Before the Foundation of the World: Encountering the Trinity In Ephesians 1

By Philip Krill

Inspired by the spiritual exegesis of the early church fathers, and modeled on the revival of an imaginative and contemplative approach to Scripture developed by Adrienne von Speyr, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, and Erasmo Leiva-Merikakas, BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD takes a small portion of a single letter of St. Paul and invites us to communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through an extended exercise in lectio divina. According to the ressourcement theological vision advocated by the authors above, our reading of Scripture should be a living encounter with the Eternal Word in every word of the Bible. BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD invites us into just such an encounter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483475080

Philip Krill

PHILIP KRILL is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO.

Book preview

Balthasar¹

I

PAUL, AN APOSTLE OF JESUS CHRIST

1:1   Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Jesus Christ…

T HERE IS NO SPACE between Paul and his being an apostle of Jesus Christ. His being is being an apostle. Paul’s mission is his identity in Christ.

Jesus Christ owns Paul. Paul belongs to Jesus Christ. They form one person, together with the countless other saints who comprise the Mystical Body of Christ. Paul discovered this in his conversion. Saul’s conversion was an apocalyptic event. It was the end of the ages for him. A new life began for Paul that day on the road to Damascus. He encountered the living Christ. Existence apart from Christ, Paul would say, was a living death. I account as rubbish, he says, everything other than knowledge of Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:8).

In his conversion, Paul encountered Jesus as a Corporate Person. ’Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’ (Acts 9:4-5). Jesus and His Church are one. They form a single, mystical person. Saul is suddenly engrafted into this corporate Jesus totally and completely. I will show him, Jesus tells Ananias, what he must suffer for the sake of my name (Acts. 9:16). He is engrafted into Christ’s crucifixion as well as into his resurrection.

Paul now belongs completely to Jesus Christ. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ… All of Pauline theology, all of Pauline mysticism, is contained in that tiny word of. "Of Jesus Christ. To be of Jesus Christ is to be assumed into His divinity through the instrument of His humanity. God became man, said the Church Fathers, so that man could become God."² In Christ we receive a share in Christ divine nature. To be of Christ is to participate in Jesus’ very nature as God.

After his conversion, Paul is no longer Saul. Paul is Saul’s new name because he has a new identity. This identity comes by the will of God. It is an identity in Christ. Saul no longer knows himself. He is now Paul. He has died and is risen in Christ. He is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). His whole identity is found in the Savior who has chosen and called him.

Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ. An apostle is one who is sent. Paul is sent by Jesus to bring the Gentile nations into corporate communion with Christ. We must not imagine this being sent as something extrinsic, something detached. As an apostle of Jesus Christ, Paul is sent by Christ in a way similar to Christ being sent by the Father. The sending is an intimate sending. It is the sending of a son. It is the sending of a son by His Father to go off to war. Jesus sends Paul to inveigh against the powers and principalities (Col. 2:15) just as Jesus Himself was sent to defeat the power of the Evil One (Mk. 3:27). The Father sends Himself in sending His only-begotten Son. Jesus sends Himself in sending Paul. Everyone sent of Jesus is an extension of Jesus, communicating His saving Incarnation to the world.

Paul and Jesus are one. They are united more intimately than any human analogy can convey. Everyone baptized into Christ is connected with Him in such a way that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come…nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, Our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39). The Mystical Body of Christ is no metaphorical expression or pietistic image for Paul, but an actual entity. Grafted into the very corporeality of Christ, a Christian loses his individual, natural personality and assumes the identity Jesus has chosen from him from all eternity (1:4). This identity is designated by one’s baptismal name. Saul becomes Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ. Saul is no longer Saul, nor is Paul simply Paul. Paul now and forever means an Apostle of Jesus Christ. Mission and identity are synonymous in Jesus.

From the first moment of his conversion, Paul never forgets he is Paul³ Jesus’ call of Paul is quite specific. Paul becomes who he is after his call from Jesus. Jesus’ call creates the true Paul. Jesus’ call creates Paul from Saul. Jesus’ call is quite specific in a further sense: no one can do for Christ precisely what Paul is created and called to do. Paul is made and elected, even before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Similarly with us: we are created by God and given a certain mission. We possess a kind of spiritual DNA that has not only our facial and physical features embedded within it, but also the predestined destiny the Trinity has foreordained for us. Our mission is our true identity in Christ. His call and our conversion enable us to enter into the truth of who we are in Christ as He imagined it from all eternity.

