The Christological Constellation: A Paradigm for Theological Coherence in Seminary Formation

Father John Nepil, professor of theology, St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado

“I wish you a tragic beginning and a comic end,” my Academic Dean wished me as I departed his office. His clever response were the words of Dante to his great patron Cangrande della Scala. What occasioned my visit to the Dean was not a disciplinary measure, but illness¾theology had given me methodological vertigo. For two years I had studied philosophy under a tight and clear pedagogy. Now I found myself tossed about in theological waters, heading towards a cliff shore of scientific incoherence.

With the help of the Dean, I came to understand that my experience was not simply the fault of the faculty; theology itself was in an identity crisis. Since the Council, the nature and mission of theology had become an ideological battleground, leaving the student in a state of confusion, even dismay. But like so much of the post-conciliar aftermath, the problems laid dormant long before the first session was called in the early 1960s.

In his theological series with Joseph Ratzinger, Johann Auer described in greater detail what I had intuited as a young theological student:

The main problem in teaching dogmatics is really this: by means of a large number of statements scattered through three or more years of the student’s academic life, dogmatics must unfold before the learner’s eyes a single reality and a single truth. This fundamentally single whole can stand before the student in its greatness and profundity only to the extent that he or she is able to absorb it in its unity at a single glance.^[1]

Ratzinger would later add to this reflection: “Specialization is the motor which keeps the single branches of theology steadily drifting apart and thereby leads to a progressive obscuring of the unity of theology.”^[2] This, he calls “the intellectualization of theology.” Now, how this is to be distinguished from the basic definition of theology (de divinitate ratio sive sermo) will require additional nuance.^[3]

Since completing my graduate studies and returning to the institution where I first studied, I have been haunted by the question of methodological coherence. Our specific focus is the intellectual formation of seminarians. But our questions can apply to anyone: What are the basic, operative principles needed to communicate a unified vision of the theological whole? How amid the greater identity crisis in which theology is passing, are we to navigate? And last, given a greater cohesiveness and unified vision, how can they come to bear on the deeper interpenetration of the various dimensions of formation?

These questions, and others like them, far exceed the scope of our present concern. What we do hope to offer a proposed path out of Dante’s selva oscura, by offering a Virgilian paradigm for organizing the complexity of present-day theological formation. Without stepping into the debate between Thomism and Ressourcement, we seek to offer a paradigm for theological coherence rooted in the creative mind of Hans Urs von Balthasar: the Christological constellation.

In what follows, we will lay out the Balthasarian constellation as a potential paradigm for the rigorous task of providing a unified vision for theology; one in which can navigate the methodological crisis of the postconciliar age, all the while aiding students by establishing the inner coherence of the already penetrating theological fields. And all this at the service of the Church, who in her most recent instruction, implores that the academic curriculum “as a whole should have a discernible and coherent unity.”^[4]

I. Ancilla as Adiutorium: A First Glance at Philosophy and the Theological Problematic

In his essay “Reading the Signs of the Times: Teaching Modern and Contemporary Philosophy in light of Pastoral Formation,” Terrence Wright lays out what could be considered the magna carta for the philosophy department of St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colorado. I was a student of this program, and glimpsed firsthand the clarity and cohesion of its great pedagogical vision. As Wright explains:

An approach that I have found to be successful in my teaching is to compare and contrast what I would identify as the basic commitments of Catholic philosophy with the commitments, or lack of commitments, found in modern and contemporary philosophy. For simplicity’s sake, I find it helpful to express these commitments in terms of the four basic systematic philosophical areas of metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, and ethics.^[5]

As Wright goes on to explain, this comparison between the Catholic philosophical tradition with those of the modern and contemporary distill for the student, four key commitments that summarize the four basic systematic areas of philosophy: creation metaphysics, realist epistemology, hylomorphic anthropology, and objective ethics.^[6]

For over 25 years, these four philosophical commitments have governed every class, informed every hire, and provided a general sense of deep cohesion within the faculty and program of philosophical studies. But they are not merely the grounds; they are touchpoints for the interpenetration of subjects. As Auer stated above, if the student is to see within the multiple subsections of a science “a single reality and a single truth,” then we must complement the divisions of modern scientification with the greater relational understanding of theological mystery.

As Wright proposed above, the task of philosophical studies in formational institutions like a seminary require an engagement with the decidedly non-Christian commitments of modern and contemporary thought. Though this is an essential act of the handmaid, the task of theology is different; its work is not principally comparative, grounded as it is in natural reason’s ability to interpret the meaningfulness of reality.

