Ethics, Telos, and Theosis

One of things I learned from Karol Wojtyla’s habilitation thesis the need in Christian ethics to address anthropology, agency, and telos.  The last is intriguing, since it makes explicit the formal cause of the Christian—deification and theosis.  In Person and Act he makes this developmental frame clearer in that a loving act causes the person to become more good (and, thus, to “become” more), more like God.

I found this frame in The Ethics of Beauty in a different way:

Our [the Orthodox] anthropology of soul-healing is inseparable from our account of creation.  Since so few know the second, the first can easily go astray without our noticing.

    Creation results from God’s self-emptying over the face of non-being.  God appears, He shines out, as Beauty.  This Beauty is so compelling that not even non-being can resist falling in love with it.  Overcome with eros, non-being renounces itself, repents of its chaos and self-absorption, and arises into being.  As it does so, it “learns” to behave as the one it loves behaves—full of self-emptying Goodness for everything around it.  Thus, everything that exists is marked by a cruciform love—for God, as eros, and for all creation, as agape.  In these two movements, rocks, stones, stars, planets, animals, electrons—all of it—becomes what it is, becomes true. (Ethics of Beauty, page 78)

While there is much to think about here, my point is that the telos of ethics is inseparable from “becoming”—that is, deification and theosis.  And this increase in “being”, if that is possible, is paradoxically dependent upon the cruciform kenosis that is an essential part of love, of each act of love.  Each act of love reveals, increases our being as well as our acts of love.

This reminds me of the sacramentality of marriage (Part II of Catechism of Human Love) in the Theology of the Body.  John Paul II subdivides this sacramentality into the mystery (sacrament) of creation and the mystery (sacrament) of redemption.  The acts of spousal love in marriage furthers creation (yes, not as a static concept) for both the spouses as well as overflowing into the creation of children.  I write this because I think it is simplistic yet easy to understand the mystery of creation of marriage as only procreation.  This has implications for those who wish to marry yet deny themselves to their spouse through the use of contraception, in that such a practice blocks or diminishes their own deification as well as that of their spouse.

Reflections on the Catechesis on Human Love

This is the first of a series of reflections on the “Catechesis on Human Love” (aka CHL), known more popularly as the “Theology of the Body” (aka “TOB”).  That title is from one of the first editions of the TOB (Personal communication from Emma Girton of JPII CUA) and the one I will use as I prefer the emphasis on “Human Love”.

That emphasis on human love is found throughout the work of Karol Wojtyla (aka “Pope John Paul II” or “JPII”).  This focus especially developed during his second placement as a priest at Saint Florian’s parish, just north of the “Old Town” of Krakow:

“It is this [marital] vocation to love that naturally allows us to draw close to the young. As a priest I realized this very early. I felt almost an inner call in this direction. It is necessary to prepare young people for marriage, it is necessary to teach them love. Love is not something that is learned, yet there is nothing else as important to learn! As a young priest I learned to love human love. This has been one of the fundamental themes of my priesthood.” (Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994), 122-123).

While the CHL was written many decades after his time at Saint Florian’s, “teaching them to love” continued as a major theme of JPII’s pontificate.

Love and Ethics

Karol Wojtyla had planned to study the Polish language and literature upon graduating from high school.  The German National Socialists had other ideas.  What led him to the discern a vocation to the priesthood is not completely clear to me.  Of course Cardinal Sapieha had already recognized his brilliant mind; as soon as the way was opened, he studied in Rome and completed his PhD dissertation under Father Garrigou-Lagrange.  Only four years later he was studying the thought of Max Scheler, with his focus on ethics.  Thus, over the course of thirteen years the focus of his life changed many times and, then, stabilized on love and ethics.

What was it that focused his life on this subject?  Certainly his move to the parish of Saint Florian’s church just north of the Planty was a major factor.  It was here that he “fell in love with love” as he became a “campus minister” (as it is now called).  In the preface to Love and Responsibility’s his focus is on how to love according to the two great commandments of Jesus and how to love in a sexually-based relationship.  Thus, the connection between love and ethics, the latter as a way to know how an action is good or evil, whether it is loving or not.  This was all done in the context of a Russian-occupied Poland, where ethics was actively subverted in the Marxist ideology that was a prerequisite to the material success as a member of the Communist party.

Father Wojtyla’s focus on ethics in a Catholic context was the alternative that he offered to those he formed rather than their joining with the ideology of the Party.  Was he successful? How can one decide that question?  Can the focus on ethics help Americans to love, to love better?