Love and Desire - An Exercise in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi": Part Two

"O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

— Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Book of Common Prayer

This collect exposes profound paradox and ambiguity in the Christian life. In it we come face to face with the complex interplay between prayer and belief, between “the law of praying, [and] the law of believing” — in Latin, lex orandi, lex credendi. In other words, when we truly pray this collect we wrestle with praying what we believe and believing what we pray.

Part Two

The remedy comes in this: knowledge—spiritual and experiential—of the transcendent excellence and desirability of divine realities, ultimately stored up for us for joyous experience of them in the next life, yet also truly and sweetly apprehended in the loves and desires of this life. But the application of the remedy is no simple balm. For as indicated, the question or issue locates in the paradox and ambiguity of this most difficult calculation: how do we love and desire divine realities in these present realities and yet above them? Understanding the doctrinal basis theolo­gically, how do we then apply the doctrine experien­tially in our daily existence?

I do not presume to prescribe the daily calculation of right love and desire, as if that could be done in advance and by another. Nor do I suggest that the remedy leads to a cure, if by cure is meant the overcoming and leaving behind of questions and struggles in seeking right love and desire. Rather, having in mind the paradox and ambiguity of redeemed life this side of the grave, I hope in the following paragraphs to indicate key, fundamental structures of Christian understanding and being. These structures provide the material for the quotidian calculation that is the working out of our salvation in “fear and trembling.” The calculation remains the task of faith for every Christian every day.

The application of the remedy begins in grasp­ing an essential signifi­cance of the Incarnation with respect to the import of creation and redemp­tion for our daily Christian existence. We are accustomed of course to considering the paradox of the Incarnation in terms of the metaphysical and theological para­dox of the union of the divine and human natures. Yet equally as significant for the Christian life is the moral and existential paradox of the Incarna­tion: specifically, how it is at one and the same time an affirma­tion and a judgment of this world and our existence therein. It is this moral and existential paradox of the Incarnation, with its resultant ambigu­ity for present Christian life, that we must grasp.

In his article “Christian Action and the Coming of God’s Kingdom” (in Confessing Christ and Doing Politics), James Skillen has written this of Christians:

Of all those who live on earth, we are most fortu­nate and have the most for which to be thankful. God has given us all things in the creation to enjoy and to nurture. We belong here. We were made for the earth and it for us.

Skillen, in his own context, touches on a notion that carries over into an aspect of the paradox and ambigu­ity indicated above; namely, this sense of right­fully being in God’s creation.

The truest proof of this is the Incarna­tion itself. As it intimately demonstrates that this world is the locus of God’s presence and activity in love, it signifies an affir­mation of this world, of the goodness of mundane existence as originally created. The impli­ca­tions of this affirm­ation are two.

(1) This exis­tence must not be con­ceived as so wholly disjointed or separated from God as to be despairingly bereft of the divine pres­ence.

(2) Nor must we as Christians con­ceive of ourselves as so redeemed from this present existence that we negate any sense of good and beauty in it or any sense of our proper place in it.

Would it not be far easier to deny this world and our existence in it, thereby to give up our lives here that we might now be tran­slated to the next world? Yes, of course, were it faithful and moral. Yet God in Christ, not abhorring this world’s womb, humbly and uniquely entered into its life in love.

It follows then that in this life we can know something of the divine goods and objects of desire, for we now live in God’s creation, the place where divine love is mani­fested and known. Moreover, as the incarnate Christ once knew this existence as home, so we Christians properly exper­ience this world as our home, as the place created for us to exist. It is God’s creation, where­in we were made and of which we are an organic part. The Incarnation demon­strates divine love for it and for us in it. Hence, we join God in Christ in affirming this world in its graces and beauties and accepting our place in it.

At the same time, the Incarnation does not signify a simple or pain­less affirmation of this world, for the Incarnation occurs for the redemption of the world. In this regard the Incarnation points us beyond this world as home to the next, for redemp­tion is necessary only where the judgment of sin and sickness has been pronounced. While the af­firma­tive aspect of the Incarnation persuades us to embrace our life in this world and to seek right love and desire therein, the redemptive aspect of the Incarna­tion moves us to embrace the next life and to seek its loves and desires above all else.

Would it not be far simpler and easier to be at home fully in this world, in this life? Yes, of course, were it faithful and moral. Yet God in Christ has irrupted into our existence in judgment and redemption to proclaim the inauguration of a new existence.

This announcement of the kingdom of heaven shakes to the core our sense of at-home-ment in this life. By his gracious bending low to us in the incarnate Christ and calling us to a new heaven and earth beyond, God dislo­cates and dis­contents us in this present world, created in grace but now corrupted in sin. Thereby we are made uneasy aliens in our very existence. And to heighten the paradox, in that we yearn for the heaven­ly perfection of the next life, we must even celebrate that which here makes us aliens!

Therefore, we acknowledge God’s creation and redemption of this world as known uniquely and defini­tively in Christ incarnate. On the one hand, we experience this world as home, for we know it is God’s created place for us. On the other hand, we also know it as home only transiently and provisionally, for we believe God has eschatologically prepared for us “such good things as surpass our understanding.” Conse­quently, we look beyond this world and seek God’s redeemed place for us in the new heaven and earth.

We find then, without ignoring sin and corrup­tion, that there is a certain continuity between the true goods and desires of this life and those divinely wrought and promised for the next. While we exper­ience dis-ease and disorder, we also experience the invigorating consolation of grace and beauty in this world.

Hence, two alternatives are morally and exis­tentially forbidden for Christians. As we long for the redemptive perfection of this world in the next, we cannot simply negate or give up on this world and our life in it, as has been done in some theological formulations. At the same time, neither can we con­flate the goods and desires of the next life with those of this life, for if the graces and beauties of this existence are all we know, we of all persons are most to be pitied.

[Part Three tomorrow]