Dominic, Doctrine & Drama

Tad Dunne
Siena Heights University 1

Intro
From Dominic to today, there have been two significant developments in the history
of Christianity that have direct effects on the Dominican tradition: particularly on
how its members pray, remember their history, and envision their mission. To
study these developments, imagine following two threadsa thread of doctrines
and a thread of dramas.
The thread of doctrines was a major concern of Dominicspecifically the Christian
doctrine on revealed truths. 2
Usually I will speak of Christian doctrine because the doctrinal threads in
Christianity began before Catholic became a normal word for the universal
scope of Christian believers, 3 and also because the threads of Dominican
development continue today, where Catholic is regarded by many, Christians
included, not as the one true religion but as a major denomination among
many Christian religions.
I will speak of Catholic doctrines when referring to official teachings of the
Roman Catholic Church regarding revealed truth.
The thread of dramas ties together the stories in the gospels, the lives of saints,
how Christians speak of their everyday faith, and how theologians compare what
Christians imagine to other ways people everywhere imagine their lives today.
In human consciousness, these two threads intertwine. All humans feel the inner
demand for consistency between what one regards as true and the stories one
believes and tells. Christian doctrinal assertions of revealed truths ensure continuity
from the first engagements of Jesus with his followers, to the written accounts in
the New Testament, and to their extensions in different languages and media to
different cultures and to succeeding generations. Doctrinal assertions solidify the

authority of those who promulgate them. And they secure the outer boundaries, as
it were, of personal commitment to any truth-rooted living in Christ. At the same
time, stories borne in our imaginations are vital for opening the heart and
deepening the commitment in those who hear God's word being preached.
These two threads have also intertwined in human history. The Gospels and Acts
are dramas. Paul's letters provide encouragements and practical guidelines that
directly affect how his communities imagined and spoke about the drama of living
in Christ. Yet throughout the New Testament, the writers also bear witness that in
Jesus, unanticipated truths about Gods own life and our own lives were revealed.
In Johns gospel we read that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
and Paul writes, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our heartsthe Spirit who
cries, Abba, Father!" 4 We can envision these events as part of the divine-human
drama. But they also present certain doctrinal assertions as simply true. They do
not intend to jamb fixed answers down peoples throats but to plant certain
questions deep in their hearts. For example, today, one might ask: It is true that
God, the creator of the universe with its 100-plus billion galaxies is Father, Son and
Spirit? 5 Is it true that Jesus of Nazareth and his Spirit are Gods own selfcommunication to us on this planet? Is it true that through Jesus and the Spirit God
personally enters into the everyday doings of history and the doings of our hearts?
The answers to all such truth questions are either yes or no. And while all believers
meditate on the significance of such truths, there is also a mode of contemplation
that seeks no deeper significance but simply rests in the truth of an assertion. A
couple getting engaged take their stand on an assertion of mutual love, knowing
that the deeper significance of their love life will be
worked out as they go forward in life together. About
prayer, I realize that we use the words meditation and
contemplation somewhat interchangeably, but they can
correspond to a noticeable difference between two ways
of praying. We notice ourselves sometimes as thinking and
sometimes as welcoming. So we have personal evidence to
connect the word meditation with thinking and contemplation

with welcoming. In meditation we think about God in our lives; in contemplation we

welcome God. In meditation, God is the object of our thoughts; in contemplation,
God is a "you":
You loved me into existence.
You will never abandon me.
The universe is a field of your love.
Throughout Christian history, doctrinal assertions continued as the mainstay woven
through and holding together all sorts of images, symbols, and stories in Christian
preaching. Yet, even though preachers and teachers have always been aware of the
power of stories, it wasn't until the 20th century that Christian theologians
recognized drama as a properly theological category. The category of drama
expresses the full breadth of life in Christ, and provides criteria for distinguishing
between true and false dramas. 6
Since the truth of doctrines and the truth of dramas are interwoven in human
consciousness and interwoven in history, we can expect that all hearers of God's
word will be eager to hear about both kinds of veritas.

I.

Dominic and Doctrine

Dominic's reputation as a defender of orthodox doctrine began with his encounter

with the Cathars whose views about God and humanity were highly alien to
Christian doctrine. His experience is similar to the appearance of the earliest
Christian doctrinal assertions of revealed truths at the Council of Nicea in 325,
prompted as they were by alien doctrines about God, Christ, and the Spirit.
Beginning around 1140, Cathers had grown rapidly in northern Italy and southern
France. When Dominic first encountered them in 1203, they had an organized
church, with bishops, liturgies, and doctrines. Morally, they stood in opposition to
the worldliness and corruption of the Catholic church. Doctrinally, they opposed not
only the entire authority of the Catholic church to teach and preach but also the
central truths of Christianity.

