Andrew Kaethler is Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology at Catholic Pacific College at Trinity Western University. While working on a Ph.D. in systematic theology at the University of St Andrews, he and his family entered the Catholic Church. He has written for a wide range of academic journals, with a focus on the thought and theology of Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI.
His book titled The Eschatological Person: Alexander Schmemann and Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue, was published in 2022 by Cascade Books/Wipf & Stock. Dr. Kaethler recently corresponded with CWR by email, discussing the respective work of Schmemann and Ratzinger, the importance of eschatology, the crisis of personhood in our time, and why the Trinity is essential to making sense of reality
CWR: Readers, of course, will be quite familiar with Joseph Ratzinger. But the Russian Orthodox theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann is likely new to many readers. Who was he?
Andrew Kaethler: Fr Alexander Schmemann was one of many émigrés whose parents, when he was young, left Russia (Estonia) to found a new life in Paris, France. He was educated in Paris and completed his studies at St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute alongside several other famous Orthodox thinkers such as Sergius Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky. In 1962 he moved to New York taking up a position at St Vladimir’s Seminary where he remained until his death in 1983.
For twenty years Schmemann gave homilies that were broadcast into Russia through Radio Liberty. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the most notable listener. Solzhenitsyn recounts that “for a long time, with spiritual delight I have been listening on Sunday evenings, whenever possible, to the sermons of Father Alexander (his surname was never given) over Radio Liberty, and I was amazed how genuine, how truly contemporary and of what high order is his art of preaching. Never a note of falsehood, not an iota of rhetoric, without empty recourse to obligatory form and ritual which causes a listener discomfort and embarrassment for the preacher or for himself. Always a deep thought and profound feeling.” When Solzhenitsyn, stripped of his Russian citizenship, moved to America, he and Schmemann developed a close friendship.
CWR: Why did you choose to study his theological work along with that of Ratzinger?
Kaethler: In 2008 I had lunch with a wonderful theologian named Hans Boersma. I asked him what five books every theologian should read. Following the conversation, I went to the Regent College bookstore and pulled off the shelves all the books that Boersma recommended. Schmemann’s For the Life of the World was the shortest of the books that he recommended, and as a new university lecturer I had limited time for reading non-course material, so that was the only book that I walked out of the bookstore with.
From the very first page of For the Life of the World, I was captivated. He wrote with poetic passion. The book sparkles with insight and is beautiful to read. It was clear to me, in the very style of the writing, that he was a man who has been touched by the Mystery who is Jesus Christ. The book introduced me to what I would call a sacramental ontology. This sacramental approach drew everything together; it made sense of life. After completing the book, I told my wife that if I ever did a PhD it would be on the thought of Alexander Schmemann.
Fast forward three years, I was sitting in one of the beautiful rooms of St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews (Scotland), with my doctoral supervisor Professor Alan Torrance, who suggested that my PhD thesis should be a dialogue between East and West. I suggested a couple of Western thinkers and he countered with one suggestion: Joseph Ratzinger.
I had no idea how much this would change my life. I will not recount the whole story, but in short, Ratzinger had a major role in leading me into full communion with the Church (I was Anglican at the time). To add to this, I could say that Schmemann led me to Ratzinger. Like Schmemann, I found Ratzinger’s work astounding, especially Introduction to Christianity. This book is arguably the key to unlocking the rest of his work.
Ratzinger continues to be the theologian that shapes my work and my life.
CWR: Ratzinger/Benedict is often associated with works on liturgy and ecclesiology—and rightly so—but his thought on eschatology seems to be underappreciated, at least among non-specialists. Is that accurate? What are some distinct themes and points of emphasis in his writings on eschatology?