Theology is, as Matthias Scheeben writes, “the scientific presentation of the entire teaching revealed by God about God and divine things.”^[7] It is the science of God, but specifically God known by faith from Revelation (and not merely by natural reason, i.e. natural theology). As Scheeben goes on to explain, the Middle Ages “knew of only one theologia, as it was set down in the Sentences of Peter Lombard or in the Summa of St. Thomas.”^[8] Only in the second half of the eighteenth century is there a “formal dissection of theology into a set of independent, equally entitled subjects,” as we know today.^[9] Of the many subdivisions of the science of theology, one could group them in three ways: (1) dogmatic theology, which serves to present and elucidate the truths of Revelation; (2) historical-exegetical theology, which though not directly treating the content of Revelation, study the texts and facts concerning its foundations; (3) practical theology, which treats the rules of human action as contained in or derived from Revelation.^[10]

But at the request of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, these increasingly divided subsections of theology needed to be drawn back into a coherent unity (while not losing any of their scientific rigor). In the words of Optatius Totius:

In revising ecclesiastical studies the aim should first of all be that the philosophical and theological disciplines be more suitably aligned and that they harmoniously work toward opening more and more the minds of the students to the mystery of Christ. For it is this mystery which affects the whole history of the human race, continually influences the Church, and is especially at work in the priestly ministry.^[11]

The way to a deeper Christocentric convergence was to reveal the harmonious interplay of the various theological disciplines, i.e. how they coinhere and interpenetrate one another.^[12] Instead of emphasizing distinction, we need to see them primarily in relation. Another noteworthy development of the Council was the desire to see liturgy elevated to the level of an equal theological discipline.^[13]

Arriving then, half a century after the Council, the most recent documents governing the theological formation of seminarians list (among many others), principally four fields, or subdivisions of the science of theology: dogma, scripture, morals, and liturgy (sacraments). These are the central four pillars of theological formation; everything else could either be considered secondary subset or a non-theological discipline.^[14] Together, they are to form, what John Paul II called “an ever-deeper knowledge of the divine mysteries.”^[15]

II. Christological Constellation: Coherence as Co-inherent­­­¾Realsymbolik as Paradigm

At the request of the Church, and drawing inspiration from the coherence of Catholic philosophical programs, the task before us is to sketch out a proposal for an overarching pedagogical framework that would demonstrate the quasi-perichoretic nature of individual theological fields to collate into a deeper unifying vision of God’s self-disclosure in Revelation. At the risk of a wholesale endorsement of Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, we posit his “Christological Constellation” as a fitting paradigm for achieving such theological coherence. Granted, to do so does not require subscription to his style, nor adherence to his communio school¾all that is needed is an honest look one of his most compelling and creative ecclesiological formulations.

“All men are interrelated in a human constellation,” writes von Balthasar, because “to be human means to be with others.”^[16] From this launch point, von Balthasar is able to build out an ecclesiology that is grounded in its truly incarnational nature¾the Real Christ in his constellation. This is what makes the Church a mysterium, that she is a presence of persons indwelling in the divine-human union of the Incarnate Word. In this way, it is constitutively communio, and definitively at that; there can be no element isolated from the whole.

If this is the gestalt of the Church, handed on and truly effected in God’s self-disclosure, then the theological method seeking to elucidate it must stay in its close confidence. It must take the concrete nature of Christ’s human with the utmost seriousness, as well as penetrate deeply into the divine nature in which it is hypostatically united in the person of the Word.

In the extensive treatment of the constellation, von Balthasar moves the reader through the multiple appearances of the constellation: first at the Incarnation and his early life, later in his public ministry and death, and at last at the fulfillment and commissioning of the Church at Pentecost. All throughout he is developing a key theological concept upon which the larger paradigm hinges: the notion of realsymbolik. As he explains:

The relationship between God and the world, concretized as Christ’s relationship to the Church, is offered to the contemplation of faith in real, incarnate episodes. Subsequently theology may derive valid principles from them but may not stray far from these concrete evangelical origins without becoming abstract and therefore untheological. Like Christ himself, Mary, Peter, Paul and John are not so much moral ‘examples’ (how could Peter’s denial be that!) as prototypes (typos Phil 3:17; only thus are they synmimetai, fellow imitators, cf. 1 Cor 11:1), forming the Church throughout history.^[17]

Realsymbolik are real theological persons, whose distinctive missions (which determine their personhood) are architectonic to the Church. They do not symbolize aspects of the structured Church; their persons are the structures. For in the mind of von Balthasar, ecclesiology must be done upon personalistic terms.^[18] Only through them can we recover a truly incarnational vision of the Church, and through her, of Christ. As he goes on to say:

We regretfully have to admit that dogmatics as a “science” is not yet ready to integrate them but leaves them to homilies and contemplative prayer. Their proper integration requires a Catholic tact that knows how to preserve the difficult balance.^[19]

Our task is not to demonstrate, or even implement how in fact the ecclesiological realsymbolik is to be interpreted within the theological science of our contemporary day. It can, however, be used to simply put the four distinctive theological disciplines in relation.

