A blurb from Pope Francis on the book jacket of Cardinal Walter Kasper’s Mercy: The Essence of the Christian Gospel, says ‘This book has done me so much good.’ Kasper is the Pope’s theologian and mentor and one can say that the book is a theological accompaniment to Francis’ The Joy of the Gospel (2013). The admiration is mutual because a most recent small book by Kasper is entitled Pope Francis: Revolution of Tenderness and Mercy. In it he describes the Pope as a radical, as beyond ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive’, as more interested in the meaning of being Christian as ‘the humble way of committed people who can move mountains.’ In reflections over the next few months, I will look at this way and its theological base in the divine mercy. The reflections will be a sprint through Kasper. A German theologian of high stature, he writes comprehensively, bringing all theology under the umbrella of divine mercy. He is not an easy read. But like another German theologian, Emeritus Benedict XVI, he is worth the effort because he rewards us with luminous insights that give such life.
Kasper says if God is to matter to people today, the question of divine mercy is the pressing one of our time. Today, interest in God is no longer simply about his existence. Whether the Supreme Being exists and who God is in himself are a matter of indifference to many. What matters is whether God is interested in me? Does God affect my life? Does God care about innocent suffering people or the death of children? And if God seems not to, as Stephen Fry implies in his recent interview with Gay Byrne (RTE Meaning of Life), then God is not worthy of my belief, my loyalty or worship. He is a ‘monster’ to use Fry’s words. Kasper is aware of these questions as he maps for us the major transition in our thinking about God today. As we know, the biblical understanding of God is basic for Christian faith, but in Catholic theology it has always been wedded to Greek philosophical concepts. With such concepts we spoke of God as Subsistent Being with attributes of simplicity, infinity, eternity, omniscience and omnipotence. There is a blessing in such a wedding because it made possible a universal outreach in our language about God. Unfortunately, this language also has suppressed aspects of biblical thought – Kasper calls it the Hellenisation of the scriptures. We became shy in attributing biblical insights without qualification to God and felt that a personal and concrete language of relationship would lead us into the great sin of anthropomorphism. We reserved our devotion for the person of Jesus in the gospels and sacrament, and in doing so we separated Jesus from the living merciful Father he reveals. Kasper says that if we are to make God real in our time we need to make use of a language of relationship. But this is not to resort to a simplistic biblicism that avoids reflective thought. Kasper acknowledges that the more classical metaphysical way to truth has broken down in our postmodern period, but he is heartened by the possibilities for faith language in some contemporary philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Jean Luc Marion. In their systems of thought they espouse a language of relationality that is closer to the Bible. Such a language is not the cool and abstract language of the scholastics, but the full-bodied language of relationship. As Benedict XVI, who espouses the same language in his writings says (drawing on Marion), it is the language of gift. It is the language of the Ultimate One as Being – For – Us because ‘we are created in gift; we live and flourish daily through gift.’
It is through this lens that Kasper looks briefly at the Old and New Testaments. In the OT, he says, one way to understand mercy is through the biblical concept of ‘heart’ (Gk. kardia). In the Bible, ‘heart’ refers to more than the biological human heart; it describes the core of the human person, the seat of his/her feelings, power and judgement. The Bible also applies this world of feeling and emotion to God. Though God is not Father, as we find in the New Testament, the OT God has fatherly qualities. Firstly, God is personal: ‘You are thou and fill the heavens,’ writes the Jewish personalist philosopher, Martin Buber. Secondly, he is father of Israel as choosing them to be his people, entering into covenant with them and making promises. Thirdly, as Creator, he is father of life in all its forms. Not just of our bare existence but of the larger reality of human life which tells us that all qualities and desires are sourced in him and flourish in his care. He is the Living God. This felicitous image may be said to be the hold-all for all OT images. As life-giver God has heart (Gen. 6:6), face (Ex. 13:14) and consuming emotional warmth ‘which never tires nor wearies’ (Is. 40:28). Even the jealous zeal of God is another aspect of his livingness: ‘For the Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God’ (Dt. 4:24). Since God is inclusive of the plenitude of life, it is no wonder that the Jews entrusted to him the complete range of human needs as they did in the psalms. Scripture scholars tell us that this robust trust in the divine responsiveness to human desire and suffering enabled Israel to live with the solitariness of a pure monotheism. Their living God is dynamic and going with his people. Such is the promise in the revelation of the hidden name YHWH to Moses: ‘I will be present as who will be there’. (Ex. 3:13, 15). And in Isaiah, the prophet of the new things God will do: ‘I am the one who does new things, brings about hidden events of which you knew not (Is. 48:6).
The mystery of the Incarnation, says Kasper is the miracle of the New Testament. It is the new thing God has done and is a subversive event in his relationship to us. In the beginning there was a stable; at the end there was the cross. You cannot deny these facts. In the OT God withdraws, so to speak, to make room for his mercy and thereby for life. In the NT God more radically enters the life that is his creation. Through his Son Jesus, God enters into the opposite of himself and takes death upon himself. But as was shown in the promise of resurrection, death could not hold God. However, we do not sever death and resurrection because even as an Easter people it is ‘by his wounds we have been healed’ (Is. 53:5; 1Pet 2:24). In fact Kasper would say that it is to the wounds of Christ we must go if we are to entrust ourselves to the divine mercy. But more on this later.
In the introduction to his work, he says that he intends to pull mercy out of the ‘cinderella existence’ it has been assigned in theology. We have seen that his first move was to restore once again to theological God-language the biblical insight of relationship. His next move will be to probe more deeply how we may use this language, because questions will arise such as: how ultimate is mercy; is it identical with God or is it an attribute? Are mercy and justice the same in God? Does God suffer? To these questions we will return next month.
Jo O’Donovan rsm
South Central Province
