Soteriology

Ducay [​olim​ Rego]

Notes by Jake Mlakar & the Croce Fathers

I.e. Notes adapted from Jake’s notes for Rego’s class

Week 1

Introduction
● History
○ It has not been a huge discipline (like Christology) in catholic theology
■ Has only become popular recently in…
● Discussions of salvation of other religions
● Liberation theology
● Feminist Theology
○ Thus, Soteriology lacks a certain systematization
■ Thus there are many differences
● There isn’t a ton of doctrine on this, so authors feel pretty free to
talk about it as they see it
■ Manuals among authors
● Scripture - similar
● Dogma - similar
● Systematic - boh
■ Only a few points of reference
● NT talks about salvation a lot, but it uses many different images
● Our mode of investigation
○ Book: Reportare il mundo al Padre
■ Ducay’s central pillar, but there are pitfalls
■ Basically to reflect upon the question: Do all of the Persons of the Trinity
participate in the incarnation?
○ We know the scriptures. We’ll construct some fundamental pillars/ideas on which
it stands, and then return to profound them…
■ This there a center? Maybe. Two necessary questions in dialogue
● Is there revelation from God?
○ We wouldn’t know much of God if he didn’t reveal.
○ Gift
● What is man’s need for salvation?
○ I’ve sinned, can’t satisfy
○ Need
■ NT concepts
● Reconciliation
● Freedom
● Satisfaction/expiation
 ● Justification
● Redemption
○ Exam
■ Past years he hasn’t done a list of questions… he might do it this year
○ Index
■ Introductive: Salvation of man in the Word made flesh
● Our need for salvation
■ ⇒ Jesus Christ, Mediator of Salvation
■ ⇒ The Life of Jesus, Source of Salvation
■ Christian Salvation:Conclusion
● What salvation looks like

I - Introductive: The salvation of Man in the Word made Flesh

God and the Salvation of Man

● Need for salvation
○ Some cultures have lost this sense of their depravity
■ Usually rich and comfortable places
○ Man’s need for the infinite
■ We all seek happiness, this is not able to be fulfilled in material things
■ Man’s situation is precarious
● In danger of losing those things that make him happy
● Our desires cannot be fulfilled here and now
○ This opens the space for salvation
○ 7 points where man experiences this tension of evil
■ Death: ours and our loved ones
● Contrary of life, what we want
■ Presence of Evil in life
● The world is good, but what we miss, we appropriate as evil
○ Suffering = man’s spiritual awareness of evil
○ Pain = physical reality
■ Fault
● People do stuff that create problems… privations of goods
● A basic human concept. Rising above the normal order of things
○ I.e. injustice to others
○ It is a little more pervasive. Fault seems to happen even if
you are trying to do the good
■ Not necessarily sin, but fault.
● Subjective: perception of the fault
○ Depends on culture
■ E.g. ancients didn’t see slavery as bad
○ And personal psychology
● Objective:
○ Unavoidable, it has infiltrated man
 ○ Explained in christianity as a part of original sin
■ Solitude
● Man is fundamentally in relation
■ Chaos
● From society, cosmic
■ Transcendence
● We need transcendence
■ Fatigue of searching for meaning
● The ultimate questions
○ “Why is there something instead of nothing?”
● Science can’t help
○ The space for salvation
■ All of these open a space/need for salvation already on the human level
■ We have searched for solutions which fall short
● Philosophy, Social Orders, Religions,
■ Christian response
● We are created by God, asks salvation from Him
● Our question is already part of the solution
○ Man can hope to solve these problems because He who
created him as such can give him the power to be happy…
to answer his desires and find meaning in his problems
● God is love. The fullness of those things we lack/desire
○ Happiness is sought in union with him
○ A true communion, must be similar to him
● Our need leads us to Him

The Salvific Design of God in Jesus Christ

● God presents himself as Savior

○ Protoevangelium, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, prophets
○ Often in terms of the Covenant for salvation
■ Thus promises (peace, land, descendants, goods)
○ God gives/gifts salvation
■ God gives much more than man could hope for
● It is transcendent and exceptional to man’s desires

II - Jesus Christ, Mediator of Salvation

● What is Christ’s role in God’s design?
○ Why did Christ come? What did he do?
■ The plan is pretty complicated, takes a long time… how does Christ enter?
● Biblical
○ Col 1:15-20
■ Cosmic Mediation
 ● 15 ​He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ​16
for in[a​ ]​ him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ​17 ​He
himself is before all things, and in[b​ ]​ him all things hold together.
● There was cult to angles. Christ is way above these beings
○ “Image of invisible God”
■ Generated before all things
■ Arian interpretation is possible… but look at
context
● Wisdom - the resplendence of God in Proverbs etc
○ A certain ambiguity
○ All things created in light of him (finality) and through him
(causes), and find sense in him (held together)
● Who is the subject of this hymn? Logos or Christ?
○ There is no real difference. Same person.
○ But, many say Christ
■ Not in the sense of incarnation before time
■ But, the Logos in his incarnability and what he
would accomplish i.e. Death and Resurrection
● I.e. He is going to incarnate for a reason!
● It is worth it - Creation, even if it falls,
because it will be redeemed .
○ Some say Logos
■ Some problems…?
■ Mediator in History
● 18 ​He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in
everything. 1​ 9 F
​ or in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ​20
and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his
cross.
● He needs to reconcile creation with God
○ Romans talks about it.
○ Creation feel through man, but man by himself can’t
redeem it
● Jesus brings peace by his Cross
○ Prologue of John
■ 1 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. 2 οὗτος
ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. 3 πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο
οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν 4 ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων· 5 καὶ
τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
■ 6 Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος ἀπεσταλμένος παρὰ θεοῦ, ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ἰωάννης·7 οὗτος
ἦλθεν εἰς μαρτυρίαν, ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός, ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσιν δι’
αὐτοῦ. 8 οὐκ ἦν ἐκεῖνος τὸ φῶς, ἀλλ’ ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός. 9 ἦν τὸ φῶς
τὸ ἀληθινὸν ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον.
 ■ 10 Ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν, καὶ ὁ κόσμος δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸν οὐκ
ἔγνω. 11 εἰς τὰ ἴδια ἦλθεν, καὶ οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐ παρέλαβον. 12 ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον
αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ
ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, 13 οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος
ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ’ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν.
■ 14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν
αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας· 15
(Ἰωάννης μαρτυρεῖ περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ κέκραγεν λέγων· Οὗτος ἦν [a​]ὃν εἶπον· Ὁ
ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν, ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν·) 16 [b​]ὅτι ἐκ
τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν, καὶ χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος· 17 ὅτι ὁ
νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη, ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο. 18
θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε· [c​]μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς
ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.
■ Logos….
● Mediation.salvation on cosmic level and in history
● History of Doctrine

Previous notes (Reno)

● What is Salvation?
○ What comes to mind?
○ Soteria/soter (Greek words) + logos: Soteriology is a discourse on salvation
○ He shows a collection of images that come up on a google search of “salvation”
■ They have to do with Spiritism, art, Terminator, etc.
○ He picks apart a dictionary definition of salvation (salvezza)
○ What does “saved” (salvo) mean? Another dictionary definition
○ Etymological dictionary says that salvo comes from ‘olos, which is from ​indiviso
○ So basically “saved” indicates wholeness, fullness. Synonyms: beato, felice
○ When we say that Jesus is the Savior, would someone before Jesus understand
that?
■ No, “Savior” a term that the Christians coined
■ Jesus is the “soter” in Greek, which the Christians translated to Latin as
Salvator (savior), but which Cicero translated earlier as “servator”. Others
translated it as “conservator”
■ So why did the Latin Christians translate soter differently from their Latin
tradition?
■ Because these terms were traditionally applied to Jupiter/Zeus, which they
didn’t want to affiliate with Jesus
■ So that’s why they invented the term Salvator. But it was an invention
■ And they made different innovations:
 ● Tertullian invented the term Salutificator because he wanted to
distinguish but not create confusion
● Others translated it in different ways
○ Paraphrase of Augustine: “Salvare and salvator were not in Latin before the
Savior, but when the Latins converted, they made it”
○ So “Savior” is an act of enculturation.
○ To enjoy this course, we’ll have to play with words a lot, we’ll have to learn to be
surprised by language.
○ In this class, we’re not just talking about salvation in general; we’re talking about
“my salvation.” We need to get the personal dimension down
○ Class exercise: the prof has us write down the name of someone who “saved us”,
either from a sickness, an accident, a spiritual malady, an economic crisis, an
enemy
■ These are all images that the early Christians use to describe Jesus as
savior
■ “If we can’t also write down the name of Jesus, then we haven’t really
experienced salvation” prof says
■ I don’t know why he had us do this exercise, don’t we kind of get that
already?
● World religions
○ What are the responses of the world religions to the question of salvation?
○ Ancient image of a man jumping off a pillar to commit suicide, found near
Salerno, now in a museum somewhere. Gives the impression that life is nothing.
○ Document “Select Questions on the Theology of God the Redeemer” of the
International Theological Commission on salvation
(​http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1
995_teologia-redenzione_en.html​), also looks at other religions. Check it out
○ There are millions of people in other religions, and they didn’t do anything
different from us to be born into that. We can’t just ignore that, we need to know
what they believe
○ We’re all asking the same questions.
○ Hinduism
■ For them, there’s something divine in each soul, but ignorance is the cause
of our souls being trapped in matter, leads to egoistic desires
■ What did Jesus come to teach us? The truth. So the truth has very much to
do with this course. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Ignorance also comes into play
○ What do Buddhists think of salvation?
■ There’s a final salvation, but it requires a process of elimination,
destruction, of desire
■ Buddhism says you suffer because you don’t know how to desire
■ This whole world is an illusion; we have to get over our desires
■ Similar to what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman with the desire of
thirst.
○ Muslims
 ■ They don’t believe in the incarnation obviously, bc of their extreme
apophatism, but they believe in salvation
■ To be saved you have to do good works, prayer, fasting, etc.
■ Islam means “submission”; they key to salvation is your submission;
salvation comes from obedience
■ Christ submitted, was obedient even unto death
○ Traditional religions (of South America and Africa especially)
■ Salvation through certain rites
■ Where did our salvation begin? Baptism, a rite. Caspita
■ They also emphasize the importance of ancestors, that there is a social
relationship with them even after they die
■ Similar to our saints. St. Thomas Aquinas says heaven is a relationship
with God and with others
○ The “Universal Religion” (New age people)
■ People today are searching, everyone is searching
■ See Gaudium and Spes on this
● Criteria of salvation
○ 1. Spirit or Material
○ 2. Individual or Social
■ For Marxism, for example, it’s a materialist-social salvation
○ For Christianity, there’s a third criteria: Eschatological or “Intrastorica”
(in-history)
● Some important things
○ ITC document #29 – we can’t over simplify the situation.
○ The question of the Truth is key. We have to ask the uncomfortable questions.
“Why do you think that’s true?”
○ Is the Christian response simply a response to these needs of salvation that
everyone has? We must assert that it’s much more than that
○ Feuerbach says that the Christian God (and therefore Christian salvation) is just a
sublimation of human desire. But we must say it’s more than that, and that’s what
this whole course will be about
○ And thus we have to renounce our self-projections that we have of Christ and
Salvation. We have to open ourselves, let ourselves be surprised by the truth
○ Be aware of these self-projections. If we have a moralistic view of salvation, then
when we open the Gospels, we’re going to see a moralistic Jesus (like the
hermeneutical circle??)
● Soteriology and our Relationship with Christ
○ We can only enter soteriology by having contact with Jesus. If we pass this class
and our relationship with Jesus hasn’t changed, then something isn’t right
○ Therefore, the Holy Spirit is the real teacher of soteriology. The professor has a
small role comparably
○ How do we have contact with Christ?
■ Dei Verbum #8 gives 3 channels
● Doctrine (in the Church, in Scripture)
● Worship/liturgy (culto)
 ● Life
■ So this course itself will just deal with doctrine, but we have to do the
other 2/3 (worship and life) outside the course
○ We have to come to class having reflected on these things, come ready to think
and ready to say what we think
● Soteriology and the Magisterium
○ The Magisterium hasn’t said much at all on soteriology, salvation, or redemption
○ We have a solid definition of what Christ did for us in salvation, but the Church
has left it up to us to talk about what that means and how it was done
○ So that’s what we’ll be doing in this course
● Birth and growth of the critical (using reason) discourse on salvation
○ The disciples who personally knew Jesus had to translate their encounter with
Jesus into categories, so they used metaphors
■ They came up with word for savior, justification, etc.
○ Then they used these metaphors in accounts (racconti) of salvation
○ Then they and the Church Fathers reflected on these racconti
■ This all started in a non-systematic way
○ What was the first systematic work on redemption?
■ Saint Anselm, ​Cur Deus Homo
○ So soteriology was developed
○ And when seminaries came around, it formed the second part of the Christology
programma. First part was “Who is Jesus”, second part is “What did Jesus do for
me”
■ Even today, they’re sometimes taught together. But that risks not talking
much about soteriology
○ Manuals on soteriology
■ Classic structure: The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus
● What does Jesus did have to do with my salvation?
● We can’t just reduce soteriology to two moments of Jesus’ life
(incarnation and crucifixion)
● We have to put Jesus’ actions in the context of the Old Testament.
We can’t understand the logic of redemption of the NT without
understanding the logic of redemption already in place
○ Our starting place in this course will be the OT. Jesus references the Scriptures
very often in regard to his mission, what must be done
○ Then we’ll get into Christian redemption, the heart of the course, always with a
“global vision”
○ Then we’ll look at the classic tracts on the life of Jesus
● The exam will be written, he’ll give us a list of questions; see the options for the
elaborato
● “According the Scriptures”
○ Premese – Introduction/presuppositions
■ 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: kata’ tas graphas – according to the Scriptures
■ Paul’s saying if you want to understand what Jesus did for us, go to the
Scriptures
 ■ Jesus at Emmaus: He opened their mind to understand the Scriptures.
● They didn’t have the categories to think of what happened as
anything other than a great tragedy. He had to point them to the
Scriptures
■ What Scriptures? The canon
● We don’t see each Bible as “the Word of God”
● Where are the Scriptures to be found? In the heart of the Church
● Each book of the Bible presents an image of God, but none of them
give the fullness
● Image a woman who’s stern in one painting but smiling in real life.
If we just had one of those, we wouldn’t have the other