Cathars held that the physical was evil and the spiritual was good. To live a good
life, one had to live an ascetic life devoted to contemplation, and to renounce meat
and sexual intercourse. This last requirement, of course, creates a recruiting
problem. Partly for this reason, Cathers established two levels of membership, the
"pure" (katharos in Greek), and the "believers," for whom the standards were less
strict. 7 Their chief doctrine was that there are two godsan evil god and a good
god. It served to explain why the created world is partly physical and partly
spiritual, partly evil and partly good. For them, Jesus was neither spiritually equal
to the good god, nor did he really suffer the evil of physical death. He was an angel.
They rejected the Catholic doctrines of one God, of God's coming to humanity in the
person of Jesus in our history, in the gift of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and of the
goodness of material creation and the human body.
Differences between Cathar and Catholic doctrines lie not only in their content, but,
equally important, in their sources. Cathar doctrines were essentially speculative,
arising from a gnostic confidence in human reason, while Catholic doctrines were
essentially revealed, arising ultimately from interpersonal encounters with Jesus of
Nazareth.
Again, besides this difference in sources, there are opposing assumptions about the
idea of salvation. For the Cathars, humans have already been given a sufficient
power of reason to live a life according to what God desires. Being saved is a
matter of knowledge. For Catholics, humanity is not sufficient unto itself for living
as God desires. We act against what our reason dictates: "We see the good and we
approve it too; condemn the wrong and yet the wrong pursue." 8 Our salvation
becomes real when we welcome God's self-communication in the historical person
of Jesus and in the gift of God's own eternal spirit, poured out into our hearts as the
love with which we love. 9 Being saved is a matter of interpersonal engagement with
Jesus, God's most intimate and eternal Word who became flesh and dwelt among
us, and with God's eternal Spirit who dwells within us, giving eternal life to our
entire selves, body as well as spirit. 10
What Dominic realized was that issues of doctrine must not be separated from how
one lives. The Catholic response to the Cathars must include both living according
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to the dramatic example of Christ's own life and preaching doctrines according to
the beliefs of the first Christians. 11 Wits, holiness, and opportunity led him to
establish the Order of Preachers. They would preach not only in words but by living
out the life of Christ. They would live under vows of poverty; they would be
dedicated to contemplation focused on enlightening others; they would be both
educated and educators.
In the centuries that followed, three Dominicans played key roles in explaining how
the assertions of doctrinal truths are related to Christian faith.
In the years 1265 to 1274, the Italian Dominican Thomas Aquinas wrote his
Summa Theologica. Its purpose was to provide Christians with deeper
understanding of the revealed truths they already hold. The watchword was
"faith seeking understanding."
In 1563, the Spanish Dominican Melchior Cano proposed that theology
should present doctrines to be proved as true by appeals to scripture,
patristic writings, conciliar pronouncements and the consensus of
theologians. 12 His watchword, we might say, was Faith establishing truth.
For the next 400 years, many Catholic theologians followed his lead, and
church-going Catholics, including many of us here, found confidence in the
notion that faith gives us certitude, without it ever occurring to us that the
significance of Catholic doctrines were not fixed and complete in the earliest
sources but underwent many enriching developments from earlier to later
sources.13 Cano's proposal that theologians should provide proofs for Church
doctrines in historically unconnected texts was eventually abandoned. This is
because over the last 60 years or so, scriptural hermeneutics and an
emerging historical awareness that doctrines undergo development revealed
a tangle of methodological problems faced by those who attempt to establish
truths based solely on the exact words of scripture and tradition. 14
In 1962, during the first session of Vatican II, a dispute arose among its
participants regarding the place of doctrines in the pronouncements of the
council. Pope John XXIII asked that the focus be pastoral. Several rankled
participants proposed that all Catholic doctrines were pastoral. At the end of
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the first session, the French Dominican Marie-Dominique Chenu proposed

that what is first for Christians is the word of God engaging the whole
person, and that the task of the church is to preach this word. His watchword
could be "Faith fully lived." Doctrinal formulations are necessary to maintain
the truth element of God's word, but insufficient for addressing, as Gaudium
et Spes begins, "The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of
our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted." 15

II.

World Drama

The third word in my title is drama. Ordinarily, any story is a drama. But most
stories are parts of larger stories. And among us adults, we tend to envision the
many short stories in our lives as parts of a whole story, of which the many events
in the many times and places, in the many lifetimes within humanity are scenes in
a single world drama. So we can ask how this factor of a world drama affects the
faith of believers, and affects the theologians who reflect on how to live it out in
ones culture. 16

