Father John A. Hardon, S.J.

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Devotion to the Sacred Heart and Modern Christology

IIHJ Conference given by
Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Any balanced approach to the modern devotion to the Sacred Heart must take into account
what kind of thinking is going on in some nominally Catholic theological circles in our day.

No doubt, there are some thoroughly orthodox theologians writing about the Devotion to the
Heart of Christ. They are totally committed to the teachings of the Church, basing themselves
squarely in the tradition of Chalcedon, Ephesus and the Nicene Creed. But they are being
overshadowed, not to say silenced, by the highly publicized spokesmen for a new brand of
Christology. They might even speak piously about the Sacred Heart Devotion, but they have in
greater or less measure removed its doctrinal foundation.

At the risk of starting with an over-long quotation, I will give some sentences from Richard
McBrien’s widely used book Catholicism, to set the stage for this presentation. McBrien opens
his chapter on “The Christ of Twentieth Century Theology” with these statements:

Catholic Christology from the time of Aquinas to the middle of the twentieth century remained
essentially the same in structure and in content…The residual medieval influence was
particularly evident in the raising of subsidiary questions—e.g., whether Christ could have
been called a human being or the Christ while he lay in the tomb between Good Friday and
Easter Sunday; the reconciliation of the “sadness of Christ with his smilessness; the legitimacy
of devotion to the Sacred Heart.” (Catholicism, pp. 469-470).

The value of quoting McBrien is not to cite him as an example of a theologian who trivializes
Devotion to the Heart of Christ. It is rather to show how some “name” writers, ostensibly
Catholic, are talking about a residual medieval Christology that still advocates Devotion to the
Sacred Heart, and an updated Christology that has moved beyond such unenlightened piety.

My plan for this paper is to do three things: first, to identify some of the prevalent errors in
modern Christology which threaten to undermine the Sacred Heart Devotion; then to point out
some of the legitimate developments of doctrine on the person and work of Christ, and again
show how they bear on this Devotion; and finally to draw some practical conclusions.
Christologies at Variance with Catholic Doctrine
In scores of volumes and several hundred articles in journals in Europe and the Americas, three
main types of modern Christology have emerged at variance with the Catholic church’s
accepted teaching. They may be conveniently called Christology “from below,” “liberation”
Christology, and “process Christology.”

Christology from Below

Christology “from below” is contrasted with Christology “from above.” The latter is also
called “high Christology,” and begins with the premise that there has always been an infinite
God, who at a point in time “came down” to earth to take on human nature and to redeem us by
dying on the Cross. He is supposed to have risen bodily from the grave, actually ascended into
heaven and is now literally at the right hand of His Father, from where He will come on the
last day to judge the living and the dead.

Compared with this medieval notion, the new Christology “from below,” or “law” Christology
starts with the Jesus of history. He was always a human being like use, even when with St.
Paul we claim He was without sin. He stands out above other human beings not because He is
God in human form, but because more than anyone else He proclaimed the Kingdom of God
and gave Himself to the extension of this Kingdom as no one has ever done or, we may
suppose, ever will do.

Inevitably, there is a wide and irreconcilable variety of these Christologies “from below.”

Some of them claim that all the titles to divinity applied to Christ in the New Testament are
merely honorary. There is no pre-existence, no real incarnation, and no redemption in any
traditional sense of the term. Such doctrinal assertions are simply the combined product of the
ferrial faith of the early Christians and of Greek speculation.

On these premises, the Christ of Christian faith is only and uniquely the historical Jesus of
Nazareth. In spite of what the evangelists or St. Paul say, Jesus was not interested in
proclaiming Himself. He was completely subordinated to God’s cause, the Kingdom of God
over the hearts and minds of the human race. Jesus preached merely the direct, unrestricted
rule of God over the world.

Confronting the selfish people of His day with this absolutist doctrine, Jesus became a divisive
figure. Some feared and hated Him beyond reason; others loved and believed in Him, also
beyond reason.

No doubt some of the statements that Jesus made about Himself were exaggerated. They were
never intended to claim that He was God. But no matter, the opposition He aroused because of
His incompromising stand on doing God’s will finally aroused the hatred of His enemies until
they brought Him to His death. All the evidence, the law Christologists say, indicates that
Jesus did not simply accept His death. He actively provoked it. He appeared in His day as the
personification of sin and as the representative of all sinners. Not surprising the God with
whom Jesus had rhetorically identified Himself did not identify Himself with Jesus at the end.
Jesus was literally forsaken by God.