Week 2
● According to the Sciriptures, cont.
o Presuppositions, cont.
▪ The Church has in her heart more than what’s in Scripture
▪ Each image transmits one or two facets of reality, not the whole reality
▪ He show us a close up image of the Pieta from above Mary, not easy to
know what it is
● We can only now what it is if we know the reality
▪ Scripture gives us images that are ambiguous, that are scandalous, and
only for those who know the reality, who are in relationship with the
reality can judge them
o Mysterion
● Speaking of salvation presumes a situation of disorder, of difficulty
● In our tradition, that’s associated with sin
● So the temptation would be to start immediately by talking about
sin
● But sin presumes an earlier situation of order. History doesn’t
begin with sin; it begins with creation
● We always have to start our conversation on salvation with the
original designs of God – Creation and Salvation History
● Mysterion is a really deep word. It’s Greek, not Hebrew.
● You can only have a story when the story’s over. Otherwise it’s
open
● And because we are awaiting this, we have a key of reading for all
of history. This key is mysterion
● 3 understandings of Mysterion
o Secret (segreto)
▪ Etymology is uncertain, but the word could be
similar to the sound “mm” – closed mouth, not
saying anything
▪ And could have originated in early sects who did
secret rites. If you were associated with them, they
could have offered some kind of salvation
 ▪Passed from ritual action to knowledge, ideas
▪Similar to gnosis – knowing the mysterion grants
salvation
o Design (disegno)
▪ Mysterion is taken in the Pentateuch and made to
apply to the “secrets” of God; ie., the projects,
designs of God
▪ The Book of Wisdom for example is full of this
▪ And these designs are a gift. It’s not man who seeks
to rob the secrets of God, it’s God who gives his
designs to man
▪ Mysterion in the mind of God is completed, filled.
He knows what will happen at the end of time (but
this doesn’t cancel freedom, because that’s a
different level. He knows our actions, but the
actions are free)
▪ Daniel, apocalyptic literature uses mysterion this
way
▪ Paul in the NT uses it this way fundamentally
● “We speak of a divine wisdom, mysterious,
etc. that was hidden in God from the
beginning and was revealed for our glory”
● The mystery doesn’t go above our human
capacities – God reveals it to us!
● Paul emphasizes the revelation, not the
hiddenness
▪ God doesn’t do everything immediately; there’s a
logic that uses time
▪ He didn’t reveal it all at once or to everyone
▪ Jesus was revealed in the last times
▪ The mystery of the Church; the salvation of all
people in Christ
o Actions (azioni)
▪ Every action of God in history can be called
mysterion
▪ What in this sense would be the great mysterion?
The Incarnation
▪ In this sense, we talk about the mystery of Jesus
▪ This is where we get sacraments, translated from
mysterium/mysterion
▪ And here we return to the original meaning of
mysterion – ritual action
▪ The Church in one word is salvation – JPII to a
journalist
o Creation and Benediction
▪ Creation
o How is creation a mercy? Nothing wrong was done prior
o If we see mercy as someone strong helping someone weak,
then we can talk about mercy present at the very beginning
of creation, simply because creation did not exist
beforehand (JPII uses it this way)
o Relationship between love and creation – this is the point
o The design of God begins with an act of love which is
creation
o For us as human beings, it’s not enough for us to know
we’re forgiven by God, that Jesus died for us; we have a
more fundamental suspect that there is an evil intention on
the part of the creator
o Radically, we are in a bruttato world that does not make
sense. That could make us think we weren’t made in love
o This isn’t theoretical. We’re talking about why we don’t
like our bodies. Why we were born into one family and not
another. Why we can make fatal errors.
o To talk about this, we have to go to the root – creation
o And this simple fact: we are in the hands of God
o Before talking about salvation, we have to heal the root of
creation. Otherwise, salvation is superficial, cosmetic
o We are here as an act of love on the part of God ----- that is
the point
o His love is free, merciful, unconditional, disinterested
o Love precedes justice. That is true in creation.
o Love conditions justice; justice serves love – JPII
o We are the fruit of the love of God.
o We always put “omnipotent” and “merciful” together in
theology and liturgy. They go together
▪ We see this in the psalms
o God can forgive sins because they’re always smaller than
God.
▪ Benediction
o Actions are explained by verbs. What verbs do we find at
the beginning?
▪ God said “Let there be light.”
▪ God separates the light from the dark
(distinguishes)
▪ He calls the light day (again he speaks)
▪ …
▪ “God blessed them”
▪ God says, he sees, he blesses
o What does “blessing” add to “speaking” (he’s relying on
the relationship between “benedice” and “dice” – both have
“dice”)
o God only blesses the living things; the things that have life
and can give life.
o We are people, not just created, but blessed. He does it to
man: God blessed them and said to them…
o Blessing gives the capacity that not all are equal
o The characteristic of the blessing on humans is to rule
creation. Which is the blessing of work; it’s a gift of God
o God also blesses the Sabbath.
▪ But it’s not a person, it’s a period of time
▪ We’ll discuss in Liturgy class
o Vocabulary
▪ Hebrew
● Root: brk
● Substantive: beraka
● Verb: barak
● Participle: baruk
▪ Greek
● Verb: eulogeo
● Substantive: eulogia
● Eu and logos – love/goodness and reason;
Spirit and Son
▪ Latin
● Vulgate: benedicere, benedictio, beatus/a
o So when God blesses, he gives me love and order
o Blessing is an action that has God as its subject (God must
bless first, only he can give life and logos)
o Scripture uses the same word to also talk about men
blessing God. But how can we give life and reason to God?
▪ Because he received them first
▪ Divine blessing ​→​ Human blessing
▪ It’s an incomplete arrow the other way ​←​---
▪ Genesis 14:18-20 – Melchizedek blessed Abram
like this
o So at the beginning, we don’t just see creation, we see
blessing as well
o But blessing must mature in time, it’s not all there at the
beginning
o The way it’s developed is when we live according to this
blessing, when we acknowledge it and attempt to return it
to God
o But in order for it to return to God, it needs our
collaboration.
 o But they’re two separate things. One thing is when God
gives us this love and order, and another (same word but
different meaning) when man blesses God
▪ Benediction and salvation
● The dynamism of blessing must develop in life gives the promise
of a Final Blessing, the fulfillment of God’s blessing, of perfect
happiness, fullness of life
● This dynamism isn’t automatic, because it passes through my
liberty
● How is it impeded? By our free will
o Satan tells us that “you will be like God”
o But that’s the real promise of the final blessing, being like
God
o He’s playing with this, making us think we can have it, but
without following the plan of God and following his plan
instead
o And the opposite of benediction is malediction – a curse
o And if blessing is life and order, malediction is disorder
and the absence of life (death)
o If I refuse the blessing or the way of blessing, it leads to
death. Does God impose that? No, it’s our choice
● When we put ourselves in this situation, God invokes Plan B
o He keeps the promise of the final blessing, but he works
more to put us back on the path of blessing
o So if Adam and Eve wouldn’t have sinned, there wouldn’t
be salvation. There would just be the path of blessing
o Did God always have two plans? In a certain sense yes,
because he didn’t determine our free will. But we didn’t
have to sin
o We complicated the divine design
o The original design turns into a salvific design
o So salvation history begins
o And the protagonist is God. God does everything to let us
know that he is greater than sin
o History is not guided by our sins, it’s guided by God
bringing us back to life.

Thursday 2/22
● Notion of Blessing, cont.
o Relationship between blessing and salvation, cont.
▪ Emphasizing that God is a good creator. And when he puts us back on the
right path, it’s because he loves us
▪ We are always in the hands of God the creator. Even when we sin. We can
put ourselves outside of his friendship, but we can’t flee from him
 ▪ The salvific logic that God uses in the OT is the same as the NT. He’s the
same God
▪ The Flood
● It is not a divine punishment.
● Why then did the Lord permit this destruction?
● Gen. 7:3 – to conserve the life of the human race
● God has to limit the evil of man. The human race was destroying
itself. So God chose one person, Noah to conserve and save others.
● General Schema of Salvation:
o Salvific Will of God ​→​ Choice (of one to bring about his
salvific plan – Noah in this case) ​→​ God gives a plan
(programma) of action ​→​ the person must listen, have
faith, and obey (Noah must build the Ark) ​→​ salvific
intervention ​→​ liberation and covenant (with a sign of
God’s faithfulness) ​→​ thanksgiving
● This is more or less the “grammar” of salvation
● After the flood, it’s clear that the end is a new creation
▪ Tower of Babel
● It’s a sort of “new original sin”. After the new creation, the people
sin again
● What’s the sin here? They want to “make a name for themselves”
and not be scattered across the earth
● So the sin is “autobenedizione” – they want to bless ​themselves,​
receive logos and life from ​themselves
● But this impossible, so they fall from benediction into malediction
● So it’s a disaster. They’re dispersed because of the natural effect of
their sin. And God seeks to put the people back on track
▪ Vocation of Abraham
● “I will make of you a people and bless you… you will become a
blessing… I will bless….” The text says blessing a lot
● The calling of Abraham is understood in the context of a blessing
● The novelty of the strategy is that in ​you (​ Abraham) all people will
be blessed
● This is a fundamental, scandalous logic, that to save everyone, God
uses the mediation of human beings, of the structure of man
● Similar schema to above.
● Abraham acts, but the descendants don’t come (immediately). God
has him look at the stars (contemplating creation). “He believed
the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness”
o Which Paul takes up as the justification by faith. This is
how we reach salvation
● Act of Faith indicates that I don’t see, but that I trust God
● Read up to “peccato” in the programma for next time

Week 3
● Benediction, cont.
o Relationship between benediction and salvation, cont.
▪ Review of Abraham and the new strategy of the transmission of blessing
● Two great temptations of envy and pride
● Abraham is a canal for God’s blessing; he can’t give into the idea
that he is the blessing.
● Melchizedek blessing Abraham is curious. How can someone
outside the blessing bless the guy who’s supposed to be the
blessing?
● To show that Abraham isn’t the padrone of his blessing
▪ Exodus-Sinai Covenant blessing
● Divine initiative
● With Moses, the channel of the blessing is no longer a single
person but a People
● This is where we get the logic of the Church (our blessing moves
from a single person – Jesus – to His People, his assembly that is
the Church)
● Liberation of Israel in the grammar of Salvation
● Salvific Intervention
o Israel doesn’t do anything to save itself. In fact, they are
often against the idea of being saved
o It’s God’s intervention that saves them
● Sinai is also called Mt. Moriah, which is where Abraham was
going to sacrifice Isaac (I think?)
● Sinai is where Moses met God in the burning bush. Then he
brought the people back there
● Election in love
● Importance of Liberty
o It’s important because God wants children, not slaves
o The people of Israel could’ve chosen God or the pharaoh
o We too can choose our padrone
o But when we choose God, we paradoxically get our
freedom
o With liberty, one can take part in the Covenant
● But between liberty and the Covenant, God tests the hearts of his
people in the desert (which always turns out badly)
● Shows the importance of a mediator. Many fall, but one is faithful.
o Moses is that one; Jesus later presents himself as the new
Moses
● Distinction between rites of liberation (Passover) and rites of the
Covenant (at Sinai)
● The Torah is the sign of the Covenant.
o The sign that Israel is in the blessing of God is (like
circumcision earlier) that they’re following the Law
 o But to follow the Law, first they must listen to it in the
Torah
o The Torah is good and holy, but when it is taken out of its
root of listening to the voice of the Lord, that’s where we
run into problems
▪ The Benediction of the People later in history
● When Israel forgets that they are nothing in themselves, their woes
begin
● Institution of the Priesthood
o The whole people is priestly (have as their mission to
transmit the blessing to everyone)
o But among them, the Lord chooses the tribe of Levi to be
priests; they consecrated to the Lord their first born
children
o The primary job of the priest was to bless the people
● Institution of the King
o Wasn’t there at the start; the people asked for it to be like
the other people (contrary to their vocation to be unlike the
other people)
o Temptation of the people to be like others
o Notion of Divine Flexibility. He respects their liberty, but
they suffer more because they went their own way
o God can be flexible because he is omnipotent. The most
rigid people are the weakest, those who lack fullness of life
o We can apply it to the Cross. The Cross was not in the
plans of God; it was a thing of man. It was the form that
man gave to God’s plan of redemption
● Priesthood, King/prophets, sages are institutions that seek to
maintain and guide Israel in the channel of God’s blessing
o Whole point: design of God is a design of blessing
▪ He gave us a start and wanted it to mature in us until the final blessing.

