{65} (cont’d)

§ 2

CHRIST AND MAN

Inasmuch as man reaches God in Christ, it is necessary that Christ may have a direct religation not only with the physical reality of man, but also with human life. Then, this question (Christ and man) divides itself into two points, which I will consider summarily.

In the first place: the position of Christ with respect to mankind.
And, in the second place: the position of Christ with respect to the promotion of human life.


I. Incorporation of Christ to mankind

We need to remember again that man is an open essence. One of the essential moments of his substantive reality is an intelligence, which opens him to everything, and in the first place to himself, as reality. Man acts in his own life not only from the tendencies he may have and from the things he possesses, but from the point of view of his own reality. And, in the second place, that essence is open not only in this sense, but in addition, by the mere fact of being open to reality qua reality, is open to the depth of this reality, which is precisely the reality of God. Therefore, it is necessary to keep this constantly before our eyes, because if it is the case of finding God in Christ, it is not enough that Christ be God. It will be necessary that, in one form or another, this reality, which the {66} reality of Christ is, have some form of articulation with the reality, which every man is, insofar as open essence. Not only from a physical point of view, i.e., because man is that way as reality, but precisely in the way in which this substantive reality activates itself, namely, in the production and configuration of its own substantive being¹, of its own I.

Consequently, the totality of this problem centers in one concept only. The reality of Christ consists in the fact that actually, everything I had called in an imaginary way the ocean of the divinity where all realities float (sit venia verbo) as terminal moment of a divine free act, admits presences more or less distinct or intense. In the soul of the just there is a more radical presence, or at least a fuller one, of the divinity. If we elevate this consideration to the infinite, we shall reach a moment in which this ocean of divinity constitutes, through identity and formally, the reality of a human person. That is the case of Christ.

But the human reality of Christ does not exist there purely and simply to make Him be a reality. Precisely through that identity in which the divinity of the humanity of Christ consists, something else is realized besides the pure reality of the person of Christ. What is also realized is the strict and formal incorporation of God to the course of history and human life. The concept of “incorporation” in this sense represents the prolongation or the reverse of incarnation. If incarnation is the constitution of the identity of God with man, the incorporation consists precisely in the assumption, in one form or another, of all {67} mankind to that body in which God is realized by way of identity.

Let us remember that the ultimate and fontanal reality, in which the ultimate reality of the divinity consists, i.e., as personal reality residing in the depth of the whole creation, is expressed in a presence. For men it is an inter-personal presence, for no other reason except that man is personal himself. Therefore, that by virtue of which man is personal, namely his intelligence, has that presence in the form of manifestation. Thus, in Christ the incorporation is primarily a manifest presence of God to the whole of humanity. And, in second place, by virtue of this manifestation, Christ, incorporates the whole of mankind in one form or another (which will have to be explained), in His access to God. In the incorporative presence, i.e., in the incorporation of God to history, and therefore, in the objective position of Christ, that incorporation has two forms or two objective dimen- sions. One is the revelation of God to man; and the other, the incorporation of humanity to God. In the first, God is incorporated to man; in the second, man is incorporated to God.


A) Revealing presence, through the word. We must address the question of the revelation of God to man, i.e., the incorporation to Christ. Man, as I have said and will continue to repeat morosely, is an open essence. Open to the very depths of his own reality, in which, through a surrender of faith, man believes he discovers God, a personal and living God. A surrender of faith founded evidently on reason, and even possibly on a reasoning, in such a way that it may allow an inter-personal presence. Therefore, if this is the case, God will be found in one form or another manifested to every man in every histo- rical situation and in every religion.

{68} However, this does not exhaust completely the problem of the manifestation of God, because since there is an inter-personal presence, there remains the possibility that the reality of God, in a certain way on its own, might make itself more manifest than what was strictly demanded by mere creation itself to be manifested. Hence, in virtue of the belief that actually Christ is God, the man that has opted for this way of access to God has reason to insist on this second mode of manifestation of God. God is found manifested not only in those dimensions where He cannot but be manifested, but also in a form liberally inscribed in the inter-personal relation of each man, and of all men to God. Now, in a revelation considered this way we must take into account two different aspects, which unfortunately are often easily confused. On the one hand, there is the one who receives the revelation. On the other hand, those of us who have found out that he has received the revelation, which is a different thing. Let us not confuse the species, as we usually say.

