Mario Bizzotto in Camillianum – Libri di storia e spiritualità camilliana – Vari, N.18, 2006 pp. 565-585

The attribution of weakness to God is essentially connected to two problems and these have always assailed theology. The first is expressed by the question: how is it possible to speak about God if He is infinitely incomprehensible? The second is imposed by the presence of evil: how can one reconcile human suffering with a God who is good and all-powerful?

Only a Weak God is Expressible

Language is power. To translate contents into concepts means to establish dominion over such. It follows from this that to speak about God involves the affirmation of a certain power over Him. One understands the timor et tremor that the believer of the Bible feels when naming God. One also understands the constant desire of the psalmist: I look for your face Lord. Show me your face. The name and the face of God escape human dominion; God is unreachable: in relation to Him one is always journeying in the condition of viatores.

God is absolutely different. If He is such, it is not possible to understand Him, but it is not even possible to attain the knowledge that He is the different One. ‘Man, in order to know that God is the different One, needs God’. The intellect clashes with this paradox and observes its own failure. It finds itself annulled and yet precisely here, where the limit cannot be crossed, arises the passion of scandal. ‘The paradox is the passion of thought…this, therefore, is the supreme paradox of thought, wanting to discover something that it cannot think’. In order to set in movement again the activity of reason and language, God Himself must take the initiative and come to man. ‘God must offer an (adequate) condition otherwise a disciple would not be able to understand anything’.

If we now ask ourselves what the condition is that God has given Himself in order to allow man to know Him, we encounter the event of the Incarnation and more specifically the consequent attribution of weakness to Him. And this is only because He makes Himself equal to us in everything; He enters language; He lowers Himself to the human condition; and He becomes acceptable. It is His weak face, the elimination of His attributes, the suspension of His being that is equal to God, it is His equality with man, that is the pre-supposition for speaking about Him (Eph 2:1ss). And yet it is precisely here, where the human becomes familiar to us and accessible, that one clashes with scandal and paradox. The more Christ draws near, the more one understands how much one does not know him.

‘The intellect has accepted God as near as possible and yet at the same time He is distant…The intellect in the end deceives itself when it defines the unknown One as the different One and exchanges diversity for equality. From this follows something else, namely that man where he really wishes to acquire news about the unknown One (God), must first of all know that He is different from man, absolutely different, and on its own the intellect cannot understand Him’. Knowledge of Him can only start from the pre-supposition of likeness to the human, from participation in suffering and in the humble occupations of daily life; from disappearance in the uniformity of habits and adaptation to social institutions. ‘Behold, here there is a man who has the appearance of all other men; he grows, he stops, he obtains a job like all other men, he is worried about tomorrow’s bread, which is the duty of every man: because it could be rather fine to live like the birds of the air (Mt 6:26) but this is not allowed and could lead to the most miserable end, or, when there is an ability to bear this, to dying of hunger, or living by the possessions of other people. This man is at the same time God’.

It is the fact that He made Himself mortal, finite, contingent and weak, it is his equality with man, that enables us to speak about Him. When one passes from His transcendent attributes to His human attributes one encounters a reality that is proportionate to language; one enters history, which can always be narrated and described. Precisely because a God exists who takes on human suffering and interprets it, authentic language is possible. The word of suffering is the nearest there is to the God of the crucifix. ‘Invisible but personal God is not encountered separately from any human presence…There cannot be any ‘knowledge’ of God separately from a relationship with men’. God enters history, and He does this above all where it is shaken, agitated by violence, and struck by disorder. God takes upon His shoulders the evil of the world; He draws near more than ever. The point of departure that allows us to speak about God is Kenosis. Language itself mortifies God; it portrays Him in the condition of Kenosis.

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