Week 4
● Sin
o Testing (la prova) of the heart is necessary
▪ I cannot know the true face of sin if, first, I do not know God
▪ There is no logos to sin, there is no reason to it. There’s always the
question, “why?”. It’s absurd, without reason, without light
▪ So it’s something cloudy, something dark, something we can’t overcome
▪ There is a distinction between prova of heart and temptation
▪ The subject of testing of heart is God. God wants us to make the decision
to remain in his blessing
▪ Testing of the heart is at the service of the maturation of the blessing in us
because it provokes our liberty.
 There are potentialities that aren’t manifested yet. So God brings them out,
▪
allows us to manifest them
▪ What is the greatest test of our heart? Death
● Man knows himself in his death, Scripture tells us
● Even Adam still would have had to pass to the final blessing. We
cannot enter into the second phase with our flesh. We need new
flesh to see God
● We call this passage death (or dormition for Mary – and even she
has a new flesh)
● It’s the same flesh, but glorified. It’s new material
▪ But God can use the devil to test us in the heart – this is temptation
● But it’s not like God invites the devil. He simply permits the devil
to tempt us, because the devil is free and wants to make us fall,
wants to distance us from God.
● But God can use even that to help us prove our love for Him
● Why would God use this negative thing as a positive thing?
● Because the devil is in the hands of God, and God never allows us
to be tempted beyond our measure. We must make use of the
divine help
▪ God never erases our liberty. “The God who made you without your help
will not save you without your help.” – St. Augustine
o Dynamism of temptation
▪ Temptation has as its subject the Devil, and its goal is to distance us from
God
● So God cannot tempt in that sense. Even if, in the scripture, we
hear of God “tempting” people
▪ Who tempted the devil?
● There was no tempter for him
● How did he say no to God? How did he, a good angel who had all
the grace of God to say yes, say no?
● It shows the absolute irrationality, the obscurity of sin.
● Angels must also grow. Not in time, but they are tested at a point.
And they aren’t the same before as they are after the test. They’ve
grown (or diminished)
● The sin of Envy; the devil’s sin has something to do with it
● Patristic theory was that the devil was disgusted with God’s love of
man and desire to unite with man’s nature, was envious that God
did not unite with angels this way. That’s why he said no
▪ Letter of James – God tempts no one. He doesn’t want anyone to sin (not
even to demonstrate his mercy)
▪ How does temptation work? What are its mechanisms?
● The devil uses temptation as an “anti-blessing.” Its mechanisms are
the opposite of benediction
● The devil is the author of temptation, proposes that man can arrive
at the final situation, reconfigures the relationship of the creation to
 his creator (views God as an evil creator rather than a good one),
gives a plan (programma) of action, gets him to make an “act of
faith” in this word of the devil, then gets him to do “works of
faith” in obedience to this word
o The Experience of sin
▪ Human experience of sin
● We are often sincere with ourselves. But we are often deceived.
● But Jesus says the work of the Spirit is to convince us of sin
● We often think of sin as something good that is illicit, that you
can’t do. But that’s not sin (and the consequence of following that
way is seeing God as a policeman, a lawmaker who makes laws
contrary to my happiness)
● Sin is a situation of self-malediction, choosing death, choosing
disharmony. Refusing life, saying no to life (and not just divine
life, but ultimately human life as well). And maybe I think I’m
choosing a better life – but that in particular is the deceit of the
devil
● Man suffers for his sin
o God doesn’t punish us for our sin, it’s more that sin makes
us suffer for doing it. God doesn’t need to punish us
o Image of the hammer hammering a nail into itself, another
image of a man completely bound by ropes
o Human nature without the grace of God is “schiffo”,
something minimal.
o Thomas and Augustine say that death entered because of
sin. But difference is that Augustine says that death is
properly the fruit of sin, and if there wasn’t sin there
wouldn’t be death. But Thomas’ position (more realistic) is
that human nature in itself is a “mortal nature”, human
nature itself is so weak that it needs God’s grace to not die.
o So for STA, death is not a punishment of God, it’s our
nature manifesting itself. Man is structurally mortal
▪ The reaction of God in the face of the refusal of man
● Does God punish sin? We’d say no, as we said above
o So God says “I’m sorry you’re suffering, but I can’t
substitute for your liberty”
o God seeks to heal us, to draw us out of situations of sin
● Death
o The passage from earthly blessing to final blessing has
become fearful for us, because of fallen nature
o The Bible presents our life as smoke, as nothing
o “death is the shepherd of those who go into nothing” –
psalm
o Many psalms express lament and darkness about what will
happen after death
 o Death is not a divine punishment
o Death is a divine mercy (St. Irenaeus?)
▪ How does God permit death as a blessing?
▪ The intent of God to stop us from destroying
ourselves
▪ Death is a limit to human self-destruction
● God’s response to Sin in the Covenant
o What we have seen now is valid for all. But what is the
implication of God’s channel of blessing with regard to
sin?
o And what does it mean when I, who am within God’s
blessing, sin?
o It adds to divine sorrow, because God has chosen us and
brought us here
o It’s the dog returning to his vomit
o Relationship of God to sin of Israel is different from his
relationship to the sin of the nations
▪ Because he had different relationships with them
o Ezekiel 16
▪ What were you before God chose you? Nothing
▪ Then he elected you (at Sinai), did all these things
for you
▪ But then you became a prostitute
▪ Ezekiel is trying to get them to think, to think about
their history. Showing them that they have been
deceived about themselves and their relationship to
God
▪ Wants to move them to repentance, to reconciliation
▪ The chapter ends well, which is a beautiful thing.
The Lord continues to love us
o Why does God speak in such a strong way with Israel?
▪ Their mission in the midst of the nations is to show
them the image of the Creator
▪ Others are supposed to see God in Israel. So their
sin is that they reveal an image of an evil God
▪ So God wants to purify the channel of his blessing.
● The response of mercy
o People don’t ask for forgiveness until after the Covenant.
o Exodus 33-34 – second revelation of the name of God:
“Yahweh, Yahweh, merciful God”
o “The Name of God is Mercy” – Pope Francis’ book
o The message of Felix Culpa
▪ The question of the suffering of the Just
● Why do innocent people suffer?
 ● It’s clear in the OT that people who suffer are suffering because of
their sin
● But then we have the figure of Job
o Place of the Blessing in Job.
o The hypothesis of the devil is that man is not capable of a
disinterested love toward God
o Then the “theologians” of the OT tell him that he must’ve
sinned, because God is just
o Immediate retribution, then, in the OT, doesn’t always
work, Job shows us
o There are questions that aren’t answered, and this is one of
them
● And Jesus turns that over in the NT
● The Dynamism of Reconciliation and of forgiveness (perdono) in the OT
o First example of forgiveness among brothers: the story of Joseph
▪ Lens of Romans 3: All are under the dominion of sin
● It’s an existential condition of every man born on earth since
Adam and Eve. Structurally, we are all sinners. This is realism
● In what sense? Double sense. First that we all have concupiscence,
then that we all do bad things.
● But do we have to wait for Jesus for the forgiveness of sins? No,
because we have the just men of the OT, where there was
forgiveness of sins, in a certain sense.
● It’s the beginning of the logic with which Jesus forgives sins in the
NT
▪ We saw last time that no one asks for forgiveness from God in Genesis.
The first action of reconciliation described is forgiveness among men:
Joseph
▪ Through the logic of mercy among men, we can understand the logic of
divine mercy. In Jesus, divine forgiveness still arrives in a way that is
fundamentally human
▪ Joseph is an innocent person. He didn’t do anything bad. And his brothers
don’t love him, out of ​envy
▪ He has many gifts, but they’re taken away from him. In Egypt, he has
nothing.
▪ But it’s when he has nothing that God gives him everything. God fills him
with gifts. And you need a certain fullness in order to forgive
▪ You can’t give what you can’t have – you can only forgive because God
has given you something
▪ Joseph forgives his brothers in his heart. The first move of forgiveness is
that the victim needs to renounce the vendetta
▪ But Joseph is clever (furbo). He puts them to the test. He wants to know if
they’re penitent or not with what they’ve done
● Because if they haven’t repented, there can’t be reconciliation. It
would be a falsity
 ▪ So he asks them to make an external gesture to show that they have
converted
▪ Two moments
● Recounting of the Truth
o The brothers had lied to Jacob their father.
o They have to unmask the truth of the deed, recognize the
evil as evil
● Joseph asks them to have the disposition of being a slave like he
was
o If one is disposed for that, it shows they’re repentant
▪ The test of the heart (prova del cuore) is not a punishment, it has a
medicinal goal
▪ What reparation does Joseph ask of his brothers?
● That they tell the truth and that they’re disposed to identify
themselves with their victim
▪ This is the human grammar of forgiveness
o Forgiveness and reconciliation within the Covenant
▪ Premises: death and the expiation of sins
● Is death solely the fruit of sin? No, there’s a natural element to it as
a passage from the earthly blessing to the final blessing
● Death is a testing of the heart, it’s not a divine punishment
● Why is there the need of passage? Because we’ll see God, and if
we see God in this body, we would die. My nature cannot bear
that. So we need to receive a new body, a structure that can bear
the vision of God
● This is the great Ontological Limit. It’s not bad, it’s natural
● But because of sin, there’s the situation of spiritual death
o You’ve distanced yourself from life
o It has its own Limit; the Limit of Fault (colpa)
o This isn’t an ontological limit; it’s controlled by my
freedom
o Fault is a state of non-relation with God; a state of death
● So the ontological limit, with sin, becomes something tragic.
● This is because the arrival at final benediction becomes a big
question mark
● Psalm 49 explains this well: “Death will be their shepherd”
● Distinction between physical death and death of soul/state of fault
● Physical death has always seemed worse, but the state of fault
makes it so much worse because we don’t know what happens
afterward
● Death becomes the great fear, so God must teach Israel to fear
death of the soul instead. He seeks to relativize physical death
● State of man on earth in OT is that sins cannot be forgiven in this
life
● But there are 2 fundamental situations distinguished in OT
 o Those who fall into malediction but who can, in this life,
reconcile with God up to a certain point
o Those who, not even on this earth, can reconcile with God
▪ So are they condemned?
▪ Thus began reflection on death as the only situation
to expiate my sins on earth
● Death becomes understood as an instrument for a greater good.
o Why does the law demand the killing of sinners?
Relativization of physical death as only means to heal the
sinner
o On earth, (in OT thinking) I can reconcile with God in
some ways. But I cannot reconcile with God completely.
There will always be the ontological barrier, which,
because of colpa, has become a real pena
● The sign of Abraham reaches the limit.
● How can certain people be reconciled with God in this life in OT?
o Remember this is all in the channel of blessing. If someone
is outside this channel (ie., outside of Judaism), these don’t
apply to them
o These are before death and don’t apply in all cases. There
are some sins that seem like they can’t be forgiven in this
life. It seems like they could only be forgiven by death
itself
o God always seeks to preserve the most life. There’s a social
goal for putting sinners to death. Many others would die in
addition if they were left alive
o Death as the last possibility of conversion. Life of the soul
is much more important than physical life
● Sins that can be forgiven
o Things that apply to minor things
o Involuntary grave things
● Symbolization of the pena and sincerity
● 3 ways of expiation
o Payment (pagamento)
▪ Kofer
▪ Example of Rego taking Michael’s computer and
smashing it. If Michael wants to remain friends, he
has to overcome the wrath in his heart. But it would
be wrong for him to say “no problem, I
understand”. Qualcosa non va. He would ask for
Rego to buy a new computer for him, and Rego
would have to pay for the damage to show he was
sincere
 ▪ But what if he is unable to pay for a new computer?
He would have to repay in another way (like
passing him on the exam).
▪ This is the symbolization of the pena. But it’s the
victim who decides this, not the offender. It’s a
symbolic, analogous action
▪ This is the dynamic of the Kofer: I want to reconcile
with God who I have offended. God overcomes
hatred in his heart (ie., he is merciful), but for me to
reestablish the order I destroyed, God asks me to do
an external thing
▪ And since I can’t repay everything in the exact way,
God asks for a symbolic action, like going to the
temple and paying
o Rite
▪ Same logic as above, except the rite goes in the
place of the payment
▪ They are a few rites of sacrifice that are determined
by the Torah
▪ So doing these rites in the OT puts into practice
obeying the victim who was offended
▪ But it’s always born in the heart of God and is given
to us
▪ In the OT, God is the only subject of purification.
Only God can purify.
▪ Man does nothing to reconcile himself with God.
That’s the point.
▪ These rites are formally different from rites of other
religions. Some manuals still get this wrong and try
to paint the OT sacrifices as solely action of man
trying to reach God
o Intercession
▪ I don’t have to do anything, but God requires that
someone else pray for me.
▪ Intercession of Moses, described with the same
word as “purification of sin”
▪ This all indicates that sin can be remitted without
blood. It’s not automatically necessary
o These things are re-found in Paul, who uses them to
describe what Jesus did. When he and other NT authors
seek to describe how Jesus affects our sins, they use these
concepts
▪ The Expiation of sins per ​inavvertenza
o Pardon and reconciliation outside the context of the Sinai Covenant
o Some conclusions
 ● Responsibility of God