We become more, not less, of who we are in God when we surrender to our true identity and mission in Christ. Our unique personalities are enhanced, not stifled, when we respond in truth to the call of Jesus and allow His Spirit gradually to remove the scales from our eyes (Acts 9:18) about our role in the Mystical Body of Christ. Our mission is as specific and integral to God’s eternal plan of salvation as the members of the body are to the human physical form. It is as central to the design of divine Providence as Paul’s was to the plan of Jesus. Human openness to God never results in indefiniteness. The gift of freedom always takes shape in a determinate form of life in which the believer fulfills the most concrete sending [apostolate] which he has received for the building up of the Body of Christ.⁴ When we say Yes to the person God is calling us to be, and to what He is calling us to do, we discover, as if for the first time, who we really are and what fulfills us as unique human persons. God’s election strengthens my personal identity, while at the same time deepening my humility. It enhances my sense of connectedness with others, increases my compassion for those far from Christ, and intensifies my desire to serve within the corporate Body of Christ in the specific way for which God has equipped me.

Paul also says, I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20). Christ and Paul interpenetrate each other. They do so after the fashion of Jesus own hypostatic union⁵: without division and without confusion. Paul remains Paul, and Jesus remains Jesus; yet, they become one flesh in such a manner that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. Nuptial union, as Paul will say later (Eph. 5:32), is the premier image of Christ’s union with His Church. This nuptial union is consummated and brought to completion when all those Jesus has called and chosen are fully incorporated into His Mystical Body through water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:5).

Paul’s identity in Christ, then, is his mission. The same is true for every person baptized into Christ. Personhood and mission are identical in Christ, just as Jesus’ Sonship defines His identity within the Trinity. God is never just God. God is always and only Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus is never simply a divine Person who, at some time in eternity, either discovered He was the Son, or decided to assume the posture of the obedient Son. Jesus was never not the Son. His identity as God is defined by His status and form as Son. As Son, Jesus’ disposition is one of obedience, first within the Trinity itself, then in the Incarnation for the salvation of the world. Jesus’ fidelity unto death on the Cross is the outwardly visible manifestation of His faithful deference to the Father from all eternity as His only-begotten Son. Identity equals mission within the life of the Trinity and is extended throughout the world in those who are incorporated into Christ.

To know Christ, therefore, is to know Him as Son. To know Him as Son is to be taken into His obedience. To be assimilated into His obedience is to be sent by Him into the world with a share in His own redemptive mission. Paul’s mission, Paul’s identity - like that of every Christian - is a participation in, and extension of, the apostolic mission of Christ, coming from the Father, to save all men and bring them to knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 1:4). Paul has no life apart from Christ, and he has no life in Christ other than that of one who is sent.

Paul is sent …to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus…The saints are who they are, and what they are, because they are in Christ. The key phrase is in Christ.⁶ It connotes an integral, intimate, organic union. I am the Vine, you are the branches (John 15:5). The Vine imparts divine life to the branches. The branches share in the life of the Vine, and the Vine bestows life on the branches. The branches participate in the Vine, and the Vine infuses vitality into the branches. So too with the saints in Christ. Sanctity consists in being in Christ. There is no divine life that comes from us. It only comes to us in and through Christ. Apart from me you can do nothing, says Jesus (John 15:5). Salvation is connection with Christ, resulting in the communication of His Life to us given in the mystery of His Incarnation.

We, like Paul, are engrafted into the divine Vine. The divine Vine is Jesus. He is the heavenly Vine drawing us up into the very life of His Father. Sanctity is the upward pull and heavenly orientation imparted to us by our connection with Christ. That which is not assumed, said the Church Fathers, is not healed.⁷ Sanctity is the divine healing and divinizing sanctification that comes from being grafted into the Vine. It is the mystery of assimilation. It means being taken into the anagogical priestly action of the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus comes to earth to carry us to heaven. He conveys to us His Incarnation to deliver us up to His Father.

The faithfulness of the saints, therefore, is not their faithfulness but that of Jesus. Jesus was faithful unto death. He is the New Adam. He accomplishes with His obedience and fidelity what Adam lost through his disobedience and disloyalty. Jesus is the only truly Faithful One. He is the "seed of