Kaethler: I am not sure if it is underappreciated or just under-read because it is unknown. If people have read any of Ratzinger’s books, it is usually The Spirit of the Liturgy. However, Ratzinger saw his book on eschatology as his best academic work. It was the last thing he wrote before taking on immense ecclesial responsibilities. When Ratzinger wrote it eschatology was a dominant theme in theology. Albeit, theologians tended to read eschatology in an existential manner as a theology of hope, or in a political manner (political theology). Most of them rejected the last things—death, purgatory, heaven, etc.—as a later anti-historical and hyper individualistic aberration.
Ratzinger agreed that an anti-historical and hyper-individualistic understanding of the last things is deeply problematic, but he saw this as an issue of interpretation and not specifically with the last things themselves. The last things are part and parcel of eschatology, and he sets out a relational and historical theo-logic of the last things, an approach that mirrors the God who is relation (Trinity) and who, out of his superfluous love, enters history (Incarnation) and has time for us.
CWR: Eschatology can appear to be a rather abstract or esoteric topic. But you emphasize, from the start, its deep and immediate importance, writing, “Eschatology provides meaning and direction to temporality” and helps us understand what it means to be “a person in time.” How does eschatology (to echo the book’s theme) shape personhood in the work of both Schmemann and Ratzinger?
Kaethler: Like all dogma and doctrine, eschatology concerns us now. Eschatology book-ends Creation. It completes the narrative and thereby makes sense of all that happens between the two bookends. The question that was in the back of my mind regarding the book was Martin Heidegger’s question: what does it mean to be a being in time? On one hand, as Christians, we can, and we must, speak of human nature (static). On the other hand, we must think of ourselves in light of the dynamics of history. We are persons on the way.
Both Schmemann and Ratzinger maintain that Jesus Christ is the Kingdom, he is the eschaton. Here we have an ontological statement of what is. At the same time, Christ entered into the flux of temporality. On one level, we could simply say that without eschatology there is no history. History implies meaning. Without meaning there is nothing to drape time on, and we are solely left with the movement of matter. Eschatology gives meaning and hope to the movement of time.
On another level, the eschatological One (Jesus Christ) enables me to have identity, a sense of isness, amid the flux of time. To put it differently, I am a creature who lives in the midst of time: past, present, and future. The past is gone, the present always eludes us—it is gone the moment we think of it—and the future is not yet. So then as a historical creature where is my identity? The short answer is Christ. In Christ all time holds together and each one of us is hid with Christ in God. Thus, we could say that in Christ both the movement of time and my identity are held together and given meaning.
Schmemann rejects the last things and thus eschatology is always solely about the end of history, which ended with Christ’s Pasch. Since history is concluded, the person is meant to ascend to the heavenly table (the new aeon) through the liturgy and the Eucharist. He is to repeatedly leave and to return shining with the light of Tabor. In the same manner that the priest lifts the chalice to our Lord, we are all called to be priests who lift the world into the new aeon.
Ratzinger, on the other hand, sees history as the ongoing love story between man and God, in which God actively participates in history. I write in the book, “this life, our temporality, is relational. As pilgrims, we move through temporality, deepening relations as we wait for and, at the same time, already partake in the definiteness of temporality, in which time is transformed into eternity.”
Put differently, for Ratzinger the eschatological person is one who constantly transcends himself by giving himself to the other and thereby fills time and history with meaning.
CWR: A major crisis of our time—a crisis that has existed for a long time now—is that of personhood: what does it mean to be a human person? How can a deeper understanding of eschatology help us with that question?
Kaethler: Beyond what I said in response to the previous question, eschatology enables us to recognize history as meaningful. Vatican II highlighted that the Church is a pilgrim. Furthermore, it helps us recognize the human person is a deeply relational creature, an ecclesial creature. Both Schmemann and Ratzinger recognize that the human person is a being in relation.
Ratzinger explicates this in greater depth and detail than Schmemann. Helpfully, he writes that the human person is Sein-mit-einander (being-with-others) and Sein-für-anderer (being-for-others). This is a reflection of God who is una substantia tres personae (one being/substance three persons). History is the web of relations in which each strand is brought together into relation in and through Christ: individuals become the body of Christ and are transformed thereby into persons. In simple terms, we call this redemption.