Everything seemed to have been useless. But Jesus’ death was not to be the end. His devoted
followers believed in Him so strongly that after His death, they subjectively experienced Him
as alive. The so called resurrection of Christ was merely something that happened to the
disciples. In the words of Hans Kung, “there remains the unanimous testimony of the first
believers, who regarded their faith as based on something that really happened to them”
(Signposts for the Future, p.21, Thesis #10). To be stressed, however, is that the resurrection of
Christ did not actually happen outside the disciples minds. It was not an empirical, historic
fact.

Other advocates of a Christology, “from below,” are not as crude in their denial of the
hypostatic union. But their steady criticism of the Church’s preoccupation, since Nicea, on one
Christological model, a Christology “from above” has improverished the Church of the
insights now available in seeing Christ from a different perspective. What is this perspective?
To see Jesus as the parable of God, as the paradigm of humanity, the one who realizes that
human concerns and God’s concerns really coincide; and that we should realize that we, like
Christ, are “of God,” even when death seems to contradict it. As expressed by Edward
Schillebeeckx, “Through his historical self-giving, accepted by the Father, Jesus has shown us
who God is: a Deus humanissi mus (most human God),” Jesus, An Experiment in Christology,
p. 669.

The number and diversity of these “from below” Christologists are past counting. What they
all have in common is a profound discomfort with the Church’s magisterial teaching about
Christ’s divinity, and the resulting doubt they leave in any sympathetic reader as to whether the
centuries-old doctrine on the hypostatic union is still unqualifyingly true.

Liberation Theology

A distinctive form of Christologists “from below” has emerged in recent years. For want of a
better term, they have come to be called “liberation theologians.” Some of them are more
systematic than others, but they all have one feature in common, they stress the historical Jesus
over the Christ of faith, and they do so on one main premise: that Jesus did not preach Himself
but His Kingdom, and His Kingdom is to liberate the financially and materially poor from their
earthly poverty.

Perhaps the most systematic among these theologians of liberation is Leonard Boff, the
Brazilian writer, whose book Jesus Christ Liberator has become something of a classic.

According to Boff, Jesus did not come to give an explanation of reality, but to make an urgent
demand for a complete change of reality. The Kingdom that Jesus came to preach, says Boff, is
“the realization of a utopia, involving complete liberation, a liberation that is also structural
and eschatological” (p.280).

Jesus preaches a God, says Boff, who is to be reached not so much through prayer and
religious observance as through service of the poor, in whom dwells the true God. Jesus
establishes kinship, by preference, with society’s outcasts. He rejects wealth; He abhors
political power; and He teaches a totally new religion, which is glorifying God by struggling
for liberation from earth’s oppression.

Summarily, then, it is quite secondary and quite dispensable, in Boff’s theology, what
Christians think of Christ. It is peripheral to Christianity whether Christ was a divine person
who assumed a human nature; whether the hypostatic union is really true; or whether Jesus
actually rose in a physical body from the dead. What matters is whether the central message of
the Gospels is carried into effect; whether the poor are being delivered from their world
oppressions, in a word, to quote Boff, “Life is more important than reflection” (p. 157).

John Sobrino of El Salvador, like Boff, emphasizes the primacy of function, over doctrine, and
of action over splitting hairs about who Jesus is.

Critical to Sobrino’s reading of the New Testament is the claim that Jesus’ past can be
recovered only to the extent that it pushes us towards the future. Sobrino defines Christology
as “Liberation theology, (which) reflects on Jesus himself as the way to liberation” (p. 37).

Sobrino is unapologetically functional. What alone truly counts is what Jesus is for us, not
what He is in Himself. Sobrino does not hesitate to say in his Christology at the Crossroads,
that if at any time Christ ceased to be of interest to people, or to serve the function of liberating
people from their earthly trials, he “would cease to be the revelation of what human beings are,
and hence the revelation of who God is” (p. 388).

As is obvious, when liberationists of this school of thought speak of the Jesus of history, they
are speaking mainly of present and future history. Christianity thus becomes the record of what
Jesus is doing for contemporary man, delivering him not precisely from sin and the forces of
moral evil, for a Kingdom in eternity. Rather, Jesus is the Savior who redeems mankind from
human and political slavery in the here and now.