Bernard Lonergan
Bernard Lonergan, in his writings on theological method, proposes categories based
on events in human consciousness. He defines symbols as emotionally-colored
images in our psyches. Here is a short exercise for noticing vivid examples of
symbols in your own life. Let each line sink into your psyche:
Imagine a family dinner.
Imagine going fishing.
Imagine being lost.
Imagine bearing a child.
Imagine gazing into the face of a loved one.
When we do this, the symbols in our psyches make us present to ourselves in a
certain kind of physical environment with a certain emotional attitude. Lonergan
describes these symbols as "a more elementary type of story: they . . . intimate to
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us at once the kind of being that we are to be and the kind of world in which we
become our true selves." 17 He anticipates that in any kind of human study
psychology, sociology, biography, history, economics, philosophy, theologyour
symbols and stories have continuous and massive effects on us. 18 Their effects in
our imaginations are even more massive than the course of our thoughts, since
symbols and stories are what first direct our attention to what is or is not worth
thinking about. Theologically, while all religions have creeds that summarize basic
beliefs, the core of any religion is not a "belief system." It is a lived and
emotionally-rich drama of the mystery of God, the universe, the world, and
ourselves. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a scholar of comparative religions said, "All
religions are new religions, every morning. For religions do not exist in the sky
somewhere elaborated, finished, and static; they exist in human hearts" 19
I found a good example of a world-drama in a recent historical novel. In Morgan
Llywelyn's book, 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion, the young rebel Ned Halloran
becomes aware of such a drama:
War and death and babies being born. Ned tried to stretch the horizons of his
mind to encompass them all in one world vision. It was the babies, he
decided, who made the rest of it bearable, who redeemed the horror adults
could perpetrate. A child . . . was created by the same species that
manufactured guns and submarinesbut with one added element: the Divine
Spark, an immortal soul. 20

Eric Voegelin
We speak of a one-world vision as the "grand scheme of things." But not everyone
envisions the same scheme. The philosopher-historian Eric Voegelin proposed that
all cultures symbolize to themselves certain dramas that describe how life is
ordered. While presenting them clearly as dramas, he also emphasizes a certain
truth element in them. He says, "The symbols in which a society interprets the
meaning of its existence are meant to be true." 21
While a doctrine is true if it presents judgments about the real vs the unreal, a
drama is true if resonates with peoples experiences of crucial life issues and
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events. We say a narrative is true to life. Thus Plato calls his myth of the cave
and puppets as a "true story" because it conveys our experience of intimating that
everything we see is but a shadow of the really real. 22 The notions of truth in the
Old Testament are mainly about Gods trustworthiness when entering the drama of
Israel. 23 The authors of the gospels tell stories that differ in the details but converge
on a revelation of God alive and present to us in Jesus. Jesus teaches, heals,
forgives, and submits to the worst of human life. In this Paschal drama he reveals
the full story of human life. He reveals the loss of ourselves in death not as the
wretched end of us but an essential element in the fullness of ourselves in God.
We come then to a difference between two kinds of veritas: the truth of a doctrine
and the truth of a drama. The truth of a doctrine requires an assent to an assertion.
In our creeds we recite the fundamental doctrines of our faith. In our catechism we
find many related doctrines. And not just any assent will do. John Henry Newman
warned against settling for merely notional assents. By notional assent he means
an understanding of the concepts or ideas presented. He promotes moving on to a
real assent that accepts an assertion as something true about reality. He gives an
example of a popular preacher: "The most awesome truths are to him but sublime
or beautiful conceptions. . . . But let his heart at length be plowed by some keen
grief or deep anxiety, and Scripture is a new book to him." 24
In Voegelin's historical account of the establishment of the Roman Empire, he
presents three distinct world dramas, or symbolic truths, that played critical roles.
1.

A cosmological truth is a drama of human life as completely governed

by the workings of the entire universethe cosmos. This drama appears in

practically every primitive society, where the entire cosmos is an enchanted
place. It is a drama of fate. Human life is dominated by the stars or by a
gang of fickle gods. Its workings are beyond human reckoning.
2.

An anthropological truth is a drama of human life as just human. Its

workings rely on human creativity and good will. Despite the shadow of
tragedy that falls on our every endeavor, humanity has no alternative but to
be self-sufficient. Its workings are entirely within human reckoning. We
ordinarily refer to it as humanism.
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3.

A saving truth is a drama of human life as in need of salvation by God.

Humanity is not self-sufficient. This is overwhelmingly evident in our inability

to sustain peace among countries and sustain basic standards of living for
every person throughout the world. It is also evident in our personal
experiences of lacking some ingredient essential to actually leading good
lives and often acting against our better judgments.