CWR: Both men have a deeply Christocentric approach to eschatology. What are some similarities or shared beliefs? How do they differ, either in emphasis or in substantive content?
Kaethler: Both theologians see the limits of scholastic theology. As a scholar of Bonaventure, Ratzinger is more nuanced in this regard than Schmemann. Schmemann tends to dismiss all medieval western thought (“Babylonian captivity”). Both recognize that the Eucharist and the Liturgy go hand in hand, and that these are at the heart of theology. A sacramental relational ontology is at the core of each of their respective theologies, and because of this, neither has an individualistic understanding of faith.
Both would affirm the famous paragraph 22 of Gaudium et spes: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” One of the major differences is how they conceive of history.
CWR: Schmemann is known for his liturgical theology and emphasis on the Eucharist. What insights does he provide into the relationship between worship, Eucharist, and personhood? How might these be applied to one’s spiritual life?
Kaethler: Schmemann argues that man is homo adorans, he is a worshipping creature. GK Chesterton summarizes this perfectly: “If man cannot pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he is in irons.” What is at the heart of worship? The Eucharist, Christ himself. Eucharist literally means thanksgiving. Christ is the Eucharist; he is thanksgiving. As a worshipping creature, I am most myself when I transcend myself in thanksgiving. Gratitude is at the heart of the Christian life.
We can practice lectio divina, pray the rosary, and participate regularly in Mass, but without gratitude it is empty. If we want our spiritual practices and our worship to bloom, gratitude must first take root in the mundaneness of ordinary life. We must be thankful, we must become eucharistic persons.
CWR: You write that Ratzinger’s “conception of the human experience of time is more complex and nuanced that Schmemann’s.” How is that the case?
Kaethler: The simplest way to summarize the difference is that for Schmemann relations fit within time. Even Christ, in a way, is imprisoned within time because, according to Schmemann, he cannot enter into time without subsuming it. Therefore, Schmemann argues that we exist in the old aeon, but Christ is in the new aeon. The two remain separate. We, in worship, and ultimately through the Eucharist, must ascend to the new aeon to encounter Christ.
Whereas, for Ratzinger time fits within relationships. There is no clear dividing line between the old and the new. God was, is, and will woo the world to himself. He wooed the world to himself in the time of the Old Testament and he continues to draw us to himself in Christ. Time does not constrain God. In Christ God has time for us. Christ is always participating with us within the web of time. This web hangs from the branch of relationality. Time in this life is the means of relationship, both with God and with our fellow man.
CWR: In your chapter on Ratzinger and personhood, you have a section on conscience. How does Ratzinger’s understanding of eschatology and the person inform how he explains and describes conscience?
Kaethler: In short, as mentioned above, Christ is the Eschaton, he is the Kingdom, and with this profound relational understanding of reality Ratzinger makes sense of time and history. To put it differently, he wants to preserve the significance of history, the significance of this life, but in such a way that does not reduce everything to the flux of time, nor reduce everything to a static reality of what is. As human persons we find ourselves in Christ. That is, we must go out of ourselves in order to find ourselves. Our personhood is established within a dynamic ecstatic movement—we become, we are beings on the way. As you can see there is a tension between ontology, what is, and history, becoming.
As I wrote in the book, “Ratzinger’s notion of conscience reveals the ontological and historical nature of the human person. The primary element of conscience, anamnesis, reveals that the human person was made to be in relation with the Truth. At the same time, it reveals that this internal reality is dependent upon an external reality, i.e., God. What is within correlates and finds its being in what is without. The Creator has made us to be in communion with him, and we need him as Redeemer to realign and remind us and, even more importantly, to renew and transform us through his forgiveness and love. We were made (exitus) to return (reditus) to the loving arms of God. Thus, we are pilgrims who must die to the self (martyrs) in order to be oneself: a being in communion (Eucharist).”
CWR: What are some of the key conclusions reached in your book?
