Important Insights from Richard Rohr’s book Eager to Love: From a Theology of Atonement to a Theology of
Abundance
By Bridget Mary Meehan,
ARCWP
The Franciscan School of Theology's focus on God's extravagant
love and abundance taught by Saint Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus provides an
alternative to Atonement Theology taught by St. Anselm and St. Thomas
Aquinas.
The Franciscan theological position was never condemned and was
always held as an alternative by the institutional Catholic Church. However, most Catholics were not exposed to
Franciscan theology, but this worldview fits well today with the spiritual
journey of contemporary mystics an emerging universe.
Franciscan School of Theology emphasized God as Outpouring Love,
and our call is to live love each
day.
Bonaventure: “We
come from God reflecting the divine image, our DNA is found in God. Everything
in creation is an example and illustration of the one God mystery in space and
time. ..We return to the Source from which we came.” P.
166.
“Grace is inherent in the universe from the moment of the “Big
Bang”. (implied in Genesis 1:2, Spirit hovers over the chaos) Grace is “the very
shape of the universe from the start.” In
this view, ‘salvation is not a divine transaction that takes place because you
are morally perfect but much more it is an organic unfolding, a becoming of who
you are already are, an inborn sympathy with and capacity for the very One who
created you….The Christ Mystery, …is plan A for God, and not a Plan B, a mop
up exercise after Adam and Even ate the
apple.”
“For Scotus and for Bonaventure, the Trinity is the absolute
beginning and ending point. Outpouring Love is the inherent shaped of the
universe and when we love, only then do we fully exist in this universe.” We
do not need to understand what is happening or who God is before we live in
love. The will to love precedes any
need to fully understand whatever we are doing , the Franciscan School would
say.” p. 182
Almost all seminaries taught Thomas Aquinas . This meant that
knowing the truths of the faith, correct doctrine was the most importan
thing.
“In short, truth was equated with knowing instead of
loving.”
Atonement Theology:
“According to the Christian understanding of the Bible in the
first millennium, Jesus “died for our sins to pay a debt to the devil or to pay
a debt to God the Father proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury" (1033-2209)
The great Franciscan theologian, John Duns Scotus, was not guided
by Temple language of atonement, blood sacrifice or satisfaction for sins but to “the utterly new world that Jesus offered, where God’s abundance has made
any economy of merit, sacrifice, reparation or atonement both unhelpful and
unnecessary. Jesus undid once and for all (Hebrews 7:27,9:12, 10:10) all notions
of human and animal sacrifice and replace them with his new economy of grace,
which as at the heart of the gospel revolution.” P.
187
“In other words, we are all saved by grace and the utter freedom
of God to love who and what God wills, without our tit-for-tat thinking getting
the way of God’s absolute freedom , and absolute freedom to love. .. we all need
to know that God does not love us because we are that good, God loves us
because God is good.
Nothing humans can do will inhibit, direct, decrease or increase God’s
eagerness to love… Only great love can handle great truth.” P.188, (Eager to Love, by Richard
Rohr)
I believe that God is extravagant love always loving, healing, empowering and transforming, moving in all beings everywhere and always loving, healing and empowering through us. Now, this is a theology of abundance that speaks to contemporary spiritual seekers, mystics and prophets today.
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1 comment:
I am grateful that we have finally found God's extravagant abundance and intimate, infinite love, and are leaving behind that other cavern god, the one into atonement, which was more like the god that condemned Prometheus forever...
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