Charles Taylor
Here, I need to say more about number 2, Voegelin's anthropological truththe
drama of human life as just human. Another philosopher-historian, Charles Taylor,
speaks of "social imaginaries" referring to how a society imagines its story and its
efforts to live well. In his recent book, A Secular Age, Taylor asks, Why was it
virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while
in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable? 25 In his analysis
of the emergence of secularism in the West he sees two kinds of dramas that would
fall within Voegelin's anthropological or humanistic truth.
An exclusive humanism rejects religious doctrines about Gods existence. It is
the atheistic form of secularism.
An inclusive humanism acknowledges Gods existence but replaces doctrines
about Gods active and rapturous involvement in human affairs with moral
doctrines about Gods expectations on humanity. God expects us to live
morally upright lives. God rests comfortably in an eternal Sabbath in heaven,
but leaves us alone in our autonomy on earth. God rewards or punishes us in
a next life. Marcus Borg, in his book, The God We Never Knew, refers to this
morality-obsessed God as the divine Finger-Shaker. 26 Taylors prime example
of inclusive humanism is the 18th century movement known as Deism. It
became an influential movement in England and France as part of an effort to
find in human reason a common ground among religions at war with one
another. Its core principle has an ancient lineage insofar as people looked
chiefly to reason to assess religion and rejected beliefs that God is actively at
work in human affairs. Also, enchanted by recently-emerging laws of physics,
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Deists proposed that once God created the universe, the system was all in
place; no further divine involvement was needed in its daily workings. Those
opposed to this view ridiculed it as depicting God as the divine Clockwinder. 27
Voegelins third drama, the saving truth, is preeminently represented by Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. The central theme in these world dramas is that there is
only one God, that we are lost without God, and that we are offered diving help
every day to live in love with God and neighbor.
The Hebrew Bible shows the consistent belief that God chose them to be a
people, sent them prophets, gave them laws, and settled them in a
homeland. The notion of a rewarding or punishing afterlife was a lateemerging and marginal doctrine.
For Christians, the true world drama is a drama of saving grace: God sends
the divine Word as enriching leaven in the dough of human history and sends
the divine Spirit to liberate human hearts to be the love with which one
loves. The divine life God shares with humans cannot die with human death.
Islam was founded on Mohammed's belief that Judaism and Christianity
distorted God's original commands to Abraham and needed to return to a
total submission to the one God. (Islam literally means "submission to God.")
God provides salvation through Muslim adherence to the Quran, the written
account of God's revelations to Mohammed.
While all three religions proclaim one God, each has a fundamentally different view
of God's "Word." In Judaism, God's Word governs nature and expresses God's will
through the law and the prophets. 28 In Islam, God's word first came through
prophets such as David, Moses, and Jesus, and God's final word was dictated to the
prophet Mohammed to write down in a book, the Quran. In Christianity, God's word
is a person, born into a human tradition and living on in each of his followers in
whom God's eternal Spirit dwells and labors.

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III. Four Dramas

Combining the views of Lonergan, Voegelin and Taylor, then, we can see four highly
influential world dramas. To bring out how distinct each drama is from the others
we might think of them as:
A Drama of Fate
A Drama of Human Autonomy
A Drama of Religious Morality
A Drama of Religious Love
A drama of fateVoegelins cosmological truthimagines the world and all human
life as dominated by the physical cosmos, ghostly ancestors, the government, or
just dumb luck. Human freedom and creativity are blind risks. What goes around,
comes around. Everything happens for a reason, and no one knows what that
reason might be. One offsets the unpredictability of fate by superstitions. This is the
drama that shapes stoic philosophies and certain resigned personal attitudes toward
life. It omits the struggle to be responsible for our individual and our collective
lives. Some imagine themselves as living in a permanent shadow of dooma drama
easily felt by listening to Beethoven's entire Fifth Symphony: DumDumDum DUM.
Some avoid the question of faith in God. Those who believe in God imagine
themselves as irrelevant to God, progeny of their original exiles from the Garden of
Paradise.
A drama of human autonomyTaylors exclusive humanismimagines humanity as
the highest form of existence. Freedom and creativity are essential to living well.
The futures of all nations and cultures are completely up to us. Life has no mystery;
it has only problems, and science has made unprecedented strides in solving them.
This drama patently omits the question of God and, obviously, the possibility of
living in love with God. Religions do not reveal truths unattainable by reason. But
reason promotes the toleration of religions, which are regarded as neither true or
false; they are just belief systems. They are only better or worse, and that
judgment depends chiefly on their outcomes. World peace may be possible, but
only by drawing on our best human resources. Even the ordinary things we hope
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for every day require our initiative and an abiding, sometimes obsessive, concern
for control. A healthy psyche requires control over ones environments and a kind of
self-management under the puzzling ideal of self-help.
A drama of religious moralityTaylors inclusive humanism or deismimagines God
as the highest form of existence. One is awed at the greatness of God: A God who
created everything. But a God at rest. A God who endows us with reason and good
will, but leaves us on our own to use these gifts to do good and avoid evil, until the
day we die and enter an afterlife. The world drama is a morality play. A Day of
Judgment fixes one's eternal destiny in Heaven or Hell based on the morality one's
earthly life. 29 This view is commonly found among both Christians and Muslims. In
both religions, this deist view evokes more anxiety about right vs. wrong than
about tensions between self-giving love and self-absorbed love. It is also found
among many American teenagers, whose spirituality has been described as
moralistic, therapeutic, non-trinitarian deism. That is, God wants us to be good;
God heals our sinfulness; God is one person, not three; and God watches us from a
distance as history unfolds. 30
A drama of religious loveVoegelins saving truthevokes an abiding sense of
human insufficiency combined with an abiding awe regarding the mystery of God,
of God's unconditional love, and of God's ongoing, ever-present engagement with
humanity. The biblical message about doing good, avoiding evil, heavenly reward
and hellish punishment are symbols of good living that make sense to the young,
whether in age or in religious maturity. But these symbols are provisional. In good
families and among good friends, as the young mature, they realize how it has
always been the love of their parents and of others that enabled them to make
sustained moral living not only possible but also preferable. From this point forward
they seek to base their lives on love and reasonably expect that moral insight and
courage will follow.