Week 5
(Lesson 3 – The Fullness of Times)
● Old Testament
o Review of benediction/malediction in their history, esp. in their exile
o In exile, they awaited the return to the promised land. “Lord, how long?”
o The Lord responds that he will re-establish them at a certain judgment, when the
good will be rewarded and the evil punished
o Beginning of idea of the bosom of Abraham for the good and Sheol for everyone
else
o The Judgment will happen on the Day of the Lord, which will arrive with the
Messiah. And the Kingdom of God is this final situation, the situation of final
blessing
o But the OT leaves the question open. They’re waiting; Israel is in an open
situation
o So when JB and Jesus preach in the NT that the “time is fulfilled, the kingdom is
at hand,” this is the pretext for that.
● The Jesus Event (Evento Gesu’)
o Who actually knew Jesus on earth? Pochissimi. Half a neighborhood. And they
knew him over the course of 3 years, which is a short time. That’s significant
o But then he sends them to preach
o This leads to Communication and Reflection
▪ The idea of who Jesus is gets purified with this
▪ This is a cycle. The Church communicates salvation but also deepens its
reflection on the mystery of Christ
▪ Jesus didn’t give his disciples a manual. He wanted them to figure it out,
to think about it
o Model for Communication of Salvation – Road to Emmaus
▪ It’s the same Jesus who communicates his mystery
o Word, Life, Rite – what we now recognize as the 3 channels for knowing Jesus,
we get from Jesus himself
● Communication of Salvation
o First communication - Acts of the Apostles
▪ Peter begins with Joel, talking about the promise
▪ Then he tells them to convert and be baptized. Interior and exterior
▪ There are lots of other examples in Acts – Stephen, Paul, etc.
▪ When Paul preaches Jesus to those outside of the Blessing, he uses
philosophy. But they don’t get the resurrection
o 3 main ways to announce salvation
▪ Word
● Examples of preaching of the apostles – preaching is culturally
disposed
▪ Life
 ● Examples of the martyrs. They testified, with their lives, that we
are free from fear of death.
● Martyrdom is imitating Jesus in non-violence
▪ Rite
● The Eucharist is an easy example
● But we can also look at the many examples of hymns. We find
many in Paul.
o Pliny says that the Christians gather on Sunday to sing
hymns about Christ being raised from the dead
o Hymns are songs of praise to God.
o It’s a confession of the incarnation.
o The Christian pagans have a measure, they’re limited.
Whereas pagan hymns are all over the place
o But because of the Incarnation, we have Christian hymns,
which are relatively brief.
● Reflection on Jesus and Salvation
o The imagination of the Church uses images of Jesus and also purifies these
images
o If I ask you who your dad is, you aren’t going to say “a rational animal with an
immortal soul…”, you’ll tell me the image you have of him
o 2 areas of this
▪ Re-thinking history
● They begin to see the intrinsic link between Jesus and the history
of Israel. I cannot think of Jesus without thinking of the entire
history of Israel
● The notion of history can only happen if you can look at the
process from outside
● Pagan cultures saw history as a cycle.
● Whereas the linear conception of time is very Judeo-Christian,
because of the concept of mysteria
● Phase 1 – now; phase 2 – Kingdom
● Paul uses the phrase aeons. There are 2 aeons
● They were expecting the end of times. And when that didn’t
happen, they reflected on it
● Came up with the 3 phases of history:
o Christ as anticipation of the Kingdom
o Time of the Church
▪ “Time of Sacramental Economy,” “gia ma non
ancora”
▪ Living in aeon 1 with a “pezzetino” of aeon 2
▪ Salvation is here, in this world, as zoe in bios
▪ Time of the Church is salvation anticipated
▪ In that sense “we come from the future”. Or there’s
a part of us that does; eternal life
o Kingdom of God
 ● The “Time of the Church” was the first great reflection that the
Church did on salvation
● And so we hear things we think are really strange. Colossians 1 –
God created all things through Christ.
o Or Jesus himself saying that Abraham was joyful to see
Jesus
o Abe’s act of faith had to do with Christ.
● And this is why we have typology. “The rock was Christ”
● So there’s one mediator, Jesus Christ. And you can only reach
salvation by being in contact with Jesus
▪ Re-thinking the identity of Jesus
● We can’t define the Jesus Event. It’s too great for us
● So we get then the various vocabulary that Paul and others used to
describe it
● Waiting of Israel ​→​ Jesus Event (excessive/scandalous) ​→
articulation of theology
● The words that theology provides:
o Ransom, expiation, acquisto (redemption), reconciliation,
liberation, illumination, purification, vivification,
justification, consecration
o These images are metaphors; they are metaphors in a strong
sense. They arrive at the truth, but just one aspect of it
● The problem of working with images is that we have to maintain
contact with the event of Jesus. If we don’t, then none of the
images will work
● STh: Veritas autem licet figurae respondeat, tamen figura non
potest eam adaequare
● The metaphor cannot give me the entire reality (because if it can,
then it ​is t​ he reality) – like a photograph of a real reality. The photo
isn’t’ the reality but can give it to me in a partial way
● Jesus walked this earth as a great unknown. There were a few who
really knew him – Mary, the apostles. But we seek to understand
him now
o Paul’s reflection on Jesus
▪ The hymn in Colossians 1
● We’re a few years after the death of Jesus, and Paul links him to
the mystery of God present in Creation. To talk about Jesus, he
goes back to Creation. It’s not enough to talk about Jesus’ public
life
● “Through him and in the sight of him”
● “He is head of the body, that is, the Church”
● Paul is using metaphors
▪ Ephesians 1
● This hymn is a grand blessing, a great benediction.
● Again links Christ to creation
 ● He has blessed us so that we can bless him.
● Theology of blessing is at the center of this passage
o John’s reflection on Jesus
▪ The Light
▪ We can’t really go into it all…
o Fathers of the Church
▪ Irenaeus
▪ Augustine (see manual for these first two)
▪ Letter to Diognetus
● Emphasizes the universality of Jesus… not his life as much
● Again, goes back to Creation to understand Jesus
● There’s an economy of the mystery – it’s been revealed step by
step
● God allows us to sin because he wants to convince us that we are
incapable of eternal life. It’s only in recognizing our incapacity and
God’s mercy that we are redeemed
o Anselm of Aosta/Canterbury
▪ Cur Deus Homo ​(1094-1098)
▪ We have to know the background – he traveled from Aosta to Bec to
Canterbury. Lived in beautiful places, lived during a time of growing trust
in reason (after the chaos and destruction of the barbarians)
▪ CDH is a theological game. And it sets the rules at the beginning, which
are necessary to understand it
▪ Reading the text
▪ Anselm isn’t just talking about the incarnation; he’s talking about the
entire life of Jesus. Why was Jesus’ life the way it was? God could have
done anything.
▪ He has a great faith in reason – he thinks we can arrive at this conclusion
with our reason (which is a problem, but it’s what he’s saying)
▪ He wants us to rejoice of the reasonableness of our faith, and he wants us
to give a reason for our faith (because of the interaction with the Muslims
– he’s not trying to convince them, but just show them that our faith is not
irrational)
▪ He thinks that, with reason, we can arrive at the same conclusion as
Scripture. That’s not the case though. Why?

Week 6
● Returning to Anselm on Salvation
o The text of Cur Deus Homo
▪ Presentation of Anselm is pretty artificial. He takes a few lines of
Scripture and puts them pretty far out of their context.
▪ There are some incoherencies
o This is the movement from Monastic theology to Scholastic theology
o The fundamental rule of this theological game is: you must work only with
reason, you must work “as if Christ was not there”
o Tension between reason and history. God always acts in the best way, ie., the
most rational way. Conclusion: it was necessary that things happened this way
o But the problem with this is that we are historical beings. Reality is not always
how it should be
o Reading Book I
o Anselm begins with faith. So he doesn’t totally do away with it. But he argues
that, once we’ve accepted the gift of faith, we have to use reason so that we
understand what we believe
o Anselm is talking to medieval Muslims and Jews; ie., people who believe in God.
Not atheists. They also believe in redemption (and therefore sin). Important to
remember this today. It’s hard for us to use this text to dialogue with people of
our time
o #6 – His interlocutors are scandalized by the Cross. So Anselm seeks to explain it
o #8 – “Divine will is never irrational.” Ratzinger and the Regensburg address takes
this back up
▪ Anselm emphasizes that the incarnation is not the humiliation/descent of
God but rather the exaltation of man, the raising up of man.
▪ There’s an idea that Anselm’s interlocutor offers here that goes against the
OT and NT – that God makes an innocent man die in the place of the
guilty.
▪ But Anselm asserts that’s not what God is doing; that is unjust, and God is
not unjust
▪ Anselm says that Jesus died as a martyr, not a suicide. He was custodendo
justice, up to the end
▪ The Father didn’t ask the Son to kill himself. He asked him to custodire
justice, and this was the result of that
o Justice for Anselm is the rettitudine of the Will
▪ And the honor of God is the just man
▪ How do we honor God? By doing his will.
▪ What happens if we don’t honor him? We self-destruct, we disorder
ourselves
▪ Justice isn’t giving God external things that are owed to him. It’s doing his
will
o Anselm’s notion of sin and satisfaction
▪ #11 – sin is refusing to give God his due
▪ There is no good (moral, physical, etc.) in creation that can justify sin.
▪ Even if we could save the entire universe by committing one little sin, we
couldn’t do that. That’s not our calling; our calling is to do the will of God
(and God’s will is that we do not sin)
▪ But we do sin, and so we have the “weight of sin”
▪ And there is nothing we can offer to outweigh it. We can try, but there’s
nothing we can do to fix the relationship with God that we broke
▪ Can God save you if you don’t change your will? No, because that
wouldn’t be a true salvation
 ▪ When Anselm talks about Satisfaction here, he’s talking about the “more”
that is required by justice. We have to get our relationship back in order
▪ Every sin is a violation of order. So we can’t just restore the order, we
have to heal the violence done, repair the friendship
▪ Man cannot be saved, cannot be “blessed” without satisfaction - #24
▪ But man can’t pay the debt to God. Man can’t do the will of God perfectly
▪ So the conclusion is that man must be saved by Christ
o Book II
o #1 – Man was “blessed” – he was in the channel of blessing
o Anselm argues that mortality and death is a consequence of sin. If man hadn’t
sinned, man would be immortal (Rego, following Aquinas, thinks this is wrong)
o Man sinned, so salvation must involve man. But God is also necessary for
salvation.
o When the God-Man does the will of God, he’s doing what’s due. It’s not
satisfaction.
o Where do we find satisfaction? In the death of Christ
o #11 – Since Jesus is perfect, he shouldn’t die. But if he dies, then he’s giving
something to God that isn’t owed (satisfaction)
o Anselm is seeking to rationally demonstrate that the only “more” the God-man
could do for satisfaction is to die. That seems harsh. But that’s the idea
o #18 gives a synthesis
o So Christ necessarily had to die? Anselm says yes
o There are many criticisms of this.
▪ Why does the “more” have to be death?
● If Jesus was God, every act in his life could have an infinite value.
Why did it have to be death?
▪ It’s because Anselm maintains that human nature is immortal without sin.
That’s the reason Christ can give death (which is not owed) to the Father
▪ Reducing the whole life of Jesus to his death reduces the salvific value of
his entire life
o What does he mean by necessity?
▪ #17 – when he says necessity, he really means fittingness. But the problem
is that it’s understood subsequently as “necessity.”
▪ So even though Anselm’s “necessity” is a soft necessity, it leads to bad
interpretations of him
o We can go back to the OT idea of the “symbolization of the pena”. Why would
God force us to make an act of infinite importance? He knows we can’t do that.
So he allows us to do something less and it still be sufficient
o What can we learn from Anselm?
▪ We can’t use our reason to go in a different way from Scripture
▪ That’s not against reason, it just means that the reason of God is much
greater than the reason of man.
▪ When we solely use human reason, we miss many divine horizons
● Other orientamenti on the motive of the Incarnation in the Middle Ages
o Rupert of Deutz (1075-1130)
o Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308)
o St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
▪ We won’t look at Rupert or Scotus in class, but we’ll look at Aquinas
▪ Reading the Tertia Pars, which is all about Christ and the Sacraments
▪ Aquinas begins the tertia pars with the question of the fittingness of the
Incarnation
▪ In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas is talking to Christians (not Muslims
like Anselm was). That affects his presentation
▪ Was it fitting that God become man?
● Thomas emphasizes the goodness of the incarnation (rather than
restoration of order, like Anselm does). “The good is diffusive of
itself”
● So this introduces the idea that it could be possible that the
incarnation could happen not because of sin but because God
wants to give us good. This is closer to a Scotist position (which
Thomas ultimately rejects)
● But the emphasis on goodness is key.
● The Incarnation didn’t happen so that God the Father could treat
his Son like a sinner. That’s a Lutheran idea. Christ did not have
fault, and it wouldn’t make him closer to us if he did
● So yeah it was fitting, but not necessary in God’s nature
▪ Was it necessary for the redemption of man that God became man?
● Necessary like a horse is necessary for a journey
● So Aquinas asserts that the incarnation wasn’t necessary in a strict
sense. It was one way that God chose to bring mankind back to
Him. But he could have chosen another way
● But ​because ​God is so good, he chose the incarnation as the mode
to save us, because greatest love is in union
● Many reasons for the incarnation:
● The Incarnation gives us great hope that we can be saved.
● The Love of God for us – this is the perspective on the Incarnation
● And it teaches us to not fear the devil. Satan is an angel, but God
became human
● We’re brutto, but we have a dignity
● Also gets rid of our presumption. The Incarnation is pure gift, pure
grace. There’s nothing we can do
● Then talks about Satisfaction (and thereby responds to Anselm)
o A pure man wouldn’t have been able to satisfy for the
whole human race
o Needs to be Condegno and Sufficente
● There are many other advantages to the Incarnation, above the
comprehension of human reason.
▪ Would the incarnation have happened if man had not sinned?
● The Church hasn’t declared on this, so we can think freely. But we
should still look for the most rationally convincing answer
 ● Aquinas goes to the Scriptures and finds that the Incarnation is
always associated with the fall, with Jesus coming to save us from
sins
● But this can be challenged. Aquinas doesn’t cite verses that make
Jesus’ mission seem more open. “I came that they might have life,
and have it abundantly,” for example.
● But Aquinas does admit that it’s not so clear
▪ Was God incarnated to free us from original sin or actual sins?
● Seems like a strange question. “Both”, the class answers
● But in what order? It seems like first it would be original sin, then
actual sins
● For contemporary theology, this is an important question
● Original sin, for Thomas, does not give colpa. But it gives pena
● So in a sense, actual sin is much worse for human beings than
original sin. Because we have the copla and the pena for actual sin
● Whereas original sin is less intense (we just have pena but not
colpa) but it’s much more diffused (applies to all people, even
babies and those who don’t have reason)
● Christ came to save us from both though