Dogma, Scripture, Morals and Liturgy: these four sciences can be related to one another when applied to the “Apostolic Foursome” of von Balthasar’s post-pentecostal constellation. “In the Acts of the Apostles,” he writes, “the constellation changes: the women retreat into the interior of the Church … Four, and only four dominate the field of force of the developing Church.”^[20] These four are Peter, Paul, James and John.

James (the lesser), who has taken Peter’s place in Jerusalem, is the real symbol of tradition and law. Paul, who could be considered opposite in his mission to the Gentiles, reflects the freedom in the Holy Spirit. Peter guards the pastoral office, while John expresses abiding love. These four make a cross: James at the top, Paul at the bottom, Peter on the left, and John on the right.

Balthasar then goes on to reflect on them in light of the four senses of Scripture. As he says, “one can apportion the four aspects of the Church which they represent to the celebrated fourfold senses of Scripture which provided the basic structure of exegesis in the Church for more than a millennium.”^[21] Now, James expresses the historical sense, Paul the allegorical, Peter the tropological, and John the anagogical.^[22]

From here, we have come full circle to arrive at a possible locus of a theological discipline within the realsymbolic and incarnational vision of the Church’s faith.

1. Scripture in James. Locating it within the “Jacobin” allows for the foundations of theology in the covenantal tradition and history to permeate and inform any scientific explication to follow. This total grounding in the soil of the history is the way to recover Scripture as “the soul” of theology.

2. Dogma in Paul. Standing opposed to James in the cruciform structure of the apostolic foursome, is Paul, the first theologian and the model of allegory. Just as theology in the Fathers arises from its typological grounds, so too is theology born from the study of the spiritual sense of Scripture. In this way, the allegorical re-reading of the testaments in light of the event of Christ still remains the central dogmatic act.

3. Morals in Peter. It would seem strange to locate morality (and not dogma) in the realsymbolic framework of the Petrine. But just as dogma can be interpreted under the auspice of the Pauline, so too can the moral enterprise be located within the man whose entire existence is the struggle to receive his objectively given office in the subjectivity of abiding love.

4. Liturgy in John. Lastly and most compellingly is to resituate the theology of the liturgy within the Johannine posture of abiding, contemplative love. In an age marked by a spirit of liturgical technocratics, recovering our bearings in a receptive, liturgical modality¾one that speaks of Mary and her fiat¾could be as instructive as it is corrective.

In classic Balthasarian fashion, we are left with little to build upon, other than the mined gems of inestimable spiritual density and richness. But perhaps the Christological constellation of the apostolic foursome is enough for us to enter more deeply into the interpenetrating mystery of the four principle sciences. What Balthasar says about the foursome could be said of our disciplines¾Jacobin Scripture, Pauline Dogma, Petrine Morals, and Johannine Liturgy¾are principles grounded in Christological self-giving love.^[23]

Again, in summary: “All the diagram is intended to do is to show that, despite the set roles of the figures involved, guaranteed by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church’s unity in the multiplicity of integrating principles contains unforeseeable possibilities of unification and comprehension.”^[24] It is precisely this that our paradigm for theological coherence has attempted to express.

Conclusion

Still a professor of dogmatic theology, it remains unknown as to whether my tragic beginning in theology will in fact conclude as a comic end. What can be said is that thinking deeply about the state of theological incoherence requires us to return to the sources¾not just Scripture, the Fathers, and Aquinas¾but also their great poetic interpreters. Speaking of Dante, Romano Guardini once commented that the Divine Comedy is perhaps “the most powerful embodiment of this medieval sense of the unity of all things in being.”^[25] As the Letter to Cangrande della Scala explains, the entire poetic edifice is built upon the fourfold senses of Scripture. The Patristic development of the senses of Scripture remains the pattern of Catholic theological thought, arising as it does out of the sacramental modality of the Incarnation. If we are to move beyond the impasse of a scientifically verifiably method with one of organic resourcing, then let us begin by looking for the truest Catholic form we can find¾a pattern within the very heart of Scripture. Then, we can conclude with Ratzinger, seeing the beautiful coherence of the Christ form radiating throughout all of theology: “The truth is never monotonous, nor is it ever exhausted in a single form, because our mind beholds it only in fragments; yet at the same time it is the power which unifies us.”^[26]

(Editor’s Note: Father Nepil’s article, though not exclusively pertaining to mystical theology, is important for Christian formation, especially in seminaries. The conversation he describes is one that I had many a time with seminarians throughout seventeen years of service as academic dean at different seminaries. In the years that led up to the founding of St. John Vianney Seminary, I had been lecturing to chancery officials about this beautiful Christological Constellation that von Balthasar develops in part from St. Augustine’s Tractates on John. I used this vision to make the case that the Body of Christ not only has a head (represented by Peter) but also a heart (represented by John and Mary), and that it is for the sake of the heart that Christ the Head lay down his life. At the time I did not realize the ramifications of this for the task of Christian formation and theology itself - if theology is about seeing, beholding, gazing on the truth, that is, it is fundamentally a contemplative task, Father Nepil’s reflection opens up a vision of the whole, and such is wisdom.)