Christian Doctrines and World Drama

Again, it is Christian doctrines that ensure the continuity and integrity of the
Christian drama of religious love.

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In Christian doctrine, the preeminent gift from God is God. In Jesus of

Nazareth and the Holy Spirit, God's self-communication resonates with all
dimensions of living fully: our awe regarding the mystery of all creation, of
human birth, friendship, commitment, beauty, opposition, betrayal, our
apprehension of death and the times we cried " Father, why have you
forsaken me?" and the Father says nothing.
In Christian doctrine, God offers all humans three kinds of everyday graces
three gifts that no humans can create for themselves but are freely given by
God, gifts that have God as their source and ultimate object. These are the
classic theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. 31 But when we conceive
of these as part of becoming a "we" in a mutual love with God, the gift of
faith is a matter of seeing better and worse with God's eyes, the gift of hope
receives God's own confidence that all shall be well; and the gift of charity
energizes one to love with God's own lovea love not only for one another
but most totally to live in love with God, whom the poet Jessica Powers calls
The Strangest of All Lovers. 32
In Christian doctrine, all our human good works are always God at work
God, whom Isaiah describes as saying, "I held myself in
check; but now I groan like a woman in labor, panting
and gasping" (Isa 42:14). In John's gospel, when
Jesus is reprimanded by the Pharisees for working on
the Sabbath, he replies, "My Father is still working,
and I must work too. " (Jn 5:17). Paul envisions
the Holy Spirit as "groaning in labor pains." He
encourages the Philippians to work out your
own salvation in fear and trembling; for it is
God who is at work in you, enabling you both
to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil
2: 12-13). 33 Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual
Exercises, has a retreatant "consider how God
works and labors for me in all creatures on the
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face of the earth, that is, he conducts himself as one who labors" (SE 236).
In Christian doctrine, the world drama of religious love of Jesus himself has
been well described by the scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink. In his recent
book, Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted and Who He Was, 34 he gives
convincing evidence that what Jesus wanted was that Gods promise that
Israel will be alive with Gods own spirit and will be a light to the world,
would be fulfilled. Jesus prayed, Thy Kingdom come, . . . on earth as it is in
heaven (Mt 6:10). The followers of Jesus would imagine the entire world as
called to be a community of love. They would imagine themselves as
members of the body of Christ, like networked neurons, giving and receiving
continuous impulses of Gods own love to one another. 35 Being in love with
God is being open to love every face we ever see and, as Pope Francis says,
even our common home on this planet.
Surely there are other world dramas. I select these four because of how different
each is from the others and because we have convincing evidence of how each
drama dominated the imaginations of large cultures in human history.
Also, the various dramas are not necessarily fixed. An individual can abide in a
certain world drama for years or months. One can move between dramas over the
space of several days, and even in the space of one day. So there is an ongoing
need to discern which world drama has been shaping how we imagine the part we
play. After all, the dramas of fate, of human autonomy, and religious morality are
compelling in themselves, easily inherited without question from parents, and often
accepted uncritically from teachers and even preachers. Efforts to root the drama of
religious love deep in our psyches take regular, even daily examinations of
consciousness.
A discernment of dramas is partly the same and partly different from a discernment
of spirits in the Christian tradition. Both aim to see the world with Gods eyes, and
both require some measure of scrutiny over our imaginations, thoughts, and
feelings. A key difference is that the discernment of spirits scrutinizes transitory
movements in everyday life while the discernment of drama scrutinizes the plot in
which transitory movements in players are the elements of an entire world drama.
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Such critical mindedness about the world dramas that affect our own psyches
heightens our critical awareness of the world dramas affecting anyone. It provides
parents with relevant questions about how well or poorly their children are
maturing. It helps teachers and preachers to ask themselves, What sort of world
do I imagine myself helping others to live in? It enables counselors to reveal
dysfunctional stories in the imaginations of people with troubled psyches. It enables
voters to assess global worldviews of candidates for public office. It enables all
believers to call forth the world drama of religious love in one another, regardless of
one's role in the community of believers.
Such critical mindedness may also affect the administrators and supporters of the
19 Dominican institutions of higher-learning in the United States. They might
reconsider who or what is the true source of their missions. In their mission
statements, all (except one that lacks a mission statement) mention Dominic and
the Catholic tradition, and none mentions Jesus of Nazareth or Gods Spirit of Truth.
Yet the followers of Dominic do well to consider who it is that Dominic follows. 36
And the Catholic faith is grounded on the belief that God the Father missions the
Son and Spirit into the world. Jesus missions his followers and gives them his own
Spirit. True, many Americans fear anything smacking of Evangelical Protestantism,
biblical Fundamentalism or Catholic proselytizing. Even the mention of Jesus can
deter potential students, whose tuitions keep the institution going. Yet most of
these colleges present themselves as open to all comers and as more committed to
the pursuit of the big questions than to the inculcation of final answers. Also, in the
history of Christianity, the drama of religious love was first and immediate in the
experience of the followers of Jesus, while it took decades and even centuries to
formulate doctrines of the faith. Perhaps our Dominican colleges can present
dramas about what its students do in the world, whose example they follow, and
ultimately whose invitation they accept.

