"Do you want to grasp the majesty of God? First grasp the humility of God.....When you grasp the humility of God, then you will rise with Him." St Augustine, Sermon 117
John Betz quotes this at the beginning of his article on The Humility of God. His aim, as I mentioned in the last post, is to put the two theological positions, of Balthasar and contemporary Thomism, into conversation with each other. He mentions Erich Przywara, specifically his work on the analogia entis, as a potential bridge between Balthasar's ideas on the humility of God and the concerns of Thomists on the subject. Przywara was mentor to Balthasar and to Edith Stein, notably, but is no longer well known. From the review on Betz's book on Przywara's thought:
Przywara aims, ultimately, to defend philosophically a declaration of the Fourth Lateran Council: "Because a similitude between the creator and the creature cannot be discerned without there being a greater dissimilitude between them to be noted."
This formulation of the Lateran Council is very directly concerned in the disputed question between Thomists and Balthasarians on this idea of kenosis and humility. It relates to what we understand by the term humility. Aquinas, when talking specifically about humility in his works, applies it particularly to the Son of Man, to the Incarnated God. God in HIs Essence does not have humility in the sense of recognizing His own limitations, the way we do.
But there is another way of thinking of humility, as the volition and practice of stooping down, a relational thing. Parent-child metaphors come to mind here quite naturally. A mother spends quite a bit of time serving her infant because the infant is needy and helpless, not because he is in charge.
In that way of thinking about humility, all of Scripture is a documentation of God's humility as a very feature of His majesty, as in the Augustine quote above. Every Psalm of praise is an inventory of all the things God does for us and for the cosmos in general.
As Betz points out, it is in this way that humility is constitutive of love. When we love, we give what we have, we share, we disclose ourselves, we serve. The Scriptures are a documentation of God's stable and gratuitous love for humans. And this love is far greater than our deficiencies which He has flooded with His abundance.
Our humility is very different, of course. Etymologicially it is derived from humus, ground, and we are literally formed from the ground and will return to it. Plus we are broken by sin. We can't attribute that form of humility to God, and yet, the Father did send the Son to take on our form, and the Son did willingly submit to being sent, to emptying Himself and taking the form of a slave. It seems intuitively obvious that this reflects something real about Who God Is, even if it does shade off into mystery; and that He has allowed this to be seen, even if through a glass darkly, at present.
I was planning to bring another element into this, which Betz also draws out, and indeed which is the main point of St Paul in Philippians 2 -- the corresponding exhortation to imitate Him. Imitation already implies a certain likeness, even if incomplete, and definitely the Lord's kenosis calls for a response:
2 Fulfill ye my joy, that you may be of one mind, having the same charity, being of one accord, agreeing in sentiment. 3 Let nothing be done through contention, neither by vain glory: but in humility, let each esteem others better than themselves: 4 Each one not considering the things that are his own, but those that are other men's......
13 For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will. 14 And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; 15 That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world.
I'll leave it there for now, but that is one further thing that's evident in this crux or median point between God and Man, which is the Word -- that the response involves our whole selves. As Augustine says, we rise with Him; He was lifted up on the Cross that He might draw all to Himself.
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