Week 7 (after Easter)

● Continuing Lesson III: Rethinking Jesus: Una Visione d’Insieme (a collective vision?)
● Review of Aquinas on the Incarnation
o Christ as “the Way” back to the Father is the most important image for St.
Thomas (and for Ducay, who wrote our book)
o The humanity of Christ is our way into the Trinity
o Looking at the sermon of Newman (Sermon 2) – he asserts that the atoning
sacrifice of Christ is the most important thing in our religion (very different from
Aquinas and his readings, which emphasize humanity of Christ and the Trinity)
o See mass of December 24​th
● Contemporary reflection on the ​perche’​ and the ​come o​ f redemption: The Mediation of
Jesus
o Enlarging the Horizons: The sense of the Incarnation in light of mediation
▪ Theology had focused so much on the Cross (like Newman quote we just
read)
● In order to better understand the Cross and redemption, we have to
understand creation
● So we have the concept of mystery
▪ Also opening of the salvific nature of Jesus’ whole life – not just the
punctiliar moment of the Cross
▪ Seeks a more personalist view; a more Trinitarian view
● We can’t understand the cross without a good Trinitarian theology
▪ We say in the creed that Jesus became a man “for us” – not for our sins
▪ It’s a personalistic view of salvation
▪ Also focusing on the fact that redemption respects our liberty
 ● Example of a homeless person who we’re trying to help. Should
we take him against his will and put him in a shelter?
o The subject and the modality of actualization of the work of salvation
▪ Spirit and Jesus
● God’s response – salvation doesn’t arrive from the outside but
from the inside
o Salvation from inside means respect for the dignity of
persons, a great patience with the consequence of sin
o Did God send his Son to be killed? No
o It was our liberty that crucified Jesus. “By envy”, Acts says
o When we speak of Jesus, we speak of one person. But
when we speak of Christ, we need to remember the other
two persons as well. The Father sent Jesus, sent the Spirit
o Christ is anointed, HS is anointing, Father is anointer
o See STA’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:7, n. 993
▪ As Adam was perfect in himself by his soul, so
Christ was perfect in himself by that he was a man
by the Holy Spirit
▪ Christ always moves in the Holy Spirit
▪ The Incarnate Word source of redemption
● The person of Christ, foundation of his mediation
o Christ is a divine person, not a human person. Christ the
divine person is the protagonist
o The movement of redemption is born of God, not us. And
he sustains it and brings it to completion
o Redemption is filial
o Any of the Trinity could have become incarnate. But the
fact that it was the 2​nd​ Person shows that our nature is
intrinsically filial. We are closer to the Son
o Revealing the person of the Father is what Jesus is doing
o Jesus is the “yes” of God to all the promises
o So Jesus is the perfect image of God and the perfect
response of man to God
● The human spirit of Christ, center of salvific mediation
o Is the humanity of Jesus just a container for God’s
blessing? No
o Where is the blessing found? It’s in Christ’s human spirit,
in his “inner world”
o This is the filial grace of Jesus. The Holy Spirit acts in the
heart of Christ, puts Christ’s heart in a particular relation
with God the Father
o Incorporating everything into Jesus’ heart – this is the
nocciola of salvation
● 1 Timothy 2:4-6 is a key passage for this.
● The salvation of man passes through the heart of man
 ● The Word made possible that the “yes” of the creature is
something very important – it’s united with the “yes” of the Son
● We’re made sons, not metaphorically, but we’re sons in the Son
● Totus sed non totaliter – our way of saying that the interior world
of the Son is much greater than humanity can sustain
● Jesus offers a rereading of the plan of God. We thought life was
one way, but it’s not that way. It seems like the human heart is
evil, but it’s not evil. In the beginning it was not so
▪ The redemptive contact of Jesus with the fallen world
● The spiritual contact in the heart of Jesus
● The reprise (ripresa) of the world in the justice of Christ
o Recapitulation of man in Christ
▪ It’s a global vision
o JC, unico and universal mediator of salvation
▪ If people are saved, they’re saved through the grace of Christ.

Week 8
● We begin the third overall theme of the course: The Mysteries of Christ’s Life
● Lesson IV: The Hidden Life of Christ
o The Assumption of Creation
▪ Jesus is a true man… we’ve been over this a million times. Everything that
is true to man is true to Jesus. What is not assumed is not redeemed
▪ The spousal language gets used with this in the liturgy – example of the
hymn ​Veni Redemptor Gentium ​of St. Ambrose
● Jesus hasn’t married anyone, he’s married human nature
● This marriage is an image that speaks to the hypostatic union
▪ We can’t take this too literally… Mary would become our mother in law,
which she has never been seen as before
▪ Rather, it’s probably better to say that Jesus married our nature and
became our brother.
▪ But it’s cosmic too: March 25 is traditionally seen as the day of the
Creation (with the Annunciation and the death of Jesus happening on the
same day… that’s very medieval)
● But this emphasizes that the Incarnation has a cosmic significance.
▪ Jesus isn’t just related to every person, he’s related to all flesh
▪ Could the Word have become a woman?
● Yes
● We can say it was fitting he became man but we can’t give the
whole reasoning of God
● Historically, people have attributed to men the active principle of
generation, while women are the passive principle. So it’s fitting
he become a man because he takes the initiative
o But this is problematic today, even in the Church. Women
are active and need to be so
 o The active/passive thing also doesn’t work in the social
realm, even though that has been used as well
o This is what we would call “fragmented complementarity.”
It’s anthropological and it doesn’t work
● Another answer:
o We say what is not assumed is not redeemed. But Jesus
went to the extremes, to the ​lowest​ place, and became man
to redeem us
o So this theory is the opposite of the other: men are lower
than women, further from God, closer to beasts
o This is probably a better answer than the first but it’s still
about who’s “better”
● A better answer
o Human language, to say something about the inner life of
the Trinity, would have to go infinitely beyond itself
o The amazing thing about the Incarnation is that Christ has
translated the language of God into the language of human
beings
o But, whenever we affirm something of God, we have to
remember that he is beyond all our categories
o So if God was translating himself into human language, if
he was taking on a human body, he had two options: man
or woman.
o Jesus came to reveal the Father, he’s the icon of the Father.
So whichever he chose, it should best reveal the First
Person of the Trinity
o So the Paternity of the Father has to do with the humanity
of the Son (cf. Last Supper Discourse)
o What does masculinity (paternity) tell me that femininity
(maternity) doesn’t tell me, and vice versa? (we’re talking
about biology here)
▪ Male paternity has the characteristic of distance,
female maternity of closeness
▪ The Mother carries the child in her womb, in her
very flesh. Mother-son relationship is closer than
Father-son
▪ The paternity of the Father, then, helps demonstrate
his transcendence
o Everything else is after this, such as the practicalities.
Because our nature was wounded by sin, women weren’t
able to do many things in society that the messiah needed
to do (like gather disciples, preach)
▪ Incarnation “ex Maria Virgine”
● Our manual says that “ex Maria” indicates that she gave the
material of our salvation
 o Rego thinks this is strange and can be phrased better – as if
maternity is just giving a body to your child
● Rego is saying that “ex Maria” is much greater than just the fact
that she offered biological material to the Word.
● What is the center of salvific mediation? The Heart of Jesus.
● When and how was the Heart of Jesus formed? It grew, developed
with time.
● And who formed it? Mary. She concentrated the center of
redemption (with the Holy Spirit of course)
● His parents also gave him this entire culture
● And we can also talk about Joseph here. We say he was a true
father to Jesus, but in what sense? It’s because he formed the heart
of Jesus, as Mary did
▪ The Knowledge of Christ
● We talked about this last semester, we won’t go into it much
● We just have to be aware of the consequences of our affirmations
● Did Jesus, from the moment of the Incarnation, know everything?
That’s extremissimo. So every time he’s surprised in the Gospel,
he’s just acting?
● It seems much more natural and coherent that he developed but
still had some direct knowledge of God
● The person of Jesus is the Word, but he wants to think like a
human being. Since the person is divine, he must know God his
Father.
● But we can say that he renounced the knowledge of things he
didn’t need to know for salvation
● He knew his mission, the rest of the time he was immersed in our
language
▪ Discontinuity and the humanity of Jesus
● Jesus Christ is human but not just any human
● The discontinuity began with the Immaculate Conception – Mary’s
flesh is also immaculate
● Biggest difference between Christ and Mary is that Christ is not a
human person
o We need to remember that Jesus is a divine person who
assumed a male human nature
o Whereas Mary is a created woman, a created human being
o So we can say that the human being closest to God is a
created, female person
o The Assumption of the Old Covenant
▪ Continuity and discontinuity
▪ The Genealogies in the Gospels seem boring but they’re belissima because
they show the canal of blessing, that God is fulfilling his promises
o Assumption of suffering and insertion into the world of sin
o Hidden life and Revelation of Jesus as Savior
 o The Soteriological significance of the hidden life of Jesus
▪ He brings the Final Blessing
● The first blessing of man was to dominate the earth and multiply
● But Jesus doesn’t get married, so what does that say
● Eschatological aspect of the celibacy
● Lesson V: The Baptism of Jesus and his Public Life
o John and the Waiting of the OT
▪ The location that John is baptizing at reprends the history of Israel
▪ He also belongs to the category of priest-prophet, like Ezekiel and
(probably) Isaiah, bringing these two institutions of the Blessing together
▪ Zecheriah – name means memory? He brings the whole history of Israel
with him, brings it out in the Benedictus
● Serving God aphodos – “without fear” – this is the service, not of
the slave, but of the Son
● That’s the difference between the service of the OT and of the NT,
service as slaves by nature to service as sons by adoption
● John parallels this with the dialogue with the Samaritan Woman
(serving God in Spirit and truth), also John 15 (servants/friends)
o The Baptism of Jesus
▪ Insertion of the event into the universal story and the story of Israel
● Genealogies help us situate the Gospel into the canal of the
Blessing
o Matthew’s is at the beginning, begins with Abraham
o Luke’s is after the baptism of Jesus, begins with Adam
o So it’s universalist in the sense it concerns all of humanity,
Jesus came to save everyone
o Matthew says that Jesus came to repair the channel of the
Blessing, Luke says he came to not just do that but open it
up to everyone
o Implication that there is a new birth
● Christology of Jesus as New Adam and the Son are both present
here
● When Peter preaches in Acts about Jesus, he begins with the
Lord’s Baptism and Public life – new way of announcing and
proclaiming
▪ The prophetic-priestly ministry of John – content of his preaching
● Luke puts the figure of John in the context of the Powerful ones of
the world… after describing them, the Spirit descends John (in a
vocational image)
● The voice of one crying out in the desert - Alludes to Isaiah –
Comfort, Comfort my People… the time of slavery is over…
behold your God
● Also alludes to Malachi 3
▪ Characteristic of the rite of John
● The Jordan is kind of gross, not some idealized thing we see in art
 ● But in that way, it is more beautiful
● It’s a rite for sinners, calls to conversion
● Israel had things like this, but the novelty from a ritual POV is that
it is done only once in life
o So it has a sense of totality, of complete change of life
● In a sense, you die and must start a new life
● Especially in murky water, you go down and you are in darkness,
you are symbolically in death
o Death to your sins, death to this world, in order to prepare
for the coming Kingdom
● People went to John, confessed their sins, then were baptized
● So it’s part of this form of reconciliation of the OT, as one of the
symbolic rituals
▪ The soteriological sense of the Baptism of Jesus
● Ritual anticipation of his mission
o Gregory of Nazianzus says that Jesus did this to separate in
the waters the old man
o He did this to bury the first phase of history, begin the
second (which began in the incarnation, sure, but publically
began here)
o Cf. antiphon for Benedictus at Lauds on Jan. 6​th
o Spousal nature of the Word with human nature also echoes
here
o The Ritual of Baptism is the whole story of Jesus summed
up in an image (like a trailer sums up a movie and gets you
excited to see it)
o Ritual prayer – Anticipation of the sense of the event
(protasi ritual)
o Non-ritual prayer – filial assimilation of the will of the
Father
o Non-ritual action – salvific Trinitarian intervention
o Solidarity with sinners, with us – that’s why Jesus received
a baptism that was meant for sinners, that’s the Scandal of
John the Baptist
● Trinitarian epiphany and public anointing of Jesus
o Because of the descent of the Spirit, tradition sees the
Baptism of Jesus as an anointing