IV.

So What?

How, then, do Christians stay in character in the drama of religious love? How to
keep stories of grace in mind? How to stay in awe about the mystery of Gods selfcommunication, not only in the beauties of nature but also in the person of Jesus in
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our history and of Gods own Spirit of love in our hearts? How to spend only half
our prayer reaching for God, and letting God reach us, both from our history and
from within our hearts, during the other half? How to take a stand against the everencroaching secular dramas? How to dismiss self-images like the Elder Brother who
works hard for his Father but with no taste for his compassionate and forgiving joy?
How to avoid picturing God always living at a mutually safe distance?
I believe that the essential attitude is an abiding sense of awe over the mystery of
life. And by mystery I do not mean a puzzle to solve. I mean our experience of
being wooed to go beyond ourselves. I mean our experience of desiring to open
ourselves to depths of reality that we know lie under everything but that we cannot
fully fathom. I mean an abiding sense that theres more to everything than meets
the eye.

Spiritual Desolation
To live in the drama of religious love does not protect us from spiritual desolation
the times when we cannot think clearly, when our emotions are either in turmoil or
drained away, when we imagine ourselves as abandoned by God. Jesus himself
experienced this in Gethsemane. Yet when he did, he accepted it as the Fathers
will. He accepted as simply true that since God allows our desolation, our dark
experience must be something essential to being in love with God. And here, in the
truth of a doctrinal assertion, we find solid ground when our thoughts, emotions,
and imagination are no help. We call to mind saving truths like "Nothing worthwhile
is ever lost"; "Ourselves and everything ours are love gifts from God;" "All who live
in love live in God, and God lives in them" (1 Jn 4:16).
To live in the drama of religious love also involves a negative awean
"awfulness"an over our inability to live our best on our owneven to make it
through a day relying only on our natural resources.

Our Time
Part of the awesome mystery of life in God is that our sense of time broadens
beyond our familiar days and dates. In our youth it didn't bother us that heaven is
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not up: we live on a ball. But now we wonder just how heaven can be after. Before
our birth and through our death, human time is both part of, and caught up in, the
awesome mystery of Gods time. Thus, the Second Letter of Peter: To God, a day
is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day (2 Peter 3:8). There will
be no first day in Heaven. What we are waiting for is a new heaven and a new
earth (2 Peter 3:13). We can rest quite awed over the simple truth conveyed in
this haiku:
I was not and now I am.
Now I am and will not be
Just what I am now.

Our Bodies
Likewise, our sense of being irrevocably linked to our bodies becomes awesomely
unhinged. The eternal Word of God became flesh, and in the flesh he appears to his
disciples after his death. The Resurrection of Jesus, not just in spirit but also in
scarred body, is God's pledge to all who follow him. Thus, Pauls letter to the
Romans: As we have been united to him in a death like his, we will certainly be
united to him in a resurrection like his (Rom 6:5; also 1 Cor 15:49).

Reading Scripture
One way to abide in awe over the mystery of life and death is to read scripture as
evidence of the abiding awe of our ancestors in the faith. That is, besides letting
scripture reveal new meanings for ourselves about faith in God, we can notice how
the authors of scripture wrote from that place of religiously loving awe with the
express purpose of evoking this awe in us.

