From the Editor's Desk

"In his image, in the image of God, he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27). Implications of this conviction about our origins have always astonished me. I have found no less astonishing the implications of the early Pauline injunction, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness" (Phil 2:5–6). These affirmations led Paul frequently to exhort his hearers to "put on Christ." Augustine came to know the implications but begged off, "Grant me chastity and self-restraint, but not yet" (Conf. 8.7.17). He preferred to demur—like Constantine who postponed baptism to his deathbed so he would not have to worry about living the implications of Christian discipleship: he could continue his draconian style of "keeping order" and at the eleventh hour, purged by baptism, slip reborn into the heavenly kingdom. The problem is that, unless one lives as the image of the Creator, life may at best be pleasurable, but it will also ultimately be joyless.

For many years I have taught courses on the quest for Christian identity. I have tried to instill, first, in myself, and then in my students, what it means to "put on Christ," who, as the second Adam, teaches us what it means to become a full human person or, as John's Jesus put it, to "have life and have it to the full" (Jn 10:10). Several articles in this issue of Theological Studies prompted in me the realization that at the root of all my teaching is the concept and reality of Christian conversion: of conversion from being born in God's image to actually, in the process of maturation, embracing the implications of that reality—after Paul's already-but-not-yet injunction that I paraphrase as: You are Christian (by baptism), now act like it! You may yet become what you are.

At the heart of Christian conversion is the movement from the (nonmoral) ego-centeredness of the infant to the (moral) other-centeredness of the mature person—after Jesus who, as the Philippians hymn put it, became "obedient to death, even death on a cross." I do not take this to mean that the Father wanted Jesus to go to his death by crucifixion, and Jesus obeyed. Rather, I take obedience here in its etymological sense of "to listen carefully" (from Lat. ob + audire). To whom? The other. And here first of all, the Wholly Other, and all other others in relation to that primary Other and that primary listening. It means being able to see from the other's point of view. Careful listening does not happen without love—a notion prominent in Cajetan's (and, later, Trent's) qualification of Luther's notion of sola fide. This is the heart of conversion and of obedience: to love the other as oneself and, therefore, to be able to listen to the other as one listens to oneself, and indeed to realize that one cannot listen to oneself apart from listening to the other, both within a profound listening to the Wholly Other in whose image we are all created.

Listening with love then leads to loving action for our mutual edification: no edification of oneself without edification of the other. In the case of Jesus, listening to his Father and to his people, especially the marginalized and exploited, led him to remain faithful in word and deed to what he heard from his Father, and that fidelity led to his crucifixion and to his resurrection. Both reveal something profound about love: the cross shows our capacity for cruel deafness; the empty tomb is God's irrevocable reply.

Conversion is the subject matter, either explicitly or implicitly, in much theological writing. Carl Starkloff's article is striking in its concrete narrative about the conversion needed to take the other as seriously as one takes oneself. Starkloff discovered in the course of many years of labor at interreligious dialogue that what he was doing is best described by Bernard Lonergan's notion of conversion, located at the center of his "functional specialties." For Lonergan, to do theology effectively (authentically), the theologian must undergo a threefold conversion: intellectual (see Insight), moral, and religious (see Method in Theology)—a conversion that involves "self-appropriation" or "growth in personal authenticity" (Starkloff). Such self-appropriation cannot happen without "attentiveness" ("obedience" qua careful, loving listening) to the other and ultimately to the Wholly Other. This kind of "obedience" or loving attentiveness requires a willingness to enter into Jesus' kenosis: "Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt 16:25).

I submit this Lonerganian proposition: No theological reflection is effective unless it is done from a converted standpoint. Why? Because the unconverted person takes only him- or herself seriously, loves only him- or herself—which, of course, is not real love, for real love requires transparent interrelationality. We cannot love ourselves without loving another, because we, like the trinitarian God in whose image we are born and called to live (and it is a vocation), are essentially relational beings. This relationality, the more fully engaged it is in love, enables authentic theological reflection, because only then are we living authentically our creaturehood, and only then do we know authentically Whom and what we are reflecting and writing about.

As to readers, those who read from a converted viewpoint readily recognize when a writing rings with authenticity and when it does not. This realization throws the fear of God into me as editor, lest I pass on articles that lack the ring of authenticity. Fortunately, I have a board of editorial advisers with whom to share warranted blame—or praise. They are the others to whom I listen carefully—in God, of course.

David G. Schultenover, S.J.
Editor in Chief