Process Christology

The third and final form of Christology that challenges the Church’s teaching is more difficult
to classify. When I call it “Process Christology,” I am borrowing a term that has broader
meaning, namely, Process Theology, and classifying Christologists among those who—in
some measure or other—place God in the evolutionary process of the world.

The prevalence that popularity of process Christology among Protestants is a fact of

contemporary scholarship. Men like Ponnenberg and Voltmann have become almost classic in
their field. One of my students at the University of Ottawa, whose thesis on Ponnenberg I
directed, spent several years just reading and trying to decipher Ponnenberg, before he could
decisively start analyzing Ponnenberg’s Christology. It is subtle and complex in the extreme.

Among professed Catholics, the most important in point of time, is Teilhard de Chardin. In
Teilhard’s thought, all history is a movement toward Christ, whom he calls the Omega Point.
In this perspective, Christ, like God Himself, is in a constant evolutionary process—the world
is becoming perfected in and through Christ even as Christ is becoming perfected in and
through the world.

The critical issue for Chardin is his position on the nature of God. The problem, he says, with
people who consider Marxism atheistic is that they define God too narrowly. Certainly if you
conceive God as totally transcending the world, then Marxism is godless. But once you realize
that God is autologically part of the universe, you see that Marxism is quite theistic and
compatible with Christianity.

On these premises, Christ and Christology and the hypostatic union take on a very different
meaning than the one taught by the Nicene Creed.

Karl Rahner is not commonly placed among Process Christologists, but I believe he can be
best understood in this way.

Rahner’s notion of evolution rises through much of his writing. It is deeply influenced by
Hegel. Matter and spirit, Rahner believes, are essentially related to each other. They derive
from the same creative act of God, and they have a single goal or purpose in the fullness of the
Kingdom preached by Christ. The world and its history are moving ever forward. They are in
constant process of development, toward a unity of spirit and matter. Rahner, like Hegel, sees
this as a becoming higher. He calls this capacity for becoming something higher as the power
of “self-transcendence.”

How does Christ fit into this predetermined process of evolution. Says Rahner, “The
permanent beginning and the absolute guarantee that this ultimate self-transcendence, which is
fundamentally unsurpassable, will succeed and has already begun, is what we call the
“hypostatic union,” (Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 181).

In other words, the Incarnation was not so much God becoming Man, as the universe,
including man, becoming slowly but inevitably divinized. Jesus Christ, Rahner insists, cannot
be properly understood except from this evolutionary process.
Development of Christological Doctrine
By way of introduction, we should briefly explain what is development of doctrine, for our
purpose the doctrine of Christology.

True development of doctrine is the growing depth and clarity of understanding of revealed
mysteries. It is the progress in understanding what God especially in the person of Christ, has
revealed to the world. This growth in subjective understanding by the Church takes place
through the action of the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the Church as her soul, and has to be
validated by the Church’s magisterium to be assured acceptance by the faithful.

One more note. Doctrinal development or dogmatic progress must be continuous. This means
it must be consistent with the Church’s teaching over the centuries. To be authentic, it cannot
be discontinuous or at variance with, or in contradiction to what the Church has always held
since the time of Christ.

Building on these premises, we can say that many areas of Christology have developed in
modern times. In fact, every aspect of Christology has witnessed authentic progress. For the
sake of convenience, I will here give only three, namely: communitarianism, anthropocentrism,
and Soteriology. Each of these deserves a volume of commentary.

Communitarianism

A phrase that is being used today symbolizes what the communitarian development means.
The world it is said, is becoming a global village. Due to many factors, including the
communications media, the human race is fast growing into a single community, where people
everywhere are aware of one another, relate to one another, sense a kinship with one another
and see themselves responsible for one another in a way and to a degree never before known in
human history.

Inevitably this has had its influence on religion, every religion, including Catholic Christianity,
and within Christianity on the Catholic understanding of it Founder, Jesus Christ.

There is a new sense of meaning to Jesus Christ as the one whom the world, the whole world,
desperately needs. The world includes the millions who have so far never heard of Christ, but
for whom Christ is desperately needed. More still, Christ is needed not only (though primarily)
to lead mankind to salvation in the life to come. The world needs Christ even, and also, for this
life, here and now.