Week 9
● Public life of Jesus, cont.
o The Activity of Jesus: “moved by the Spirit”
▪ His whole mission is done in dialogue with the Father, thus he is led by
the Spirit
● “Christ means anointed, in which we understand not just the one
who is anointed who is the Son of God, but also the anointing
 which is the Holy Spirit, and also the one who anoints, who is
Father.” – Thomas Aquinas, on 1 Corinthians, ch. 1, I, 2.
● Saying “Christ” implies the Trinity
▪ The Temptations of Christ
● Parallelism between Christ and Adam
o Jesus goes back to the places where humanity has said no
to God, and Jesus says yes, shows that the human heart can
choose God. There’s no force or power that obligates them
to sin, if they are moved by the Spirit
● Content of the temptations
o The devil makes the temptation center on filiation; that’s
what he puts to the test. “If you’re the Son of God… do
this.”
o But Jesus shows the true manifestations of a filial heart
o Jesus cites Deuteronomy every time; shows that it is
important because it’s expanding on Moses’ theology in the
same symbolic place
o Jesus isn’t just taking up the sin of Adam, he’s taking up
the sins of all the people of God, the sins of Moses and of
the Israelites
o Jesus wins against the devil where human beings have lost
o Luke 4:30 – These 3 temptations are a synthesis of all
possible temptations. Jesus was tempted as we all are.
There isn’t a temptation that Christ was not subjected to
o The positive message is that he won... It wouldn’t have
been better if he had lost (like some say…)
o Like Hebrews 4:15 says
o “Christ was tempted by the devil, but in Christ you were
also tempted. If we were tempted in him, it will be truly in
him that we defeat the devil. He could have sent the devil
far from himself; but, if he had not let the devil tempt him,
he would not have taught you how to win when you are
tempted.” – St. Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 60, 2-3
● The struggle of Jesus with Satan: the exorcisms of the Gospel
o The struggle doesn’t just happen in the desert, it happens
throughout Jesus’ ministry
o There are 8 or so “exorcisms” we get from Jesus in his
battles with the demons
o Putting the house in order, that’s the image. That’s what we
do in baptism
o But the house is empty, it needs the presence of the Holy
Spirit; charity. The devil can then re-enter if the Spirit is
not there
o This is why Tradition also sees the gift of the Spirit as
forgiveness of sins.
Week 10
● Public life of Jesus, cont.
○ Review: schema of the public life:
■ Baptism --> Call to Conversion --> Signs ​and​ Preaching -->
Transfiguration --> “towards Jerusalem”
○ The conquest of the earth
■ The Call to Conversion in general
● The public life begins with Jesus going around Galilee
● Jesus’ continutiy with John the Baptist is his preaching of the call
to conversion
● In that way, he is also in continuity with the Old Testament
● What is Galilee, symbolically? The place of the Gentiles
● Jesus doesn’t begin his preaching at the center of Jewish
religiosity, he begins it on the “margins”/“periphery” as we say
today
● Parallel with Israel’s prophetic mission to preach salvation to the
other nations. They weren’t chosen for themselves, they were
chosen to bring salvation to others
● “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, convert and
believe in the Gospel”
● Faith opens the door to salvation, but because it’s a gift of God and
not solely human action, you have to accept the gift of God. How
do you do that? Through conversion
● Conversion and Believing aren’t the same thing
● What’s the biblical form of conversion?
○ “You, Lord are right/just. But I have sinned”
○ The formula is to accuse yourself and realize that God has
nothing to do with your sin
○ It’s the opposite of self-justification.
● It frees us from the idea of self-salvation.
● This is where people were getting it wrong with the Law, with
doing all these things and thinking you were saved
● The Law doesn’t seek to sanctify, the Law seeks to convert
● The Conversion of “the Good”
○ The most difficult thing about the preaching of Jesus
○ They’re doing the Law but refusing God
○ God has given a new Word in his Son, and the “good” have
lost the capacity to listen to God
○ For this, they put him to death (in accordance with the Law
but in reality against God)
○ The channel of the blessing must embrace Jesus, the gift of
the Father for their salvation. But they don’t
■ Carrying out the call to conversion: signs and preaching
■ Jesus as prophet powerful in works: the signs
 ● Miracles are the manifestations of the power of God
● John is the one who calls them Signs
● The signs are something beyond us, something we haven’t seen, a
work (opere), an authority; they bring a new power (Gk. dynamis)
● Matthew 8:16 - quotes Isaiah
○ Jesus taking our sickness doesn’t make him sick, it allows
him to heal our sickness, this is the canonical interpretation
● Healing of the bleeding woman
○ She’s impure according to the law
○ Touching a rabbi would make him unclean too, so she’s
kind of crazy for doing it
○ But the thing with Christ - he’s more powerful than the
sickness, so he heals her
● The miracles are linked to the faith of the people. The physical
healing seeks to open the person to eternal life; it doesn’t seek to
just give them the fullness of earthly life
● The Jews were seeking signs. Whereas the Greeks sought wisdom.
This brings us to Jesus’ teaching...
■ Jesus as prophet who teaches the truth about God and man
● This is the preaching of Jesus; his words
● Jesus teaches the “logic” of eternal life, the logic of Phase 2 of
salvation history (which is the same logic as Phase 1, but it’s
brought to completion with Jesus)
● The Content of the Preaching
○ Summarizing, we can say he reveals the truth about the
triune God and the truth about man.
○ Aquinas says Christ’s language is in accord with the goal of
the Incarnation, our salvation
○ But then we have STA (III q. 40, a.1 co.) “He came into the
world first to manifest the truth.” (quoting John 18)
○ So the goal of the Incarnation is to manifest the Truth,
which is also our salvation (ie., you can only choose the
good if you know it. Revelation of Truth is the beginning of
forgiveness of sins)
○ Who speaks in Jesus’ preaching? The Father, through
Jesus. It’s a self-revelation of the Father
○ Where in the Bible do we find the best summary of Jesus’
preaching?
■ There are many examples
■ But possibly the best is John 16:27 - “The Father
loves you”
■ Teaches about the Trinity (there’s a Father and he
has a Son), and it links the Trinity with us in a bond
of love
○ The “New Commandment”
 ■ Unity of the preaching of Christ with the teaching
of God in the OT
■ “What must I do for eternal life”, the rich young
man asks
■ The funny thing is that, in Mk and Mt, it’s a scribe
who asks and Jesus quotes the Law. But in Luke,
it’s Jesus who, in responding, asks about the Law,
and the Doctor of the Law is the one who quotes the
Law
■ What does Luke’s account make clear in the story?
That it was revealed in the Old Testament, that
these things aren’t new with Jesus
■ But then what is new in this new commandment?
■ The novelty is that we follow this command “as
Jesus does”, according to the model we see in him
■ So then, at the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus
does it in a little different way
■ Like instead of hating our enemies (those who
aren’t like us), we’re supposed to love them
■ Jesus brings salvation for all
● The Modality of the Preaching
○ The Parables and images
■ Jesus reveals the truth, but he doesn’t give them the
“naked” (nuda) truth. He veils it
■ Why does Jesus veil it? To encourage the free
decision of man; so that people accept him because
he establishes a personal relationship with God, not
beceause it’s clearly obvious he’s the Son of God
■ Parables have this end, to suscitare the act of faith
■ Jesus seeks to operate within the imagination of
man. This is very beautiful. He doesn’t speak
abstractly
○ The Questions of Jesus
■ Mark 8:14-21 - Jesus questions the disciples over
and over again. He asks them 7 questions. He’s
getting them to rethink their identity, getting them
involved rather than just stand by passively
○ Preaching at meals - the “pranzi” of Jesus
■ Jesus preaches mostly in houses, while he’s eating
with people, especially with sinners.
■ He came to establish a communion with people,
doesn’t just involve saying words
○ The prayer of Jesus
■ Jesus reveals the Trinity in teaching people how to
pray
 ■ We could do a whole commentary on the Our
Father here but we don’t have time
■ He teaches them to ask for their “daily bread” - God
is there in the everyday things
○ The Transfiguration
■ The synthesis of all these signs and preaching
■ “The Transfiguration is the sacrament of the second birth” - STA
■ It makes eternal life present to us
■ It’s an anticipation of the Resurrection
■ It eases the scandal of the cross for the disciples
○ Messianic entrance of Jesus as anticipation of his hour
■ The regality of Christ. He is hailed as a king

● Lesson VI - The Hour (ora) of Jesus

● Introduction: The Hour of Jesus and the Pashcal Mystery
○ What is the Paschal Mystery? Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus
○ When did it begin? At the Last Supper. Even though many manuals don’t indicate
this.
○ The Paschal Mystery is more open than we think
○ Paul: I received what I handed on to you, that Jesus died for our sins, rose, etc...(1
Cor 15:3-8)
○ Jesus did something at his Hour that was unique - he died
○ He was confronted by the famous ontological limit of man, and he beats the limit
○ John 12:23 - the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
○ That is the content of the Hour - the glorification of the Son
○ Theme of Passage
■ Jesus passes “passare” the limit, passes this phase of history.
■ It’s a passage like Passover
■ Greek word is metabainen (spelling of this?) Book of Wisdom uses this
word talking about Passover
■ Like Moses and Elijah talking about the “exodus” of Jesus
○ This is an extreme manifestation of the love of God - the love of God the Father
made present in the love of the Son
○ Beginning of the Feet Washing: “Jesus knew his hour had come to depart out of
this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved
them to the end.” (John 13:1)
○ Then he literally lowers himself to wash their feet
○ The Eucharist
■ Also has the theme of passage, of Passover
■ Rite --> Death - Resurrection - Glory - [Eschatological waiting]
■ (The rite contains all this; it’s made present in the rite)
■ The Hour begins with the Rite
■ Every passage contains all the others. This is the logic of John
● Why was Jesus Crucified?
○ From the POV of a non-Jew
 ■ Seems that he’s being killed for theological reasons
● Violating the sabbath, blaspheming, making himself God. Law of
Moses says this should be punished with death
● Dt 13:6 - false prophet should be put to death
● Jesus purified the temple, which is the prerogative of the king of
Israel (John sees Jesus’ ministry as a big purification of the
Temple)

