The latest papal encyclical, Dilexit Nos, is a rich ecosystem of Christian thought, but there’s one point in particular that is sticking in my mind right now. It has to do with what I call the vulnerability of God. This is a topic that I’ve been preoccupied with for almost two decades. Recently, I’ve started to put pen to paper—or, more exactly, fingers to keyboard.

Back in February, I was at a low point in my relationship with my diocese over what a local culture does well or badly in the abuse crisis. And while I was in that place, I churned out an essay on a phrase common to Cherokee Baptist theologian Randy Woodley and French Thomists Jacques and Raïssa Maritain: “God is the most vulnerable of beings.” The paragraphs I produced were relatively technical. And I think that as a work of actually grappling with metaphysics that matters to real people today, this was not an insignificant contribution. But like I say, it was pretty dense stuff.

In March, Pope Francis got in on the action. He started issuing interesting comments on spirituality, vulnerability, and abuse. I don’t think the original reflections were particularly deep. But they made some points worth pondering. And it really struck me that, as has so often happened, the Holy Father was looking at the same confluence of situations, people, words, and ideas that had preoccupied me.

For a while after this, as my own life settled a little, I left the topic to rest, but then, last month, Pope Francis issued an apostolic letter re-organizing the Diocese of Rome. Although most people outside of Italy left this alone, I took up a limited commentary. It turns out the Pope was eager to tell us that “vulnerability is another manifestation of beauty.” And for me that sparks quasi-philosophical ruminations, because beauty is found not just in Christ’s Humanity but in the whole Christ, including the Divinity. I did a lot of condensing and simplifying of my thoughts, previously published, on Randy Woodley and Jacques and Raïssa Maritain. The commentary I put out is a lot less technical, shorter, and tighter on the issue of vulnerability.

Well, as we know, when Pope Francis starts on a topic, he doesn’t let it go for some time. Whether he keeps using the same terminology, or changes up the words and circles around the same questions, he doesn’t usually look at an important matter just once or twice. Along comes Dilexit Nos.

God’s Love is deprived of extension

Of course, the majority of Dilexit Nos is not about the topic of vulnerability. It’s not one massive indulgence of my personal hobbyhorse. This is a substantial and interconnected set of meditations on the beating heart of Jesus in Scripture, the Fathers, Councils, mystics, and the ongoing papal magisterium, including the social doctrine of the Church. It has its own priorities.

Hidden away towards the end of the encyclical letter, however, is one paragraph that I’ll quote in full to make sure I haven’t left out anything. It goes like this:

Even though it is not possible to speak of new suffering on the part of the glorified Lord, “the paschal mystery of Christ… and all that Christ is – all that he did and suffered for all men – participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all”. We can say that he has allowed the expansive glory of his resurrection to be limited and the diffusion of his immense and burning love to be contained, in order to leave room for our free cooperation with his heart. Our rejection of his love erects a barrier to that gracious gift, whereas our trusting acceptance of it opens a space, a channel enabling it to pour into our hearts. Our rejection or indifference limits the effects of his power and the fruitfulness of his love in us. If he does not encounter openness and confidence in me, his love is deprived – because he himself has willed it – of its extension, unique and unrepeatable, in my life and in this world, where he calls me to make him present. Again, this does not stem from any weakness on his part but rather from his infinite freedom, his mysterious power and his perfect love for each of us. When God’s power is revealed in the weakness of our human freedom, “only faith can discern it”. (no. 193)

Although Pope Francis shies away from attributing vulnerability to God, we’re in exactly the same place as my meditation when I say, “God is the most vulnerable of beings.”

There is something profound to contemplate here. God offers us motions of truth, love, and beauty. They pour into the world from his acts of will, freely considered and freely chosen from all eternity. God has “an infinite freedom.” Yet, we too have freedom, and there is a “weakness of our human freedom.” God offers. We can say no. Such “rejection of [God’s] love erects a barrier to that gracious gift”; indeed, “rejection or indifference limits the effects of his power and the fruitfulness of his love in us.”

When this happens, God, so to speak, loses. Or as Pope Francis puts it, “If [God] does not encounter openness and confidence in me, his love is deprived… of its extension, unique and unrepeatable, in my life and in this world, where he calls me to make him present.” Something true, good, and beautiful that God wanted from all eternity for me, here, now, in this very moment that I say no, will never be. And where and when light and warmth were willed by God to radiate outwards from, into the world, there is and will forever be a black void of chill. The unrepeatable moment has passed.