The consequences of this new insight are far-reaching. Christ is coming to be seen as the only
true answer to the staggering problems facing the modern world. The responsibility this places
on Christ’s followers, especially the Church’s leaders, is staggering. They are to see Christ, as
the Gospel presents Him, only now as the Christ for everyone, whom everyone needs with an
urgency that can stand no delay.

One important proviso, however, Christ will save the world from its chaotic situation, and the
future of the Gospel is secure only if those who have the true faith also have the humility and
the wisdom to preach the true Christ, the whole Christ, and not some mental construct of their,
perhaps zealous imagination.

Anthropocentrism

There is a valid explanation of the preoccupation with Christ’s humanity these days. One
reason is that Christ is being recognized for what He is, God in human form indeed; but
nevertheless true man who came for men.

The Second Vatican Council could not have been plainer. It portrays Christ as God who
became a human being in order to identify with us human beings in every way but sin.

Authentic development of Christology here means that the faithful are seeing Christ more than
ever as their Savior, of course, but as One whom they are to follow, in fact strive to imitate in
the practice of virtue and with resounding emphasis, in the practice of charity.

Christ is, after all, God become Man. Given this doctrine of faith, the human virtues of Christ
are the attributes of God made manifest to us, for our imitation and even duplication in our age
of history.

Soteriology

Perhaps the single most significant development of modern Christology has been in the field of
Soteriology.

The mistaken stress of liberation theologians on the function of Christ is freeing people from
earthly oppression has this however. It focuses attention on the forgotten fact that Christ is our
Redeemer.

It is here that I cannot stress too much the importance of Pope John Paul’s Encyclical
Redemptor Hominus.

It is the magna charta for anyone who wants to properly understand what true Christology is all
about in our day, and who wants to put this Christology into practice. Parts of this precious
document deserve to be memorized and whole sections could be quoted profitably to show
how critically important it is for us, the Church’s leaders, to know Christ, the true Christ, so as
to proclaim Christ, the whole Christ, to a Christless world that is desperately in need of a
Redeemer.

Let me first quote one lengthy paragraph from Pope John Paul II.

Jesus Christ is the stable principle and fixed center of the mission that God Himself has
entrusted to man. We must all share in this mission and concentrate all our forces on it, since it
is more necessary than ever for modern mankind. If this mission seems to encounter greater
opposition nowadays than ever before, this shows that today it was more necessary than ever
and, in spite of the opposition, more awaited than ever. Here we touch indirectly on the
mystery of the divine “economy” which linked salvation and grace with the cross. It was not
without reason that Christ said that “the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of
violence take it by force” and moreover that “the children of this world are more astute…than
are the children of light.”
We gladly accept this rebuke, that we may be like those “violent people of God” that we have
so often seen in the history of the Church and still see today, and that we may consciously join
in the great mission of revealing Christ to the world, helping each person to find himself in
Christ, and helping the contemporary generations of our brothers and sisters, the peoples,
nations, states, mankind in developing countries and countries of opulence—in short, helping
everyone to get to know “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” since these riches are for every
individual and are everybody’s property.

I make no apology for the long quotation. It is meant to serve as an introduction to my

conclusion of this paper on “Devotion to the Sacred Heart and Modern Christology.”

Summary Conclusions
We end where we began, by emphasizing what Pope Pius XII stressed in the opening
paragraphs of his definitive document, Hariatis Aquas. Before he went on to explain the
meaning of Devotion to the Heart of Jesus, and urge its promotion among the faithful, the Pope
went to considerable effort to alert the Bishops and Church leaders to the errors prevalent, not
outside the Church, but among Catholics regarding what he called a synthesis of Christianity.

These errors, declared the Pope, “are in outright disagreement with the teachings which our
predecessors officially proclaimed from this seal of truth” (#14).

There is no doubt that Devotion to the Heart of Christ has a promising future in the Catholic
Church, and from the Church to the whole family of the human race. But on one condition: that
we who promote this devotion are alert, in our day, to the erroneous ideas widely prevalent in
nominally Catholic circles; that we recognize and are able to distinguish true Christological
development from its spurious counterpart; and that we follow the teachings of the Church’s
magisterium, specifically of the Bishop’s of Rome in answering for our contemporaries what
Christ asked His contemporaries, “Who do you say that I am.” On the correct answer to
Christ’s question depends all the good, the marvelous good that in God’s providence we can do
in our world by advancing the knowledge and love and service of the Heart of Jesus, who is
our God become man for our salvation.

Copyright © 2004 Inter Mirifica