How the God of Jesus Makes Peace

By William Frazier

The two “major concerns” that theologian/author William Frazier addresses in this book help readers understand the relationship between the death of Jesus and peacemaking. He writes: “First, there was the need to get directly to the point about the saving death of Jesus as the very center about which everything else in my research revolves. The fact that I have attempted this under the rubric of a theology of peace instead of a theology of salvation is simply because peace is our most direct route into the soteriological world, which is to say that in Judeo-Christian thought soteriology and eirenics, or what I will venture to call eirenology, coincide.” He adds, “Related to this is a second concern, which not only motivated my efforts, as did the first, but thoroughly haunted them at every step of the way. This was an awareness, developing gradually as I pursued my research, that the vast majority of Christian commentators rarely, if ever, do more than rather vague, generic justice to the New Testament message about peace.
Father Frazier’s discovery in his first point that “peace is our most direct route into the soteriological world” and in his second point that “the vast majority of Christian commentators rarely, if ever, do more than rather vague, generic justice to the New Testament message about peace” is the heart of this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Fenton
• Release date: Jul 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370007769

Book preview

How the God of Jesus Makes Peace

William B. Frazier, M.M.

Copyright © 2017 William B. Frazier, M.M.

Digital ISBN 9781370007769

Print ISBN-13: 978-1548050153 and ISBN-10: 1548050156

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author. Contact Dr. Joseph J. Fahey .

First edition, June 2017, Maryknoll, N.Y.

Design, layout, and production: Thomas P. Fenton

Contents

Foreword by John E. Keegan, M.M.

Tribute by Joseph J. Fahey, Ph.D.

Introduction

1. The Peace that God Makes

2. What Gets in the Way of God’s Peace

3. A Death that Makes Peace

4. Reconciliation Reversed

5. The Siege and the Arming of the Human Heart

6. Toward Disarming the Human Heart

7. Innocent Suffering and Death

8. Isolating the Enemy

9. The Peacemaking of God

10. Conclusion

Appendix 1: Links in a Theological Chain

Appendix 2: A Parallel Perspective

Notes

Foreword

John E. Keegan, M.M.

I met Bill Frazier in the early 1960s. I was ordained a Maryknoll priest in 1960 and assigned to Maryknoll College in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. I was to begin teaching philosophy to the seminarians in the fall and earn a degree at night by attending Loyola University in Chicago. Vatican II was not yet on the horizon. Before the Council got off the ground, Bill returned from his studies in Rome. He had been attending the Angelicum there, preparatory to his taking up the task of teaching theology at Maryknoll College. At the time, the Angelicum was the preeminent place enshrining Neo-Scholastic thinking. It was renowned for being home to one of its most famous scholars, Reginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., who was perhaps the most famous Neo-Thomist of the twentieth century. Garrigou-Lagrange was a severe critic of the Nouvelle Theologie theological movement that was later to dominate the Second Vatican Council. He believed the movement to be Modernist and put himself at odds with the French Dominican revivalist theologians, Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., and Ives Congar, O.P. Garrigou-Lagrange was also believed to have been the drafter of Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis, subtitled Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine.

The satisfaction understanding of salvation played prominently in Neo-Scholastic theology. You will see it appear in Bill Frazier’s How the God of Jesus Makes Peace as the older and easier view that a revival of the Biblical understanding will find wanting. In a more Biblically founded view God is engaged in reconciling sinners, not the other way around, Bill writes. Bill’s discovery of this began with his becoming acquainted with the thinking of Stanislas Lyonnet, S.J., who was to be suspended from his teaching post at the Pontifical Biblical Institute on the eve of Vatican II. Lyonnet lectured on sin and redemption." Some of his lectures can be found in Sin, Redemption and Sacrifice: A Biblical and Patristic Study (1970), a book he produced with fellow Jesuit Leopold Sabourin. Lyonnet’s aim was clear: [to] set forth the central theme of Christian soteriology as revealed in scripture and interpreted by the most authentic tradition.