I don’t know if we can ever comprehend what this means. There is a certain mystery to evil. It’s beyond understanding, because it’s so very much nothing, not a thing, nihilation. But left to itself, this notion—that I can at each and every moment deprive God’s love of extensive realization that God elected from all eternity—bowls me over. I truly have no words for the depth of nothingness that this implies.

And that’s just one person, one moment. The possibility of erecting barriers, turning God away as he knocks at the door, pushing aside the plate that he offers to us from his infinite bounty—this repeats itself worldwide throughout the entirety of human history. God is more susceptible to being denied, thwarted, having his offers of his own very self trampled upon, than we could ever conceive. I find myself unable to adequately imagine and comprehend one moment of willful darkness. Here we have a potential infinity.

But—but, as the Holy Father insists and as I have repeatedly said myself, that is only one side of the coin.

God remains all-powerful. Our ability to fracture the motions that God offers us “does not stem from any weakness on his part but rather from his infinite freedom, his mysterious power and his perfect love for each of us.” However strong we may be, God is stronger. He has seen ahead a billion billion moves. The condition under which we are free to throw him out on his face—well, “he himself has willed it.” He doesn’t choose evil. But that freedom—oh yes. He gave it, created it, offered himself to it. He knows it.

While we need to understand human evil as loss, as nothingness, as thwarting an infinitely powerful and infinitely happy God, it also somehow isn’t. God rises higher still. What seeming defeats there are God overcompensates and overabounds. Somehow both are true.

The usual Christianese for this divine overabundance and overcompensation is: “God can pull out of every evil a still greater good.”

Pope Francis renders it: “God’s power is revealed in the weakness of our human freedom.”

My preferred idiom is a little different. Part of the reason is that, when it comes to God, I don’t like pat answers all tied up with a bow. If contemplative prayer teaches us anything, it’s that God is known to us, but also so much more unknown. So if I violate some shibboleths in the way I express myself, while still being solid in theological meaning, that can open the heart to a God still greater.

More important than the method, though, is the very hidden treasure that I want to set our sights on. I want to stress the fact that vulnerability is not a deficiency. I insist that God is the most vulnerable of beings, and it follows from this claim that integral vulnerability brings one not farther from God but closer to him. The condition for this approach is that vulnerability does not become locked in on itself but remains open to joy.

In ourselves, there can be realized a transformation of any wounds, any suffering, any nothingness, any sadness, into happiness. This takes time. Even with grace, the process has a temporal dimension. But in God, I say, there’s one difference: the “process” is as if speeded up infinitely.

By our sin, God is wounded. He suffers. Maybe I should use quotation marks around these verbs. Maybe not. At any rate, the expressions are necessary. They present truths that are unavoidable. But still, the words aren’t quite right, because God doesn’t change; he remains infinite beatitude. “Woundedness” and “suffering” aren’t just poetry, aren’t merely metaphors (like saying God is my rock); neither do the terms mean here exactly what they mean in us. Words here insufficiently capture a notion that has a range of meaning that includes both us and God.

Beatitude beyond comprehension, woundedness by sin, eternity, all together. In God, somehow—I don’t know how—infinite happiness and the supratemporal existence of eternity meet with the transformation of suffering into joy. That’s the God I believe in. That’s the way I describe it. God is the most vulnerable of beings, and whatever cuts him to the quick in that potential and partially realized infinity of refusals of his self-offering, is moved—but moved without hesitation and beyond any finite rate—from woundedness, sadness, and suffering, into joy, happiness, and beatitude. 

It’s nonsensical to deny eternal, perfect blessedness and happiness to God. But it’s equally nonsensical to say that what we’re talking about here isn’t some sort of vulnerability, played out on a scale that exceeds our comprehension. A feasible joining link between the ideas is to take the quintessentially Christian process of changing suffering into joy—evidenced in the Paschal Mystery and imprinted upon the lives of all believers—and to remove it from the constraints of temporal existence, not by slowing it down to zero, but by speeding it up to a rate infinitely beyond time. How else are we, with all our experience and images derived from temporal living, going to describe it, while retaining the fact that God’s perfection is more, not less, than our goodness?

God is the most vulnerable of beings. He is unlimited power and beatitude. Both/and. Not either/or.

The real question here is about suffering

I think that, in reading Pope Francis’ meditation, I both am strengthened in my views and gain a better understanding of why other people are reluctant to call God vulnerable.

On the plain facts, that’s what the encyclical is saying: God is vulnerable. He offers his love, which is his very self. We can erect barriers, refuse, shatter his advances.