Kaethler: First, the Trinity is key to making sense of reality and of our place within it. Relationality undergirds all reality. In one way the Beatles were correct, “all there is love… .” Second, persons are beings in relation. All persons exist within the I-Thou-We framework. It is, paradoxically, when I give myself away that I truly become myself. There is no me without others. Third, to be loved by Christ and to love Christ is the path to becoming persons, to becoming fully alive. Fourth, the last things are an integral aspect of eschatology. They are not individualistic nor are they juridical. Rather they fit within the relational fabric of reality and only make sense in light of Jesus Christ the Son.
CWR: Final comments or thoughts?
Kaethler: The relationship between East and West is vitally important. As Saint John Paul II stated, “the Church must breathe with her two lungs.” Each brings to bear depths and insights that the other, on its own, is often incapable of seeing. I have witnessed a concrete instantiation of this in a graduate house of study in Vienna, Austria called STEP Wissenschaftliches Zentrum für Orient & Okzident—Studien. Here I experienced the breathing of her two lungs. What eschatological peace and joy! What a beacon of hope and light!
In the words of our Lord, “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21-22).
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Enlightening. Thanks for this.
I remember Father Schmemann when I attended the St.Vladimir’s in the 1970’s. It was during the time of student unrest in many universities. He began the talk by saying ‘here we have no rights, we are all slaves of Christ.’ Good advice for us today.
Could God be lonely? Andrew Kaethler on Benedict that the human person was made to be in relation to truth suggests this question. We might then begin our eschatology of the Trinity in pursuit of a response.
Theoretically no. Perfectly content within himself, nevertheless a desire to love beyond himself, setting the groundwork for understanding man’s place in the world [man unites two worlds, the world of the divine and the natural world – through freedom and creativity the two natures must unite, Berdyaev].
As the most creative of loves God outside of time [eternally] brings forth the Word to save Man in time. Man created in His likeness that this creative love, the Spirit inspires Man to love as He has loved us.
Thank you for this dialogue. As an “older” graduate student at UST, I am interesting in this combination of East and West, and finding person and substance as both integral in our theological study.
As an engaged non-theologian, thank you for this comparison! About time and eternity, two comments here on the box canyon proposed by Karl Rahner and even one version of synodality.
FIRST, in 1944 (reprinted in 1982), St. Vladimir Orthodox Seminary published a tidy little volume entitled “St. Athanasius: On the Incarnation, which includes an introduction by C.S. Lewis. Lewis writes:
“Every age has its own outlook [….]” AND “[the unity of Christendom] any of us can find by going out of our own age.” The text, itself, includes a “Life of St. Athanasius” and finds that he wrote probably in A.D. 318. This is one year before Arius gained attention (A.D. 319) seven years prior to Nicaea (A.D. 325) and clarifies that the Council was more an act of remembering what had been believed from the beginning…than it was any lesser consensus of the moment—within the turbulence of otherwise fluid history, and specifically the Arian proposition backward (!) toward polytheism.
SECOND, about the novelty of a synod, or two, possibly more responsive to an ambulatory and futuristic spirit than to the historical fact of the Trinitarian Incarnation (the witness of Scripture being less than exhaustive but still definitive)…Ratzinger critiques Karl Rahner’s long shadow; extending now into synodality, yes? Writes Ratzinger:
“Ultimately, then, a synthesis [Rahner’s] that combines being and history [!] in a single, compelling logic of the understanding [!] becomes, by the universality of its claim, a philosophy of necessity, even though this necessity is then explained as a process of freedom [….] THEN “…man does not find salvation in [Rahner’s] reflective finding of himself but in the being-taken-out-of-himself that goes beyond reflection—not in continuing to be himself, but in going out from himself” (Faith and History, in “Principles of Catholic Theology,” 1982, Ignatius 1987, pp. 161-171).