The Arts
Another way is to let the arts expand our imagination. Gerard Manly Hopkins calls
on our aesthetic imagination to see how God's grandeur "will flame out, like shining
from shook foil." 37 Bernard Lonergan too points to the arts: "Art," he says,
"presents the beauty, the splendor, the glory, the majesty, the 'plus' that is in
17

things and that drops out when you say that the moon is just earth and the clouds
are just water." 38
Not every artistic creation arouses awe about the mystery of Gods self-gift. Many
artworks just arouse our nervous systemthey excite, they calm, they stir our
sexual juices, they motivate us to rush out and buy something. Other artworks
resonate with our sense of belongingnational anthems, Fourth of July parades,
how we enhance our neighborhood by planting flowers around our houses. But the
loftiest artworks evoke awe over the mystery of life by tapping into our need for
beauty at every level of our consciousness: the allure of the possible; the harmony
of the ordered; the exquisite uniqueness of each single thing, event, person, or
community; the splendor of goodness, and the liberating invitation to lead our lives
by love. We sense this in religious liturgy and architecture. But we also sense it in
the kinds of music, paintings, poems, fiction, ballet, architecture, and so on, that
resonate with our abiding sense of always grappling to transcend the selves we are
to become selves ever more fully enriched. We experience not only joys and hopes
but also griefs and anguish of the people of our times. We experience this groping
in Beethoven and Mozart, in Van Gogh and Georgia O'Keeffe, in Adrienne Rich and
Gerard Manly Hopkins.
Even artworks that evoke tensions and tragedies unfamiliar to us can evoke in us a
genuine empathy with our sisters and brothers for whom these tensions and
tragedies are very familiar. By allowing these artworks to work on us, we serve as
their priests, lifting their cries to God for them.
Mystery-evoking arts have one thing in common: they bring to light something
entirely unique, glowing, as it were, with more meaning than even the best art
critics can put into words. They do what science cannot do. Science always
classifies. It finds underlying laws and probabilities that govern similar things.
Everything is a case of something. But while science indeed evokes awe over the
wonderfully complex workings in nature and the psyche, it cannot fully explain the
"thisness" of any one thing or person or event unlike any other. Mystery-evoking
artworks in combination with faith in Christ Jesus can reveal how, as Hopkins
says, 39
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. . . each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells.
Selves. Goes itself. Myself it speaks and spells,
Crying, What I do is me, for that I came.
I say more: The just person justices,
Keeps grace; that keeps all ones goings graces;
Acts in Gods eye what in Gods eye one isChrist.
For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father,
through the features
of our faces.

2016. Text and art by Tad Dunne

Website: http://users.wowway.com/~tdunne5273/
This is a professional courtesy copy. Please do not distribute via paper or e-file.
For permission to display online (freely given): Just email me:
tdunne@sienaheights.edu

19

NOTES
1

This paper was presented on June 10, 2016 at the Dominican Colloquium, held at Aquinas
College in Grand Rapid, Michigan

By doctrines I include anything taught. A related term is dogma, whose meaning has been
defined by the Catholic church as doctrines that express revealed mysteries, that are formally
recognized by the Church, and that require assent by Catholics. As revealed they arise from
God's work among humans and not solely from human reason; as mysteries, their full meaning
remains hidden in God and can only be grasped analogically or metaphorically by humans.
Under this definition, Cathars have no dogma, but Catholics do. But since nowadays dogma it
means simply any imposed belief, I thought it better to speak of "revealed doctrines." See
Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, 320-26 (ch. 12, secs. 9-10).

First known use: St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch. Around the year A.D. 107, he wrote, "Where
the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church." Earliest informal uses of "Roman Catholic"
come from Protestants in the late 1500s. Earliest formal uses appear in treaties during the early
1600s.

Jn 3:16; Gal 4:6.

http://www.universetoday.com/30305/how-many-galaxies-in-the-universe/

For a comprehensive account of the notion of truth in Catholic spirituality, see Suzanne Noffke,
O.P., "Truth" in Michael Downey, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville,
MN, Liturgical Press / Michael Glazier, 1993), 983-86.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/Cathari

Ovid, Metamorphosis, 7:21. Also St.Paul: "I do not do the good I want, but rather the evil I do
not want" (Rom 7:18-19).

Rom 5:5

10

Jn 1:1, 14; Rom 8:11.

11

While from 1203 on, Dominic focused on living according to Christ's example and preaching
doctrine revealed by Christ, Pope Innocent III initiated military crusades lasting from 1209 to
1244 that focused on crushing the Cathars. These have been called the Albigensian Crusades
because they centered roughly around the city of Albi in southern France.

12

Melchior Cano, OP. (1509-1560). Publication: De locis theologicis [On Theological Sources],
(1563).

13

A bald criticism of Cano's position is not justified. Prior to the 19th century, no one was aware
that doctrines undergo historical development. For Melchior Cano's unawareness of historical
developments between earlier and later resources, see Bernard Lonergan, Early Works on
Theological Method I, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 22, eds. Robert M. Doran and
Robert C. Croken (University of Toronto Press, 2010), 476.

14

In the early 1950s, Lonergan began working on methodological issues related to theology. He
soon realized that he first had to establish what are the inner methods by which anyone knows
anything. To this end, in 1957 he published Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. From this
time on, he widened his focus to include existentialism, values, feelings, and historical
consciousness. He finally published his Method in Theology in 1972.