Certainly, revelation, in the sense I have just indicated, is never a “communication” of truths by dictation. Primarily and fundamentally, revelation consists in the very work of God, whose maximum is precisely in the Incarnation, in the divine reality of Christ. Therefore, the Incarnation itself is what formally constitutes the supreme and donating revelation of God to humanity. This presents no impediment to the fact that actually throughout the previous history (one may think of the prophets), there may have been glimpses, with differing characteristics, of a revelation whose free initiative resided entirely with God. But in all these cases without exception (neither with the prophets nor even with the apostles), revelation does not center primarily and formally in the communication of some truths and some propositions, but in an activity realized, in a manifestation that manifests God operating.

{69} On the other hand, there is no impediment so that the live transmission of that which has constituted the revelation may be put in writing at the disposition of men. This commitment of revelation into writing gives it a character of word. We should not confuse the two dimensions of revelation, which appear to be connected. The one who receives the revelation does not receive a dictation from God. This is absurd. In virtue precisely of the metaphysical immanence of the divinity in the depths of the human spirit, whoever receives the revelation receives a special internal illumination, a criteria to judge certain realities, which sometimes may develop around the one receiving the revelation, and at others may even lead to the intellection of certain divine realities, but always through the way of illumination. For this reason the writing is always inadequate to what formally constitutes the revelation, which the one that has received it possesses.

Therefore, when this revelation is communicated to others through the spoken word or the written word, certainly revelation has the characteristic of word. But let it be well understood that here “word” does not simply mean a text written as a code. It means precisely what “word” means: something addressed to someone who has the capacity to listen to it, and consequently, who “shares the life” of that word in his own voice, in the voice of conscience. Revelation would be formally inoperative, regardless of how transcendent it might be, if in one form or another it were not directed to and accepted in some dimension of man, which awakens precisely through revelation, and where revelation finds a dwelling place. Certainly it is word; but as word it is precisely a correlate of the radical voice of conscience, which I have covered in another place². Revelation always says {70} something to what man was before receiving it. In this kind of exchange (sit venia verbo) or complexion between word and the voice of conscience, written revelation constitutes what should strictly be called the word of God. But a word of God understood not as a code, but precisely as a spirit. And besides, a spirit, which has the real and positive characteristic of being a fountain of life for all those who receive the revelation.

This revelation, I was saying, has taken place numerous times throughout history. Indeed, in his first line, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us: “in multiple occasions and in many ways throughout antiquity God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, and in these recent days spoke to us through His Son” (Heb 1:12). In this brief versicle is contained the idea, which more imperfectly and in greater length I have just explained. The revelation of God is multiple throughout history. However, there is always a manifesting unity, which culminates in the manifestation of God in Christ.

Nevertheless, it is necessary not to forget that man is an intrinsically historical reality. And the recipient of revelation is an intrinsic part of revelation itself. The opposite would be absurd. Which means that revelation is also intrinsically historical. Historical, not in the sense that it is called to disappear, that it has happened once and will not happen again. History is not quite the realm of the transitory, indeed, historicity is an internal and intrinsic characteristic of the reality of man.

Hence, revelation is intrinsically historical, in the first place from the side of God, because formally and constitutively He has wished to manifest Himself throughout history “in many ways and in different and multiple occasions”. And, in {71} second place, because in this case history, with respect to revelation, is not an accident, which happens to revelation, or something where revelation is received, but history indeed is the very revelation in act. This means history is that which in each moment carries the content of revelation, but where something else is said: that the historical being is precisely the formal act in which revelation consists as word of God.

This applies not only to revelation from the side of the one who receives the revelation, but to the entire course of the history of revelation. Because, actually, Christianity becomes more complex throughout the whole of history; new dogmas continue to be defined by the Church. But here the action of the Church is nothing but ministerial. The essential background of every dogmatic definition is Christ defining Himself. He continues to manifest Himself, not in the form of a new revelation, but at least defining His own and initial revelation throughout the length of history. Revelation is intrinsically historical. Therefore, a dogmatic definition is not a definition “of” the Church, but is made “by” the Church. It is a definition “of” Christ.

That is the manifesting and permanent presence of God to humanity, through Christ, in the form of revelation, which is an incorporation of Christ to mankind in the form of revealing word.


B) Mystical corporeity. But this is not the only manner in which God is actually present to humanity in reality. He is present also in another form. God is present as incorporated to humanity in the form of a revealing and subsisting truth, but in a way that is the continuation of the first, i.e., arranging it that the men to whom this revelation is {72} addressed remain incorporated to the real body of Christ himself. That is the incorporation of mankind to Christ.