When Bill returned to the United States to begin his teaching career as a theologian, he had been influenced by Father Lyonnet. What resulted was an excellent course in Biblical theology. The main focus of Bill’s work became Soteriology. Interesting things were happening at Maryknoll College in the years after Vatican II. Of particular interest was the introduction of an integrated humanities program. Fr. Thomas McGinn, then academic dean at Maryknoll College, wanted to experiment with the possibility of preparing our seminarians to obtain part of their education overseas in another culture. To do this, the traditional mold of seminary education would have to be broken. Could students have their identity as Christians nourished and strengthened by an integrated humanities program in their first two years, rather than continuing with the usual two years of philosophy at the back end of their college careers? A multi-credited program was put together to try and bring the resources of religion, history, philosophy, literature, and the arts together in an integrated team-taught way.

Bill audited the program and at its conclusion wrote his seminal paper, Salvation as Incarnation. A correlative theologian was being born, one who was to become more and more experience-centered.

Not long after, Bill was assigned to Maryknoll, New York, where he was to play a central role on its theological faculty. The memory of the integrated humanities program at Maryknoll College coalesced with the sound advice Bernard Lonergan, S.J., had authored in his 1972 book Method in Theology. Lonergan had counseled that the sources for human understanding were so manifold in contemporary times that no single mind could encompass them all. Theological reflection, if it was to be adequate, had to flow from an interdisciplinary approach. As he would say: "Method is not a set of rules to be followed

to be known as the Core Theology Program at Maryknoll School of Theology. I joined the team in 1973 with responsibility for philosophy and the arts, particularly the most universal of all the arts, contemporary cinema. Bill was the systematic theologian, the glue holding the whole project together.

The heart and soul of Christian theology is Soteriology, understanding salvation. Christianity is not an ethical system; it is about human salvation. Strangely, there are no doctrinal definitions shaping the way we grasp its meaning. We see Jesus saves! signs plastered all around us, on subway walls, placards, and billboards. Yes, but what is he addressing? It is difficult to recognize a cure if the sickness remains unknown. What the problem is is rarely addressed. Soteriology requires a great pathologist, and this is where Bill is incisive. His exploration of the thanatological undercurrents that run through the human project is telling. Destructive death resistance hides in places hard to ferret out. But Bill has an eye and ear for discovery. That, along with his thorough grasp of the Biblical vision leaves him uniquely equipped to answer how the God of Jesus saves, or should we say, makes peace. A theology of salvation is also a theology of peace, Bill writes, simply because peace is our most direct route into the soteriological world, which is to say that in Judeo-Christian thought Soteriology and eirenics, or what I will venture to call eirenology, coincide. That is the only way into how the peace that God makes becomes available to us. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God (Matt. 5, 9).

A Tribute to a Visionary Professor

Joseph J. Fahey, Ph.D.

This book is a heartfelt tribute from a generation of Maryknoll seminarians to our beloved Professor of Theology, Fr. William B. Frazier, M.M. Those of us who were privileged to sit in his classes remember even today the sheer breadth and depth of his lectures, his vast knowledge of theology and philosophy, and the probing questions he asked that were foundational to a theology of mission. We also remember the faculty member who mentored us, played basketball with us, and cheered us on with his quick wit and always-ready smile. This book is our way of honoring you, Bill, and saying thanks for all you did for us.

Bill (as we came to call him) taught every Maryknoll seminarian from 1959 to 2004. He was ordained in 1956 and sent to secure a S.T.D. in Dogmatic Theology from the famed Angelicum in Rome. He taught philosophy and theology to us as students at Maryknoll College, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, from 1959 to 1970, and theology and missiology at Maryknoll’s major seminary (Ossining, New York) from 1970 to 2004. Sadly, both schools have closed but the memories of those who studied there are vivid still and there is a special place in our hearts for a giant of a professor, Bill Frazier.

In addition to his teaching Maryknoll seminarians, Bill was active in Missiology circles and often delivered controversial papers to mission groups and societies in the United States and abroad. He was also active in the Catholic Theological Society of America. But the one thing Bill did not do much was publish. He wrote a great deal and there is today a large collection of his unpublished writings at Maryknoll, New York, under the stewardship of Fr. William Grimm, M.M., and Fr. Richard Baker, M.M.

The list is quite long of active and former Maryknollers who wanted to be remembered to Bill in the publication of this book. It is hoped that a proper festschrift will soon be published that will list all those names along with essays on Bill’s theology and his impact on the fields of theology and mission.

Peacemaking Is Central