The Humility of the King

 

What then is humility? To be lowly minded. And he is lowly minded who humbles himself, not he who is lowly by necessity. To explain what I say; and do ye attend; he who is lowly minded, when he has it in his power to be high minded, is humble, but he who is so because he is not able to be high minded, is no longer humble. For instance, If a King subjects himself to his own officer, he is humble, for he descends from his high estate; but if an officer does so, he will not be lowly minded; for how? He has not humbled himself from any high estate. It is not possible to show humble-mindedness except it be in our power to do otherwise.   St John Chrysostom

 Still thinking about the humility and kenosis of God.   

John Chrysostom has a series of homilies on Philippians, and here is the one on the 2nd chapter.   Here is another.      

Nova et Vetera turns out to have had a symposium on kenosis in its summer 2019 edition.    N&V is a useful way to read up on postconciliar Thomism.    In addition to the Fr Gilles Emery article on Kenosis, Christ and the Trinity,  there is an artice by John R Betz called The Humility of God:  On a Disputed Question in Trinitarian Theology.      Fr Emery's article is a recapitulation of Thomistic teaching on kenosis and specifically on the Philippians hymn, and I found it very useful for context.   Dr Betz's article is more geared to finding common ground between the Balthasarians (is that a word?) and the Thomists on this surprisingly vexed question.

He writes:

"To our common end, therefore, let us put Balthasar's theology to the test to see whether it stands up to Thomistic criticism.    In the process I hope to show that, while the Thomists have legitimate concerns, they are greatly mitigated by Balthasar's unwavering commitment to the Thomistic principle of the analogia entis as he inherited it from Erich Przywara..... specifically, with Przywara's help, I hope to show how Thomas's teaching on divine power and simplicity are more amenable to Balthasarian emendation than meets the eye, and that Thomas's own theology begs us to consider more carefully the conclusion that Balthasar draws:   that the Almighty is humble, not merely as an accident of the economy of salvation, but in himself."

Basically, Betz is trying to use the two different traditions to illuminate each other.    He notes that when two theological traditions run against each other, and are not adjudicated by the Magisterium, it is usually because there is still fruitfulness in the dialogue, even the disputation:  

"Or should we at once recognize with Paul V that the lack of theological resolution is a sign of mystery, and that no one school can claim to have a definitive grasp on it?   This, I submit, would be a genuinely Catholic way forward...."

 That works for me.      

I haven't read the rest of Betz's article yet, but if I were to express my readerly hopes, it would be that he would frame Balthasar's "urkenosis" -- his claim that the Savior's humility reflects some essential attribute of God's nature, not just an accident of the economy of salvation --- in terms of Aquinas's theology of simplicity.   For if God is simple and can neither deceive nor be deceived,  He can never appear as something He is not.    

But!  The analogia entis!  Here I am apparently speaking for Balthasar, for he by no means dismisses this.   Nor does Larry Chapp in his essay, for you can't simply trample around the Holy of Holies, the ineffable mystery of the Trinity's inner workings.     As he says:

Nobody is asserting on the Balthasarian end of things that there is no need to always keep in mind the greater dissimilitude between God and creation in any analogy between predicates of the Divine nature and the constitutive goods of creaturely being.

There is something rather breathtaking, if you think about it, in the notion of God's humility.    Referring to my readerly hopes and expectations again, it would have to be an aspect of love..... the love that gratuitously brought creatures such as humans into being in the first place.  

Certainly it reached its fulfillment in the New Covenant, but there were indications in the Old Testament as well.    

Now I'll go and finish reading the article.