Week 11
● Why was Jesus Crucified, cont.
○ Motives
■ We saw the theological reasons
■ Political, civil reasons?
● Pilate says he’s innocent, ie., so there isn’t a civil reason to crucify
him
■ Other motives?
● “Envy of the leaders of the people”
● Fear
○ Pilate’s fear, for example
○ Fear coming from not knowing who Jesus is; fear that
comes from ignorance
○ What sense did Jesus give to his death?
■ Some say he didn’t see it coming. Bultmann, Reimarus go this direction
■ The other extreme is to hold that he knew everything about his death.
■ These are extremes, the correct view is in the middle
■ Jesus preached repentance. It’s clear some accepted him and some rejected
him, especially because he preached that people should have faith in him
■ Jesus would have realized at a point that, if he keeps saying these things,
these people would kill him
■ But was it possible that the Leaders would convert?
● Yes, but how would it have turned out? Jesus wouldn’t have been
crucified, he wouldn’t have had a resurrection. So then would
Jesus’ humanity be glorified?
● But God wanted to glorify humanity, raise us from the dead
● So in that case, there would have to have been a “death” or
“dormition” for Jesus at some point, where he would pass the
ontological limit and then allow man to be glorified
● Many see the crucifixion as necessary. But is it? Rego says no.
Jesus would have “died” eventually, but it didn’t have to be in this
way. Talking about this more:
■ What is the will of the Father?
● How is Jesus carrying out the Father’s will at the crucifixion?
● The Father called his Son to reveal himself, to love the people
 ● The forgiveness of sins has to do with the presence of the Spirit in
us, like we talked about. The Spirit puts our ish in order
● The Father did not kill the Son
● If the Father asked the Son to die on the Cross, then Judas is
materially a saint. He carried out the Father’s will perfectly. We
can’t say this!
● The death of Christ is a sin, it’s evil. And God cannot formally
cooperate with evil. The Father did not ask the Son to die this way
■ What’s the difference?
● Was Christ going to die at some point in his life, yes. So in that
sense, the Father asked Jesus to die by him becoming human.
● But the Father did not ask for the Crucifixion
■ The Father did everything to try and get the people to believe. But he did
not succeed. The point here is freedom. God does not substitute for our
freedom, he allows us to choose
■ We can look at Mary’s death as similar to what Jesus’ death would have
been if he hadn’t been crucified, if the people had converted.
● That’s fitting since she’s the image of the faithful people
■ Texts of the Gospel of Jesus’ sense of his death
● We can list examples
○ How did Jesus die according to the Gospel narratives?
■ There’s an excellent logic behind the Event of Christ, so the Gospel
writers seek to explain it with many images, using many categories that
existed in the OT
● Images of sacrifice, payment, mediator, etc. appear in the NT (not
necessarily the Gospels)
● These things tell the truth, but they must be interpreted in light of
the reality, in light of the Event
■ What is the great Interpretation of Jesus’ life and death?: The Rite of the
Eucharist
● If you want to understand what Jesus is doing on the cross, we
have to know what the Eucharist is
● We call the Eucharist a sacrifice because it makes the Event
present, which was interpreted as a sacrifice
● But that’s not all the Mass is. The Mass can be seen also as a
payment, as a mediation. But we can’t limit it to any one of those
● The Eucharist makes the Event of Christ present
■ The key is prayer. Jesus’ dialogue with His Father is the key. Jesus is
praying on the cross first and foremost. And the resurrection is the
continuing of that dialogue, bringing it to man, finishes with the gift of the
Spirit
● Jesus’ “hour” begins with the Last Supper, which has a ritual
prayer but also a non-ritual prayer
● What is the function of this non-ritual prayer? To assimilate what
is being celebrated in the rite. This is what Jesus is doing
■ So we should see Jesus’ prayer in all the points of the “hour”
● 1. Rite -it’s clear
● 2. Prayer in Gethsemane - it’s a prayer and moment of consolation.
We often see the image of the angel bringing the chalice (chalice is
present at all these moments)
● 3., 4., ... we see it at all the points. It’s a unitary event
■ Jesus is continually accepting his condition of martyrdom, of giving
testimony.
● This was one reason for Jesus’ “suffering” - accepting the will of
the Father
■ Jesus rises above human fragility
● Another way of seeing Jesus’ suffering
● Jesus has to do a major “stretching” of his will. Not regarding sin,
but regarding the fragility of being human. His human will gets
enlarged and must act in a divine way. This causes a suffering for
him. He has to rise above human fragility
● So there’s a dimension that doesn’t just regard Jesus conquering
sin. It also regards Jesus overcoming the weakness of human
nature.
● This makes sense for us - there are sufferings that don’t have to do
with sin. Someone can suffer, not because of his sins, but for
another motive.
■ The Resurrection
● We remember in John - Jesus’ “I am” statements, especially in
Gethsemane, where the people fall down on account of the glory of
God being revealed
● John sees the Cross as the enthronement of the King
● John sees the glory of the resurrected Christ already present in
Jesus on the cross
● We see this in the rays of light that we often depict as coming from
the crucified Christ. The glory of the Resurrection is already
present in some way
■ Ecce Homo
● We also see Jesus’ victory present in the Ecce Homo scene. We
see what happens when man sins. In sin, we brutalize the true self
of man, just like Jesus is brutalized in the Ecce Homo. He unmasks
the damage we do to ourselves with sin
■ Barrabas
● See Ratzinger on this
● Constant temptation of wanting to arrive at God by violence
■ Phrase of Augustine: Victor quia victima (or something like that?)
● Jesus won by being a victim rather than a conqueror
■ What does Jesus do on the cross? Pray, like we said.
● Read the psalms that he references
● Psalm 21 and 31
○ How is his death interpreted in the text of the NT?
■ There’s a great richness in the images, but none of them alone can
demonstrate the richness of the Christ Event
■ We need to recover the difficulty of understanding the Cross.
■ The NT writers sought to figure out the logic behind the Cross and
Resurrection.
■ It’s not absurd, they thought, so they tried to read the Christ Event into the
great Hebrew categories that existed
■ But in order to speak to all people (not just the Jews), they chose a
plurality of images, some of which came from the civil or commercial
realms
● Like liberation of slaves, image of healing/medicine, paying a debt
■ Then they also chose images that have to do with worship
● Like sacrifice, rites of purification, rites of consecration
■ We know the problem with metaphors is that they can become something
fixed. And when they do become fixed, they die
■ So some thinkers would begin to speak of these images in themselves,
rather than the reality of the Christ Event itself
● Focusing just on the Sacrifice or the Ransom, for example, rather
than using those images to look at the whole
● But if we do that, it ends in absurdity. If we just look at Ransom,
“paying the price,” we have a lot of questions. Who is Jesus paying
the price to? To the Father? To himself? To the devil? These are all
bad answers, but they enter the discussion if we force the metaphor
too much
○ Principal interpretive lines in Tradition and in the history of theology
■ The death of Jesus in the context of Patristic reflection
● The Fathers deal with these things, we won’t talk about it much
■ The vision of the Protestant Reformation on the death of Jesus
● The Lutheran interpretation of the Cross
○ The problem is with the presentation. It’s a pious and
sentimental way of reading the Passion but creates lots of
problems with regard to Christ’s divinity
○ Luther takes the verse where Paul said that Christ was
made sin for us
○ But Luther asserts “Christ was a sinner”, the “greatest of all
sinners”
○ Lutheran justification consists in denying human initiative
(which is true; it’s all God’s initiative, it’s pure gift), but
the problem is that Luther denies the goodness of creation.
Goodness is in God alone. So Christ has to become a sinner
in order to redeem the world? I think this is what he’s
saying
○ Luther’s ​simul iustus et peccator -​ we are sinners but at the
same time are justified because of God. God justifies us
 without us. Passivity of justification, man cannot do
anything, literally nothing
○ This is all very pious, but it ignores freedom (liberta’)
○ With freedom, we can cooperate with God. That’s the point
○ For Luther, if everything is corrupt, then the less human
you are, the more divine you are, the more God can act in
you, the more pure your act of faith will be
○ For Luther, God hides his goodness under the veil of sin
○ The more suffering in your life, the more distortion, the
more absurdity, the greater your act of faith can be
● What’s the theological problem with this? It goes against the
divinity of Jesus
○ It’s all very pious, helps us offer up suffering
○ But now it’s passed into Catholic thought as a way of
interpreting the Cross
○ For example, Newman said the center of Catholicism was
the Cross as expiatory sacrifice. That’s not good, Rego says
○ Because the Protestants denied the Sacrifice of the Mass,
we overemphasized the Sacrifice of the Cross. But we kept
overemphasizing it, not just in regard to the Protestants
(like walking around with an umbrella on a day that doesn’t
require one)
■ The Cross in recent theological perspectives
● Example from Kiesling, “The Sacramental Character and Liturgy”
(1963)
○ Equates the Cross with a ritual sacrifice
○ But is it? No, there’s nothing ritual about the Cross.
● Example of Thalhofer writing in 1870
○ The essential element of sacrifice is destruction
● When we overemphasize the Cross as sacrifice, we overemphasize
destruction; the renunciation of something
● G. van Noort (1918)
○ The sacrifice of the cross is an oblation for our destruction
● This is bad. No wonder people think Christians are dangerous.
They think that at the center of this religion is destruction, the end
of life.
● Where are these writers getting this destruction idea from?
○ From the great commentators of the Summa, supposedly
from what St. Thomas says
● Thomas’ view of sacrifice
○ Sacrifice is something that is offered to God, in a way that
affects the material itself, “aliquid fit”
○ Like breaking bread, for example. That can be called a
sacrifice. But the bread isn’t destroyed
○ Sacrifice =/= destruction for St. Thomas
 ○ STA’s thought is similar to Augustine, who says: Sacrifice
is everything we do to unite our will with the divine will
○ This is very different from seeing sacrifice as destruction.
That’s basically the opposite. And it affects everything
○ Going through more text examples
○ Devotion for STA is act of the will that offers response to
God
○ Sacrifice doesn’t destroy anything, it unites our will to God
○ The formal element of sacrifice is charity
○ Prayer and devotion are both internal acts of worship
○ An external act of worship (sacrifice or oblation) occurs
when you have the internal acts plus some material
■ Oblation for STA is offering the material to God as
it is, you don’t do anything to it. Similar to
sacrifice, but you don’t materially change the thing
that is offered

What is the Exam?

- 4 questions
- We know what the first one will be
- 2nd question will be the longest (minimum one side of a page, max two sides)
- He’ll choose the 2nd question from 3 options
- Other 2 questions will be from the list