15

Bernard Lonergan, "Pope John's Intention," in Frederick E. Crowe, A Third Collection: Papers by
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 224-238.

16

Attention was drawn to the imaginal and story aspects of Catholic faith by David Tracy's
Analogical Imagination (1981) and Andrew Greely's The Catholic Imagination (2000). Both point
to reality as a "sacrament," a revelation and involvement in God's real presence, and an abiding

20

sense of mystery in the ordinary. This approach opposes the dis-enchantment about the
universe stemming from modern science.
17

Bernard Lonergan, "Reality, Myth, Symbol," in Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, eds,
Philosophical and Theological Papers: 1965-1980, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 17
(University of Toronto Press, 2004), 384-390, at 387.

18

Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 64-69 [ch. 3, sec. 4].

19

Bernard Lonergan, in Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, eds. The Triune God: Doctrines,
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 11 (University of Toronto Press, 2009), 735.

20

Morgan Llywelyn, 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion (New York: Tom Doherty
Associates/Forge, 2010), ch. 30 (ebook p. 663).

21

Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (University of Chicago Press,, 1952), 53, 76-77. Also,
Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation, ed. Maurice P. Hogan, ed., Collected Works of
Eric Voegelin, vol. 14 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 95. In a further source
Voegelin identifies specific civilizations that symbolize their order by analogy with the cosmic
order (Chinese symbolism), by analogy with the order of the soul (Platos society as man writ
large), and by experiences of transcendent revelation and grace (Israelite and Christian). See
Robert Anthony Pascal, James Lee Babin, and John William Corrington, eds., The Collected
Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 27, The Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings, LSU Press,
1991, 76-78.

22

Lonergan quotes Voegelin regarding this movement of consciousness, that it is "a mutual
participation of human and divine; that Plato speaks of his myth of the puppet player as "an
alethes logos, a true story"; and that the ontological status of the symbols is both human and
divine" See "A Post-Hegelian Philosophy of Religion" in Frederick Crowe, ed., A Third Collection
(New York: Paulist, 1985), 221.

23

In the Hebrew Bible, there is no distinct word for the English true or truth. Where English
versions use these words, the Hebrew authors meant "trustworthy for believing and living." In
English versions of the New Testament, the authors often have the Hebrew meaning in mind as
well, but occasionally they have in mind a personal state of integrity or righteousness, as in
"God's righteous judgment" and "Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth"
(Rom 2:8, 1Cor 13:6). See the entry for "Truth" in John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible
(Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1965), 901-02

24

John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
See the entire section on pages 57-64. See also, the Book of Job, 42:3-6. I replaced his word
awful with awesome because this now seem s closer to what he meant.

25

Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2007), 25.

26

Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic
Contemporary Faith, (HarperSanFrancisco. 1997) 17-19. See also Eugene Webb, Worldview and
Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development (University of Missouri Press, 2009)
132-37.

27

Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the
Modern World (Harper Collins, 2011).

28

For God's Word in nature, laws and prophets, see, for example, Psalm 147.

29

The notion of Purgatory is involves a temporary purging, not a finale. The notion of Limbo arose
not from any divine revelation but from the inability of theologians to specify what happens to
the unbaptized. It is not a place but the liminathe outer boundariesof theological
understanding.

21

30

See Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University
Press, 2005). Information on this work is taken from "Teen Spirit," a review by Tom Beaudoin of
Kenda Creasy Dean's Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American
Church (America magazine, Nov 1, 2010), 27. I have found this view among at least half of my
students who regard themselves as Christian.

31

Eric Voegelin finds these gifts of faith, hope, and charity not only in Paul's epistles and Christian
theology but also in the pre-Socratic writings of the Heraclitus of Ephesus. See Eugene Webb,
Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 115.

32

Jessica Powers, "God is a Strange Lover," A House at Rest (Carmelite Monastery, Pewaukee, WI,
1984), 24.

33

All three italicized words have the same Greek root for labor: katergathestha, energown,
energain.

34

Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was (Liturgical Press, 2012).

35

The human body has between 50 and 100 billion neurons, each receiving and giving electronic
charges. This gives a fitting analogy with Christs mystical body: His body lives through each
person, each neuron, receiving and giving love.

36

Gandhi was once invited to speak to a group who called themselves Followers of Gandhi. He
said, You call yourselves followers of Gandhi. But Gandhi follows his conscience. In a similar
manner, how might Dominicans complete the statement, You call yourselves followers of
Dominic. But Dominic follows . . .

37

Gerard Manly Hopkins, "God's Grandeur," in W. H. Gardner, ed., Poems and Prose of Gerard
Manley Hopkins (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1971), 27.

38

Bernard Lonergan, in Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe, eds, Topics in Education,
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 10 (University of Toronto Press, 1993), 222.

39

Gerard Manly Hopkins, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," in op. cit., 51. This citation has been
modified slightly for reading aloud.

22