Last week, I picked up a copy of Josef Pieper: An Anthology at The Calico Cat Bookshop.
This passage from the Foreword by von Balthasar struck me, and I’ll say why if you read through it:
“Just as the gracious, faithful and merciful God who made a covenant with Israel requires in the end a reply of perfect love from man, so too Jesus — as our transparency toward God, our very interpreter of God — expects a truly astounding love for himself: “Do you love me more than these?” and “If you love me, keep my commandment.” He means the commandment to love, which is the only place where the highest insight into the absolute now opens up. Have the theologians really pondered the question of what “scientific” method is needed by an object who demands the highest of loves for himself? Surely, at the very least, a method that does not seek to master him!” – p. xii
I have been reading Giussanni’s At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and he talks frequently about the importance of using a method that matches its object. Giussanni points out that it’s silly to expect from theology the same kind of susceptibility to a certain method that chemistry (or physics or computer science) uses. Different “objects” of knowledge will have different ways of being known; don’t expect or insist on a single, universal method.
So this passage struck me when it mentioned a “method” for a science in which the object must be loved with the highest of loves.