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^[1] J. Auer, The Church: The Universal Sacrament of Salvation, Catholic University of America Press: Washington D.C. 1993, xii.

^[2] J. Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy, Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2010, 123-124.

^[3] Augustine, The City of God, VIII, I.

^[4] United States Conference of Bishops, Program for Priestly Formation, 6^th Edition, n. 318

^[5] T. Wright, Reading the Signs of the Times: Teaching Modern and Contemporary Philosophy in light of Pastoral Formation in “As a Priest Thinks, so He Is: The Role of Philosophy in Seminary Formation,” eds. Beth Rath McGough and Patricia Pintado-Murphy, Institute for Priestly Formation: Omaha, 2023, 115.

^[6] Cf. Wright, Reading the Signs, 116-122.

^[7] M. Scheeben, Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics 1.1, Emmaus Academic: Steubenville, 2019, 2-3.

^[8] Scheeben, Handbook, 4.

^[9] Scheeben, Handbook, 4.

^[10] Dogmatic theology, as “theology absolutely in the proper sense of the word,” can be called “systematic” when compared with the second group, the historical-exegetical. It can likewise be called “speculative” when viewed in light of the third group, practical theology. Cf. Scheeben, Handbook, 4-5.

^[11] Second Vatican Council, Optatam Totius, 14.

^[12] This perhaps is related to the thorny issue of Optatam Totius n. 16, which endorsed a Ressourcement methodology over and against hegemonic scholasticism:“Dogmatic theology should be so arranged that these biblical themes are proposed first of all. Next there should be opened up to the students what the Fathers of the Eastern and Western Church have contributed to the faithful transmission and development of the individual truths of revelation. The further history of dogma should also be presented, account being taken of its relation to the general history of the Church. Next, in order that they may illumine the mysteries of salvation as completely as possible, the students should learn to penetrate them more deeply with the help of speculation, under the guidance of St. Thomas, and to perceive their interconnections. They should be taught to recognize these same mysteries as present and working in liturgical actions and in the entire life of the Church. They should learn to seek the solutions to human problems under the light of revelation, to apply the eternal truths of revelation to the changeable conditions of human affairs and to communicate them in a way suited to men of our day” (Optatam Totius, n. 16).

^[13] The study of sacred liturgy is to be ranked among the compulsory and major courses in seminaries and religious houses of studies; in theological faculties it is to rank among the principal courses. It is to be taught under its theological, historical, spiritual, pastoral, and juridical aspects. Moreover, other professors, while striving to expound the mystery of Christ and the history of salvation from the angle proper to each of their own subjects, must nevertheless do so in a way which will clearly bring out the connection between their subjects and the liturgy, as also the unity which underlies all priestly training. This consideration is especially important for professors of dogmatic, spiritual, and pastoral theology and for those of holy scripture. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 16)

^[14] Among these could be counted history, law, languages, homiletics, pastoral, practicum. In our estimation, the lack of distinction between sub-theological (or non-theological) sciences is what can give the theology student a sense of the lack of cohesion.

^[15] John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, n. 361.

^[16] H.U. von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1986, 136.

^[17] Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 148.

^[18] Cf. L. Chapp, Who is the Church? The Personalistic Categories of Balthasar’s Ecclesiology, in “Communio” Vol. 23.2 (Summer 1996), 322-338.

^[19] Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 149.

^[20] Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 308-9.

^[21] Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 310.

^[22] Within these von Balthasar will also locate the “four possible distortions of Christian communio” (Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 311): Positivism in James, Rationalism in Paul, Catholic Church Inc. in Peter, and Gnosticism in John.

^[23] “The true standard is to be found by returning to our ecclesiological schema, where it is a case of “doing the truth in love” (alētheuein en agapēi: Eph 4:15), not “in knowledge” (en gnōsei), between all four principles. Love does not limit truth and the doing of it but shapes and defines it: it provides the universal standard. Love provides the standard” (Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 321).

^[24] Von Balthasar, Office of Peter, 324.

^[25] R. Guardini, The End of the Modern Age, ISI Books: Wilmington, 1998, 22.

^[26] Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology, 98.