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A truly amazing article by Khaled Anatolios of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology (Cambridge, Mass) in the most recent issue of Pro Ecclesia <\/i> . Anatolios is exploring the perennial question of the Spirit, and defends the traditional characterizations of the Spirit as \u201cmutual love\u201d and \u201cgift\u201d by using the concept of \u201d disponibilite <\/em> \u201d developed by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel. At the beginning, He points out the functional identity of the Spirit and Son in the post-Pentecost world, concluding that it is through the Spirit that we come to share in the sonship of Christ: \u201cthe Spirit is the one who effects the availability for us <\/i> of the Son\u2019s sonship, and thus brings it about that we share <\/i> in the sonship of Christ, which apart from the Spirit is not \u2018share-able.\u2019\u201d He explores this dynamic in the Old Testament, pointing to the fact that even before the incarnation the Spirit\u2019s work was to make the Word available to us. Thus, the Spirit is \u201cgift,\u201d who \u201ceffects the outward availability\u201d of the Word. <\/p>\n In addition, though, the Spirit is also the mutual love of the Father and the Son, or, to put in in Anatolios\u2019s terms, \u201cthe one by whom the Father is available to Jesus and the one by whom Jesus is available to the Father.\u201d The Spirit, thus, is the mutual love between Father and Son as well as gift to us. These are not separable dimensions to the Spirit\u2019s work, however, since He is \u201cthe one who effects the outward availability (giftedness) of the sonship of the Son by drawing us into the reciprocal availability (mutual love) between the Father and the Son.\u201d Within the church, the Spirit produces this mutual availability among the members of the church: \u201cAt Pentecost . . . the Spirit is experienced as the one who effects the reciprocal availability (mutual love) of the disciples of Christ by drawing them into the reciprocal availability of the Father and the Son.\u201d So much is implied in Jesus\u2019 prayer in John 17: \u201cThat they may be one as we are one, I in Thee and Thou in Me.\u201d <\/p>\n To unpack this, Anatolios looks at the concept of \u201d disponibilite <\/em> \u201d of \u201cavailability\u201d in Marcel\u2019s thought. He isolates five major themes: 1) Marcel contrasts the notion of \u201cavailability\u201d by contrasting it to the typically \u201cself-preoccupied\u201d disposition of human beings. With the attitude of \u201cavailability,\u201d however, the person does not see the other as an obstacle or boundary to his desires, but rather as \u201ca place where \u2018I\u2019 can dwell, at the intersection of receptivity and self-donation.\u201d As Anatolios points out, there is a kind of \u201cperichoresis\u201d at work here, though Marcel does not use the term. <\/p>\n 2) Availability means readiness to receive appeal and to respond to appeal. \u201cAppeal\u201d here means not only \u201cpetition\u201d but \u201cattraction,\u201d and the two senses of the word overlap. Thus, the petitioner is not to be viewed merely as someone in need, but as someone who attracts my delight and admiration. Availability thus is \u201crealized in admiration, the \u2018eruption\u2019 of the self wherein it goes out in an actively enthusiastic receptivity toward the other.\u201d <\/p>\n 3) Availability involves a readiness to commit or pledge oneself to the one who makes appeal. This means that I open a space in myself, where the other can \u201clay a claim,\u201d thus completing the perichoretic cycle that began with me seeing the other as a \u201cplace\u201d where I can dwell. <\/p>\n 4) Availability leads to transformed understanding and response to circumstances. The self-enclosed person is hostile to interruption, to demands on the claims of others: \u201cwhat is not part of the self-generated (and self-generating) project with refusal or a sense of defeat.\u201d (If you didn\u2019t say \u201cOuch\u201d there, you haven\u2019t been following the argument. Think of the last time you were in the middle of an important piece of work and one of your children came to you for a hug \u2014 at that moment, the child was not part of your \u201cproject\u201d and was probably treated accordingly.) By contrast, Marcel describes the response of \u201cavailability\u201d in this way: availability is \u201cthe aptitude to give oneself to anything which offers, and to bind oneself by the gift . . . . It means to transform mere circumstances into \u2018opportunities,\u2019 we might even say favours, thus participating in the shaping of our own destiny and marking it with our seal.\u201d Anatolios elaborates: \u201cWe can say that the movement of availability is what enables me to encounter unexpected and even seemingly inhospitable circumstances as not ultimately an intractable impediment to my flourishing, but to encounter these circumstances in hope and trust as a new \u2018dwelling place\u2019 for my person.\u201d Availability in this sense not only means accepting unexpected situations as gifts for me, but also as opportunities to imprint myself on the other who \u201cappeals\u201d to me. Again, a mutual marking and perichoretic dwelling-together is the result, but only if one is \u201cavailable.\u201d <\/p>\n 5) Availability is love. And it is love that not only is available to the others within one\u2019s immediate circle but which also opens out beyond the circle in \u201cabsolute availability.\u201d Anatolios suggests that the prodigal son parable illustrates this principle, in that the father in the story makes himself available to both sons. He provocatively suggests that the parable as a whole provides an \u201canti-icon of trinitarian life.\u201d The Father is available fully to both sons, but they refuse to return that availability. The younger son demands his inheritance, while the older son clings to his sonship in a way that excludes his younger brother from participation. (Anatolios doesn\u2019t pursue the stunning typology here: first, that the Eternal Son did not see His sonship as something to be guarded with jealousy, but opened it up to all the adopted sons of God; and, second, Israel is the older son, who refuses to share his filial position with his dead-and-risen brother; and third, that Jesus is the true Israel, who does what Israel refused, and leads many sons to glory.) <\/p>\n Further unpacking this as a trinitarian soteriology, Anatolios says, <\/p>\n Our being-in-love with such a God has an ascending trinitarian pattern. We acknowledge the Father as our Lover, we find ourselves as beloved in the Son, and all this happens by the Spirit, who effects the availability for us <\/i> both of the Son\u2019s being beloved by the Father and the Father\u2019s being Lover of his only-begotten Son. Moreover, we experience the Spirit\u2019s agency of availability as an internal dynamism within us, which draws us to make outwardly available to others our status as beloved and the unique modality by which each of us is beloved. By the Spirit, we experience, from within, the appeal to render available to others as much love as we ourselves receive as \u201cbeloved,\u201d so that the outward availability of this love, in the Spirit, becomes equal to our status as beloved, in the Son. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thus, \u201cthe injunction to \u2018love the other as oneself\u2019 really means to appropriate the equality of the three divine Persons within the Trinitarian pattern of God\u2019s love for us.\u201d <\/p>\n There\u2019s much more in the article, but that\u2019ll have to do for now. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A truly amazing article by Khaled Anatolios of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology (Cambridge, Mass) in the most recent issue of Pro Ecclesia . Anatolios is exploring the perennial question of the Spirit, and defends the traditional characterizations of the Spirit as \u201cmutual love\u201d and \u201cgift\u201d by using the concept of \u201d disponibilite \u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-trinity"],"yoast_head":"\n