(Can’t help but notice, too, the likeness of Rahner’s “necessity…explained as a process of freedom” with the necessary 5,000 words of explanation in Fiducia Supplicans…. A myopic rationalization for blessing/not-blessing “irregular”/rationalized pairings?)
“Put differently, for Ratzinger the eschatological person is one who constantly transcends himself by giving himself to the other and thereby fills time and history with meaning.” All in all, history for Ratzinger seems an optimistic pursuit. History, relation, time, etc., have meaning in so far as they assist man in reaching his true and final destiny. Yet did not also the fall of man, i.e. the “descending” of man in Adam also have meaning; did this also not transcend him (O Happy Fault!)? I was hoping that in such a deep discussion concerning eschatology there would be some mention of divine providence – the all-wise plan God has for the human race, whence God gives meaning from all eternity (through Christ) to all that man does in time including man’s failures. Also, I am always trying to glean understanding about the apparent antagonism that the nouvelle theology has for the scholastic. In this particular case, is there another time more so than that of the scholastics when the Church was more relational: the (liturgical) Eucharistic hymns of Aquinas, the blooming of universities, the communal efforts of the cathedrals, the foundation of hospitals; even the gathering of the Crusades. All this historical, relational, bustling was going on “in time” during the scholastic period which cannot be separated from scholasticism. Does this not answer Heidegger’s question of what it means to be a being in time? Or is phenomenology too idealistic about time and relation to see it?
I too seek to understand the scholastic/nouvelle theology divide. More sympathetic to Thomism, I’m finding enlightening the series of original essays, translated by M. Minerd, edited by J. Kirwan, at “The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Theologie” The other side is sympathetically presented in: “Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology” edited by Flynn and Murray, Oxford Press.
A superficial glance may lead one to see a case of young energetic intelligent bucks rebelling against scholastic theology, perhaps because of the way it was taught–dry, scientific, confounding.
I’ve not read much of the Thomistic response book. (It was a Christmas gift.) But there I’ve not found the chutzpah I’ve found typically found in the ressourcement group. The scholastics as a group generally more methodical AND measured in their interpersonal dealings with the new kids on the block. OTOH deLubac seems a hothead, Rahner a brilliant poetic sort who had no apparent desire to slow his mind down to write to convey his meandering meaning, and Balthasar left his Jesuit order to work (?reside?) with von Speyr. Then there were the likes of Schillebeekx (I won’t look up the correct spelling), and the evolutionary paleontologist (I always forget his name ?on purpose?). The Scholastics held positions of power in Rome. Of course the young guys wanted and did buck the system with their intellects. Then came VCII where they cut their teeth by cutting off the other guy’s mic. History met Eschatology, Also see a bit here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1063851220965426
Thank you and Happy New Year!
Let us not forget The Holy Ghost, “The Lord And Giver Of Life, Who Proceeds From The Father And The Son”,
and that Perfect Love does not divide, it multiplies as in The Miracle Of The Loaves And Fishes.
“Augustine builds upon this tradition to show that the Spirit who is the love of Father and Son in the Trinity is also, because of this, the love that establishes unity within the church.”
https://catholicsstrivingforholiness.org/st-augustines-prayer-to-the-holy-spirit/
“Breathe in me O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be Holy
Act in me O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be Holy
Draw my heart O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is Holy
Strengthen me O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is Holy.“
Don’t come too close; I will adore Thee and worship Thee in the East!
“O blessed Holy Trinity, I adore Thee profoundly” In the host you are Christ’s flesh and blood, soul and divinity. I eat divinity! The Father dwells in the Sacred Heart. “Heart of Jesus, in whom dwells the fullness of divinity” O, but you are what I eat and I surrender; I am conquered, infused, a new creation. your joy and divine fire of love. In you I am God! Through you, with you, in you, I am You; without you I do not exist. Consumed in you, one love embrace. I agree with Benedict XVI, “a love story” and his last words were: “Lord I love you”. He who makes all things new by the will of Abba Adonai, transformed by the Sanctifier. Love is the holy Power and love is His Glory.