another tipping point regarding the sustainability of the planet, I am shown via the Christ the scale of Your irrepressible intention “to make all things new” (Apoc 21:5); when repeatedly encountering the illicit coupling of authoritarianism and Christianity, I glimpse via the Christ kenotic Self-outpouring as Your ubiquitous M.O.; when confronted by the inscrutableness of my own impending death, I wager all on who Your Christ has shown You to be; when lured by the siren of despair, I am shown via the lamb “with the marks of slaughter upon him” (5:6) Your “new heaven and new earth” (21:1).
In the words of the “weeping prophet,” “You have seduced me, O [Lover], and I have allowed myself to be seduced” (Jer 20:7). I am persuaded that Your amorous embrace—primal, unconditional, all-encompassing, inexhaustible, consummational—is Reality Itself, the infinitely large picture within which all that has being is held. In this my December that embrace is my final resting place.
