Steck on the existence of man after Auschwitz

"There are those who say, After Auschwitz one can no longer speak of God.  [Yet] Israel did so [after another such event] in the Old Testament long ago.  I [by contrast] find [that] after Auschwitz one can no longer speak in such a ridiculously 'Enlightened' fashion and with such unspeakable naïveté [(so lächerlich aufgeklärt und so unsäglich naiv)] of the self-realized and superior man [(dem selbstverwirklichten und besseren Menschen)], as so commonly today."

     Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 92 (75-95).  Others have said this, too, of course.

"The existence of these specific men is the existence of Jesus Christ for us and for all men."

Karl Barth, CD I/2, 486 =KD I/2, 539 (§19.2.3), as quoted by Bruce L. McCormack in his "The being of Holy Scripture is in becoming:  Karl Barth in conversation with American evangelical criticism," Evangelicals and Scripture:  tradition, authority and hermeneutics, ed. Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguéz, and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity Press, 2004), 68 (55-75).  "these specific men" are the "first witnesses":  "His disciples, His followers, His apostles, those who are called by Him, the witnesses of his resurrection, those to whom He Himself has directly promised and given His Holy Spirit".  So they are unique:  "It is in this function that they are distinguished from us and from all other men, whom they resemble in everything else."  Yet there is something about this that rings true for the saints as well.

For better

     "Your first wife married you for better or for worse.  Your second wife, particularly if you were sixty and she was a twenty-eight-year-old number like Serena—why kid yourself?—she married you for better."

     Tom Wolfe, A man in full (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 135.

Morning prayer the morning after seeing Werner Herzog's "Cave of forgotten dreams"



Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, End chamber, West wall, c. 30,000 BCE.



When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers,

the moon and the stars which thou has established;

what is man that thou art mindful of him,

and the son of man that thou dost care for him?

Yet thou hast made him little less than God,

and dost crown him with glory and honor.

Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Hillaire

chamber, North wall, c. 30,000 BCE.

Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;

thou hast put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Ps 8:3-9, RSV.

(Actually, I slipped up and read the wrong office, but how providential!)

"although he takes back his word, although he breaks his promise, although he takes back what he gave, although he envelops his goodness in the hidden, in contradiction"

"Abraham is not [just] anyone who must give [up] his child; [it is] not something, albeit the most beloved [of things], [that] Abraham must give [up], no, [it is] God—[it is] God [that] he must give back to God, the trusted, gracious, tried-and-true God [who] discloses everything to him, [it is] th[is God that] he must give back to God! This is the whole harshness of the story, as Israel perceived it: God against God; God himself here takes his promise back, himself slams shut everything that he had once opened, places in question with all sharpness the hope and expectation that he himself had aroused in Abraham. [It is n]ot the loss of an only child [that] stands here in play, no, of Abraham is here expected the renunciation of the graciously-inclined God, the salvation-creating God of Israel. Of Abraham is expected—and indeed by God himself!—the renunciation of the God on whose word Abraham had staked his life. This is the depth and the unfathomability of this story, that God contradicts himself on the field of the experience of Israel! That he takes back [the already] given, [fully] realized nearness of meaning and salvation, that he takes from Israel everything, that he takes from th[is] man everything that he had given him, and no one is able to prevent this—and yet in this, too, remains his God!—[this is an] awareness of God in a depth of experience to which we moderns in blasphemous over-self-valuation do not again, not even from afar, attain. 'Sadistic,' 'cruel,' 'hostile to life,' 'one who strikes out at the defenseless'—these, I believe, are all, however, completely inappropriate, completely anthropomorphic, reductionistic, completely inapplicable concepts for what happens in Genesis 22: the mysterious, dark, night-saturated unreasonable demand of God that [Abraham] remain with him, go on [hand] in his hand, although he takes back his word, although he breaks his promise, although he takes [back] what he gave, although he envelops his goodness in the hidden, in contradiction."

Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 87 (75-95).

Cur Deus homo

"This is the sort of teaching we derive from the mighty revelation of God's becoming man.  By his intimate union with humanity, . . . He freed man from evil, and healed the very author of evil himself."

Gregory of Nyssa, Address on religious instruction 26, ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson.  Christology of the later fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson, Library of Christian classics 3 (Philadelphia:  The Westminster Press, 1954), 304.  Cf. "And by so doing he benefited, not only the one who had perished, but also the very one who had brought us to ruin" (303), and "In the same way, when death, corruption, darkness, and the other offshoots of vice have attached themselves to the author of evil, contact with the divine power acts like fire and effects the disappearance of what is contrary to nature.  In this way the nature is purified and benefited, even though the process of separation is a painful one.  Hence not even the adversary himself can question that what occurred was just and salutary—if, that is, he comes to recognize its benefit" (303-304).  Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco "recommend[s] prudence while reading this text . . . , seeing in this affirmation more of a hypothesis than a firm conviction", and says that Gregory "returned to this notion in An et res (PG 46, 104) and Tunc et ipse (GNO III/2, 15)" ("Devil," The Brill dictionary of Greogry of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco & Giulio Maspero, and trans. Seth Cherney, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 99 (Leiden:  Brill, 2010), 225-226).

The Confession of St. Martha

Martha:
Jn 11:27:  ἐγὼ πεπίστευκα ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἐρχόμενος.

Peter:
Mk 8:29:  σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστός.
Mt 16:16:  σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος.

The antiphon to the Benedictus for the Feast of St. Martha in the Liturgia horarum conflates the two confessions:  Tu es Christus, Fílius Dei vivi, qui in hunc mundum venísti.