Postmodern Theology And Jean-Luc Marion: An(other) Interlude, On Benedictine ‘Caritas,’ Continued

(Archive of this tediously—and slowly—developing series)

At the center of Benedict’s theology of charity, is an ontological contention that is also central to Marion’s postmodern theology. While Benedict puts that ontology within the intelligibility of the logos, Veritas; what I find remarkable is the bare ontology of the matter. Both Benedict and Marion raise the same question for Catholics: What does it means to (re)think theology under the sole terms of love?

I will not answer that question here, but I will try to be descriptive. To that end, I will rely mostly on quotations from Benedict’s recent encyclical that bring out ideas that compare favorably to Marion’s ontology.

I begin with this opening passage from Caritas in Veritate:

For the Church, instructed by the Gospel, charity is everything because, as Saint John teaches (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16) and as I recalled in my first Encyclical Letter, “God is love” (Deus Caritas Est): everything has its origin in God’s love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it.

Here we find a striking ontological statement: “…charity is everything because… everything has its origin in God’s love…” This is very close to Marion’s own philosophical statement in The Erotic Phenomenon on the primordiality of love: “I love even before being because I am not, except insofar as I experience love, and experience it as a logic.”

This primordial origin-ality of love emphasized in Benedict’s theology and Marion’s phenomenology presents a robust alternative to the modern domain of reason and rationality. The alternative is not irrational, but it confirms the dynamic flux between love and truth. In that flux, we find that love is not merely revealed in truth, but love gives truth its originary creditability—a credibility that truth cannot give in return to love. In other words, truth becomes instrumental to revelation as a lamp is to sight, but it is not the ontological source.

Benedict puts it this way:

Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth. In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living.

So, while love is located in truth and always can be found in the light of truth, Caritas retains its ontological originality. From this point Benedict puts the ontological priority of Caritas into more concrete terms by showing that not only does it pre-exist truth, it also transcends justice.

The Pope is very clear when he writes:

Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them… On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.

If we recall Marion’s cited idea that we experience love “as a logic,” we see that the logic of giving and forgiving is of the same kind. Moreover, we find that Marion’s phenomenological reduction into giveness is affirmed in Benedict’s own discussion of giving. As with truth, we find that justice and charity are not simply put into a totalizing hierarchy, but, at the same, there is an ontological order to their complex relations.

This ontology—an erotic ontology, and ontology of charity—is the very heart of Benedict’s developing theology and Marion’s developing phenomenology, I think.

Postmodern Theology and Jean-Luc Marion: An(other) interlude, on Benedictine ‘Caritas,’ continued