By virtue of the Incarnation, all men, at least in this world, are in one form or another converted into moments (St. Paul would call them members) of the body of Christ. That is the incorporation of all men to the reality of Christ. That this may be possible, is based precisely on the characteristic of open essence, which mankind possesses. Precisely by being open essence, it admits this radical possibility of being incorporated to Christ in the form of body. It is what has been called His mystical body. Let us understand it is necessary not to rush into false illusions concerning what this is all about. One might think that this is a kind of society of men with Christ. That is not the case at all. Neither the mystical body nor the communion of saints are a kind of theological society. Not at all. Because it is not the case of a societas. It is something more radical, which is only given among persons, namely and precisely, a communion. The communion of persons.

This communion of persons certainly has a moral characteristic. But it has more than a moral characteristic. We are accustomed of making a moral out of the content of some duties, of some intentions, forgetting that particular characteristic, in a certain way “physical”, which morality has. Man may be moral or immoral; can be moral in one way or another. What he cannot be is to have no morality at all. Which means that regardless of the intentional order through which the moral may be acting, in some measure it has dimensions we would call “physical”. Morality, the moral entity, belongs to the physical reality of man, which is physically moral and morally physical. In this sense, which is transmoral, but includes morality, is how actually the communion of persons is realized in this world, between persons, and the communion of all persons {73} in Christ forming His mystical body. It is a “physical-moral” body.

This incorporation is realized in the life of each individual, in the structure of history, and in the whole of nature.

1) In the first place, in the life of each person. If man were not an open essence, all of this could not have any reality at all. That is why it is absolutely unsatisfactory the way in which this incorporation to the mystical body has been described as an “elevation”. This is true from a certain point of view. But from a more radical point of view it could be described precisely the opposite way. Not as an elevation, but as a descent of God towards man. This makes it false to superpose stratigraphically what we might call the natural reality of man, and the supernatural reality. It is almost as if actually men had been provided with a certain nature, more or less rich or poor, and in addition, as a gift, they were destined for a transcendent destiny. Obviously anything can be said in this world, and this has a portion of truth. But it is not the radical way to conceive it. Because the radical form is precisely the opposite. If Christ has created a nature it is precisely because He had to create something that could receive what He has proposed in the first place, which is precisely to incorporate Himself to creation personally, with His internal life.

Therefore, for man, the concrete form, which the incorporation to God in Christ receives is, by virtue of the structure I have just mentioned, the filiation. St. Paul tells us that we have received the Spirit of Christ, not in a spirit of servitude, but to call God “Father”, i.e., being children (cf. Rom 8:15). Of course, not through nature, but by adoption. The term is certainly juridical, and as such (I regret to say) inadequate. The law has always played games, which are somewhat {74} strange in theology and philosophy. Regardless of what adoption was in Rome or Greece, here it means purely and simply that filiation is not a forced one as in the case of Christ, which was a “natural” filiation. But nothing else. Because, indeed, it is a real filiation, much more real than an adoption would be in terms of Roman or Greek law.

This intrinsic and radical unity between the open essence of man and his incorporation to the body of Christ cannot be lost sight of in this problem. The great theologians of present day Protestantism (Bultmann, Tillich, Barth) have excessively sundered the thread that unites faith with reality. Paul Tillich himself has become aware of this, and at the last hour has had to return to the defense of the rights of ontology, saying that somehow we have to answer the question of what is God by Himself, and what is man by himself³. Clearly, How can theology proceed simply in the realm of pure faith?

Be that as it may, man as open essence is forming a mystical body with Christ, by virtue of the filiation, which is given to him through the real and effective assumption of the life of man to the very life of God.

2) In the second place, there is an incorporation of history to God. The incorporation of the history of humanity to God through Christ is a complex problem.

We are used to consider humanity as the set of beings who are rational animals. However, this way one cannot become part of the body of Christ. Humanity does not figure in this problem as a specific abstract unity. This is obvious. Also, it does not mean a mere collection of individuals: here is one that is really son of God, the next one also, and the one over there... and in the end all of them. Not at all. It is {75} a much deeper and radical dimension. Much deeper and radical, in the first place, because of what it says about the specificity of man, about the species of man. To consider that the species is always an abstract essence is one of the topics, which from my point of view, is weighing heavily upon the intelligence in a very sad way. I have tried to justify my point of view in a very long and boring book⁴. The species has no other characteristic but the genetic one. And what we call specific characteristics are those by virtue of which one can identify the genetic phylum to which one particular individual essence belongs. But nothing else. In this sense, the unity of humanity is a genetic unity. In the second place, besides being genetic, the unity of humanity is a historical unity. It is a historic unity, which is making itself. Numerically, throughout the centuries, it is not socially “one”. But, at least in its overall outline, it constitutes a rigorously historical unity. Men are not born only from some parents, but by virtue of a tradition and a historic-social situation, they are constituting their own history.