Week 12
● Why was Jesus crucified, cont.
○ Principal lines of interpretation, cont.
■ Sacrifice (drawing from Thomas), cont.
● Review: sacrifice became the “thing” of the event of the cross,
rather than just one way of looking at it, which was bad.
● Remember that, for Thomas, an external act of worship (sacrifice
or oblation) occurs when you have the internal acts plus some
material
● What is Christian sacrifice? You need to first understand what
happened on the cross
● The event is the reality, the other things are just images
● He’s going through the whole free will/diving knowledge thing.
We do free acts, which God knew from eternity. So he knows it,
but we’re sill free to do it
● The Father made it so this Event would be prophesied and
prepared for in figures
● History is free but is always in the hands of God. He’s the Lord of
history
 ● I think this is the point: Christ died, not because the prophets said
he had to; but the prophets said that he would die because God
knew what would happen in the Christ Event
● Visible sign of divine acceptance of sacrifice: fire
● Hebrews says that Jesus offered himself with an “eternal Spirit” -
ie., the Holy Spirit, the charity of the Son
● Another affirmation of Thomas is that the body of Christ is nature
without fault, but he did functionally assume our defects (eg.,
needing food) in order to experience (Latin: espiare) our sin
○ He didn’t assume all defects, just enough to experience the
sin of human nature (original sin, pride)
● So when Paul says “He was made sin”, it’s not objective, it’s
saying he was made a sacrifice for sin (Hostiam pro peccato)
● We can’t pay God back. We can’t even buy him a coffee. What
Christ does is help us buy the coffee
■ Victory over sin and the devil
● Another aspect of what Christ is doing on the cross
● “Victor quia victima” is the way that Christ won. He’s a victor by
becoming a victim
● Jesus basically said “do your worst”. And even when the devil
exerts all his power, he cannot distance the heart of a Son from his
Father
● Paul says we were placed under death out of fear.
● Jesus asserts in the most obvious way that we need not fear neither
the devil nor death. He has conquered both
● What does it mean to win against sin? It simply means to not sin
● Jesus went through all this and didn’t have the slightest movement
of sin against God or others. This is how he wins against sin
● It’s not so much victory over sin but also victory over the body
overcome by sin
● Phase One of history dies with Christ.
● God loves the devil, he allows the devil to exist. For this reason we
don’t need to fear the devil
● Of course the devil hates that love. But from the side of God,
there’s just love there
● The descent into hell/to the dead (la discesa agli inferi)
○ It’s a complicated mystery, the mystery of Holy Saturday
○ 1 Peter 3:18-20
○ He went there as a spirit, Peter says. And his body was still in the tomb. But it’s
hard to depict Christ as a Spirit, so the harrowing of hell art usually shows his
resurrected body. But it’s still in the tomb
○ Is Jesus bringing the good news to these people who didn’t believe in him? Is
there the possibility of a conversion of these people? Some of the Fathers say yes,
but that exact reading isn’t very reasonable. Our choice ends with death
○ Christ went there to explain to those who went before him the history of salvation
 ○ Christ is the door to Phase Two of salvation
○ Main points with which we talk about the descent into hell
■ Salvation must pass through Christ
■ This salvation arrives at all human beings of all times and places (all have
the opportunity to pass into Phase Two of salvation or to reject Christ)
○ Balthasar’s reading of the descent into hell is more with the Protestant line, Christ
in hell wanted to feel the maximum distance from God as possible, wanted to feel
what it was like to be damned.
■ But this is problematic, Christ was never far from his Father
■ While we can be separated from God, Christ can never be totally separated
from Him
■ Christ doesn’t need the full psychology of a sinner in order to accomplish
his mission.
● The resurrection of Christ
○ Prefigurations in Scripture
■ Road to Emmaus story - Jesus himself shows them because they don’t see
the Phase 2 of history yet. They don’t see God yet. It’s only after this life
we get to do that
■ So seeing the resurrected Jesus is a grace that Jesus gives to a few. It’s not
a normal thing
■ It’s clear that some Jews doubted the resurrection. It wasn’t enough for
them to open their Bible and look at the prefigurations
○ The resurrection of Christ, historical and transcendent event
■ The event of the resurrection of Jesus
● Jesus rose on the first day of the week rather than the last (the
Sabbath). There’s something new here, the new creation
● The resurrection is an explosion of divine life in a human structure
○ Apocalypse 1:17-18
■ Historical and transcendent character of the resurrection
● What does it mean that it’s historical? You wouldn’t have seen
anything if you were there
○ We wouldn’t see the resurrected Jesus because he’s within
the Trinity now
○ Remember it was a special grace that he appeared to some
● But some of those at the time saw that He who lived among them
came to life again; our entire faith rests on this fact
● We believe in the resurrection because of those first testimonies to
it, especially those of the women who saw him first
● But this was a grace that they saw the transcendent God
● STA: “Human fragility cannot sustain the presence of a glory so
great” (humana fragiitas conspectum maioris gloriae ferre non
sustinet)
● Only God can see God, can know God, can love God
● Looking at 1 Corinthians 15:43-50
● The glorious exaltation of Jesus
○ Exaltation and resurrection
■ This is absolutely necessary for looking at the Glorification of Jesus. We
can’t limit the glory of Jesus to just the resurrection, we need to look at the
Ascension
■ There’s a space of time after the resurrection before the Ascension. Why?
■ But in John’s Gospel, the apostles receive the Spirit on the day of the
resurrection
■ Historical nature of Revelation. Jesus isn’t in a hurry. Progressive
development of things
■ Where was Jesus after resurrection before the Ascension? We don’t know
■ What did Jesus do? He was itinerant, on the move.
● It’s the idea of when man is a pilgrim, when he’s on the move,
things go well. But when he settles down in phase 1, things go
badly.
● But then when Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. Phase
1 is over, he’s not getting up again
■ People gave testimony to Jesus, especially women
● The male disciples learn about the resurrection first from the
women
● And we remember the fact that Jesus was a man indicates that men
are lower than women
● Women are the official testimonies of the resurrection
■ Jesus talked to his disciples, told them to go out and preach
■ Jesus eats.
● This is important, it shows what life with the Risen One is like
● Eating is communion of life
○ The ascension of Jesus to heaven
■ Sign of the insuperabile and unico character of salvation in Christ
■ Nothing is higher than Jesus
■ Ascension is the highest gift God could give to someone.
■ Evil has a limit. That’s central to Christian hope. We know that history
ends well. So we do not fear. This is all part of the Ascension
■ But Christ rises with his wounds. The effect of evil in history isn’t
completely made invisible.
■ The fullness of God’s design gives real agency to human actions
○ The salvific mediation of Jesus at the right of the Father and the gift of the Spirit
■ What does Jesus do in heaven? Same mission: give life. But he does it in a
different way
■ Eggs are symbols of Easter because they’re symbols of life. Jesus gives us
life
■ Through Human flesh of Jesus that is brought into heaven, the Spirit of
God is given
■ Christ has prepared a place for us there.
■ Last image of Christ that Gospel of Luke gives us: Blessing.
● Jesus blesses them
 ● When I receive the blessing of God and don’t close the channel of
blessing, I myself am a blessing. And I continue the blessing, like
the apostles, “blessing God”.

Week 13
● The glorious exalation of Jesus, cont.
○ The Donation of the Spirit
■ Soteriology implies pneumatology
■ There are some things that are only possible once we’ve received the
Spirit
■ We’re saved by the Cross, but the Cross stands for the entire Paschal
Mystery
■ According to OT prophecies, the new and definitive presence of the Spirit
of God is what defines the eschatological times.
● Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Joel 3:1, etc.
■ Revelation of the HS as a ​person​ takes place on Pentecost
■ The Spirit helps us live a life in conformity with the Law of the Lord. In
the sense that, without the Spirit, we can’t succeed at following the Lord
■ Christ lived in Phase 1 of history in order to show it had a meaning
■ What did he do? He consummated Phase 1, brought it to its end
■ He did this moved by filial charity
■ This is where the kingdom of God is; in the heart of Jesus
■ All of Jesus’ words and works prefigure Jesus’ total gift of himself for life
■ The greatest miracle is the Resurrection; it’s evident there that the flesh of
Christ has become the perfect vehicle of the Spirit
■ The gift of the Spirit too passes through the flesh of Christ
● “Spiritism” without Christ is total BS
■ There isn’t going to be an “Era of the Spirit”. The New Covenant that
Jesus gave us is definitive
■ CCC 731-732
● Systematic Reflection on the Paschal Mystery
○ What is important in our faith? The Event of Jesus (l’evento Gesu’)
■ What are the functions of explaining the Event? All the categories with
which I seek to say something true about that Event
■ The categories help us be in contact with the Event, but they are not the
Event
■ We can’t reduce what Jesus did for us just to a few categories. It’s so
much more than that
■ Every person who reflects on this is doing theology. Theology of the
Cross is not closed.
■ The questions change. We can’t be focusing on questions that aren’t being
asked
■ So we need to keep studying, keep answering the questions that are being
asked
 ■ The problem in the world today is the idea of the sadism of God. This gets
picked up when we overemphasize the Cross, portray it as a violent event
backed by God
■ Like if we get the idea of Satisfaction wrong.
○ God’s work against sin
■ We need to start with the initiative of the Father, and the willingness of
Jesus to do the Father’s will. The Son is the great testimony of the will of
God
■ The Father isn’t asking an impossible satisfaction from anyone. He’s
battling sin
■ Jesus preaches forgiveness of sins, tells people to repent and stop sinning
■ He preaches to two groups: those who know they’re suffering because of
sin, but also those who do not think they need a savior
■ The Father is working against the devil as well though
■ The thesis of the devil is that God messed up (ha sbagliato) with the
creation of man. The devil wants to show that man will always seek his
own interests, will always be egoistic. Even when man responds to God
with blessing, it’s only because God blessed him first.
■ God knows this, but it doesn’t concern him.
○ Evil cannot come from God
■ This is a fundamental concept
■ God did not create the world perfect. Why? He didn’t want us to enter into
perfection without freedom
■ There’s real suffering in the world. But we need to distinguish between
moral evil and natural evil
■ Natural evil is “normal.” It shows that we’re growing. Like with literal
growing pains that people get as teenagers
■ We know that this growth is part of the great test of the heart
■ God created the world “in via”, but not “segnata dal peccato”
■ But God doesn’t have some causality for sin? He created a world capable
of sin, so isn’t that some kind of responsibility? In a sense, yes.
■ He permits us to sin to make us understand that he is greater than sin
■ Big discussion with Michael from Switzerland here. He disagrees with
saying that God is responsible for the consequences of sin
■ The point is that the love of God is greater than sin. Love of God holds us
in existence even when we sin, even when we deserve to stop existing
■ Evil continues in time, and God has a certain responsibility for that. In the
sense that he doesn’t erase sin completely, he allows it to exist. He allows
us to exist
● It’s like if two parents somehow know their child will kill millions
of people, but they decide to generate the kid anyway. They aren’t
responsible for his actions of course, but in some sense they bear
responsibility for that evil action existing
■ Original sin: It’s not a personal fault, it’s the world “segnata dal peccato” -
signed by sin?
 ■ The Son is the icon of the Father in the battle against all this
○ Victory over the Devil
■ How did Jesus defeat the devil with his passion, death, and resurrection?
By renouncing everything except his liberty, by allowing the devil to
destroy him
■ Allowing for temptation
○ Victory over sin
■ Sin isn’t a person (whereas the devil is).
■ How did Jesus defeat sin? By showing us we don’t have to sin
■ How do I defeat sin? By living in a holy way, by being a saint
○ Victory over death
■ It’s the test that, with original sin, has become the limit for us entering
phase 2
■ It’s a tougher limit to pass; it’s no longer just the ontological limit. It’s
more severe for us because of sin
○ Suffering of Christ
■ The key here is love. Love for the Father allows Jesus to do the Father’s
will
■ What happens if I love a sick person? I’m taking on a certain suffering.
■ Christ taking on the human body, which is imperfect; this is a suffering
■ And it’s not just that the body is imperfect, but man is also marked by
suffering. And Jesus took that into his person as well.
■ God is not immobile in the sense of being a rock. He’s the fullness of life.
We can speak of his compassion. He is capable of responding to sick
people
■ Plato’s “just man”, who defends the truth, will also be crucified.
■ Not that there is a metaphysic of the cross, like it had to happen. This just
shows the liberty of man. Man will crucify the just man
■ There is another type of suffering in man that comes from God the Father
himself: “The branch that bears fruit will be pruned.”
● Human flesh cannot sopportare the glory of God
● God is purifying our human nature, makes us more capable of
phase 2
● God is making the human heart more in accord with the divine
heart
○ Vicariate Representation
■ Big difference between Catholic and Protestant position
● For Protestants, Christ is a penal substitution
○ God is against sinners, needs to pour out his wrath, so the
wrath of God is poured out on Jesus
○ Good point of this is that Jesus is very close to us
● For us, Jesus is not our substitute
○ We always have our liberty
○ Christ helps us, he doesn’t take our place
○ This is why we always need conversion.
 ○ The Father offers us salvation, but only through our own
liberty
● Lesson 7: The Salvation of Man, Participation in the Mystery of Christ
○ Presupposition: How did the Holy Spirit participate in the redemptive event of
Christ?
○ In what sense do we say that the mission of the Spirit communicates the salvation
of Christ?
■ Salvation, interiorization of the mystery of Christ in the Spirit
■ Ecclesial Mediation: The Body of Christ, place of salvation
● The logic of sacramental economy
○ We don’t have direct access to God, we need the mediation
of Christ, which now takes place through human structures
● Adhesion, participation and growth of the Christian in salvation
○ This is all a process. It’s not immediate.
○ Just like the Incarnation does not immediately assume the
glorification, it takes time to mature
○ This repeats in us the life of Christ
○ The first passage is conversion
○ Faith leads to obedience of faith. If I want to be saved and
I’m not baptized, I am led to seek baptism. And I have to
do it, because Christ said being baptized is necessary
● The participation of non-Christians in salvation
○ Fundamental point is that the Church is not just
communicating salvation to us. It’s communicating
salvation to others
○ What is the plan for the Jews in salvation today? They are
still carrying out their mission of bringing pagans into their
fold (like Paul says)
○ What are the prinicpal benefits of the work of salvation?
■ Liberation from sin and the devil
■ Justification and Reconciliation with God
■ Opening of human life to divine grace
■ Revelation of the ultimate sense of man and of creation
○ In what sense will the Parousia consume definitively the salvation offered in
Christ?
■ Parousia is the point of arrival of salvation history
■ It’s a mystery in the life of Christ still yet to come.
■ Some see it as the Return of the King, some see it as a Final Judgment.
■ We can’t think of it just in the sense of punishment. It’s the total and
complete revelation of the Love of God; love which is at the base of the
entire salvation history
■ Two great questions will be answered
● “Why?” - The problem of evil
○ God will give justice to those who are due it
 ○ The only one who can judge the intentions of a person is
God
● “How Long, O Lord?”
○ We do not determine the times
○ God is the Lord of History
■