Therefore, the unity of the human species taken this way as the historic unity of all men, and not as a specific unity or a collectivity, is precisely the one, which is incorporated to Christ, and forms part of His mystical body. Consequently, Christ is not a mere link of history, and not even its most noble link. He is the very fundament of history. And this in two ways.

a) In the first place, because from the point of view of humanity all men, historically considered, find in Him their access to God. And, therefore, it is an access to which, in one form or another, they are historically incorporated to Christ in order to be able to access God.

{76} b) But in second place, Christ is not only the fundament of history in this sense, but is also a fundament of history, which is at the same time historical. He is the historical fundament of history. History, in this aspect, not only contains Christ, but has a specifically and formally Christic characteristic. Christ does not fundament history only by belonging to it, but also because Christ is happening in it throughout the whole of it. Christ is not only the fundament of history from the point of view that all manifestations of God in history are in one form or another anchored in Christ, but the whole course of history itself has its historical character founded precisely on the very corporeity of Christ. The whole of history is the body of Christ distended throughout the length of time, and over all the situations by which humanity is constituting itself. History is a Christic occurrence. And this makes that, on one hand, the whole of history from the point of view of the manifestation of God in the depth of each human conscience, and all religions, may be something, which cannot be separated at any moment from Christianity. It has been said (and I myself have previously used that expression) that all the other religions are “deformed” Christianity. The term is not quite correct, because in reality they are not deformed Christianity but deform Christianity. No one has ever proposed to deform Christianity. But it has turned out deform. All religions are deform Christianity⁵.

{77} In the first place, God is fontanal at the bottom of reality in a personal way. In the second place, He has an inter-personal presence in the depth of history, incorporating Himself precisely to the very structure of history. And, in third place, this incorporation constitutes the texture and the very sense of history. Christ is precisely God made into history. And history is nothing but the very historicity with which Christ maintains His incorporation to humanity in a historical way. The whole of history is the body of Christ, and in His corporeity history holds all of its reality.

3) In addition to being incorporated to each individual, and to humanity in a historical way, God in some way incorporates all of nature, even the physical one, towards Himself. St. Paul says once in a passing remark that all of nature is groaning in labor pains awaiting redemption, or at least its glorification in Christ (cf. Rom 8:22). At any rate, regardless of the detail this expression may refer to, it is evident that taking nature in its dynamic development, it is properly called to be at some moment the only thing, which matter can be (but inexorably will be) with respect to the spirit, i.e., to be the expression of the incorporation of the spirit to God, through Christ. Of course, this dimension of history precisely opens the perspective of an eschatology. Christianity is certainly complete and whole, in a radical sense, in this world and in each one of us; but complete in the fullest and formal sense it will not be except in the eschatology. With respect to this, I will now say a few words.

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¹ Zubiri will make this more precise in his later writings saying it is not really of the substantive being, but of the being of the substantive, cf. Sentient Intelligence, Intelligence and Reality (Inteligencia sentiente, Inteligencia y realidad, Madrid, 1984, 3a. ed., p. 222); Intelligence and Logos (Inteligencia y logos, Madrid, 1982, p. 352); Man and God (El hombre y Dios, op. cit., p. 54).
² Cf. X. Zubiri, Man and God (El hombre y Dios, op. cit., pp. 101-104); also The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones, op. cit., pp. 64-68, 301-305).
³ Cf. P. Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, Chicago, 1951.
⁴ Zubiri refers here to On Essence (Sobre la esencia, op. cit., pp. 220-248).
⁵ Zubiri notes on some file cards: “Christ fundaments history historically: founds history by happening in it, throughout the length of it. History is the mystical body of Christ distended along time. Deform Christianity: God is always revealed in all men and in all religions. This revelation is no mere unveiling, but a dynamic manifestation: it is a going towards Christ. This is the reason why in all religions and in all men there are salvific graces.” And Zubiri refers to the text published in The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones, op. cit., p. 256).