When a young person makes a confession of love (and can be rebuffed)—that’s vulnerability. When one child approaches another on the playground and makes overtures of friendship (and can be turned away)—that’s vulnerability. When Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island offered Europeans an understanding of treaty-making as the formation of a new blended family (but it was possible to twist the offer of family bonds into a story of control)—that’s vulnerability. When the earth, though so much more powerful than we are in the long run, can (for some moments of history) be harmed, altered, and pushed around by us human beings—that’s vulnerability.

These situations are themselves not cut of a single cloth. They’re not, as the philosophers say, univocal. They show variation centred around a core theme—or, as those pesky philosophers also say, analogy. So why not extend the analogy of vulnerability upwards to the very top—to God?

God is vulnerable before us. He is vulnerable in the face of our sin. His vulnerability existed before ours ever took root. And he is vulnerable in a pre-eminent sense. He is vulnerable before us. That’s a perfectly natural way to address the issue.

But I get it. Other people are disinclined to speak this way.

The Holy Father shows some of the reasons why. As we have seen, he opens his remarks by noting that “it is not possible to speak of new suffering on the part of the glorified Lord,” i.e., Christ in his Humanity raised to glory. Jesus’ life on earth is completed. He does not suffer in his body any longer, for the simple reason that his life-story on earth is over with. It was already brought from the great abyss of the suffering of the Cross, through death and resurrection, to ascension into heaven. The wounds of his Sacred Humanity are already transfigured.

This brings us into the territory of suffering. Christ suffered; he was vulnerable. But there is pretty significant resistance to speaking of vulnerability in respect to, not Christ, but God. The Holy Father’s clarifications point to where the crux of the matter lies. He deliberately distances his formulation of the question from suffering. No new suffering for the resurrected Jesus, he says. He further refrains from any comment on sin wounding God. Nothing for, nothing against. The impression is that there is little appetite for speaking of suffering here.

I get it. The perceived problem, at least on the surface, is about suffering.

How, we are inclined to ask, can suffering be compatible with the Divine Nature? How does divine vulnerability work in an orthodox Christian theology?

Well, it’s not easy. Metaphysics isn’t easy.

The difficulty, though, cuts much deeper than you (probably) think. Most people have become numb to the real questions here. The fact of the matter is, if God is not vulnerable, then God is not Mercy Itself.

I mean that—and I mean it in as intellectually robust a way as one can.

The vulnerability of God before our sin is presupposed by the claim that God is merciful. “Mercy” means absolutely nothing beyond “love,” if it is not granted the added notion of a pull on the heartstrings. Nobody shows mercy, i.e., relents, restrains, and reaches out yet more, if they’re not merciful inside, and nobody is merciful inside if they don’t have the kind of spiritual contact with another person that we identify as pity. But pity, in our simple human terms, implies a heart wound, being affected at another’s condition, suffering, sensibility, mutability. Pity directed at someone who themselves suffers is compassion, suffering-with. If God really is Mercy in a sense that conveys meaning beyond saying that he is Love, then there is something, however little we understand it and can give thought and word to it, that is like suffering in God. Granted, we can be confident that this divine quality is something positive, not a sign of limitation or deprivation. But it’s still a divine equivalent of suffering. It has to be.

So, we always have the same problem: How is some conception of suffering compatible with God’s Nature?

Like I say, I think I can sketch a solution: God is all at the same time, in a way that we can hardly splice together, unlimited beatitude, mercy, and the infinitely speeded-up process of changing suffering into joy, of transfiguration, compensation, overabundance. All those things seem to me good in themselves. They point upwards to perfection. If they can co-exist in the simple unity of God, then problem solved. Of course, the individual notions seem contradictory to our poor intellects. But I can live with that. I am not the measure of God. My piecemeal thoughts merely point to reality. They aren’t reality itself.

Even if my solution is wrong, though, we still need to explain how, or accept that, God can be Mercy. And the metaphysical problem that remains unresolved with God being Mercy Itself is exactly the same metaphysical problem as God the Most Vulnerable: the conception we have of suffering in a God of infinite beatitude.

So, what gives? Resistance to Divine Vulnerability is not keeping some conception of suffering out of the Divine Nature. The Divine Mercy already breached that rampart. If the problem is truly intellectual, people are being extremely inconsistent here (I don’t mean that this is evidenced in Pope Francis so much as the general freak-out that would ensue were he to ever say that God is vulnerable). I find the inconsistency hard to give credence to. I ask more questions. Why the double standard? What really lies at the root of this?

I’m about to get really, really annoying.

The real question is a social question

Wanting to talk about mercy in terms of its generous effects for its beneficiaries, while giving scarcely a thought to what distinguishes mercy from love in the merciful, says something about our ethics, perhaps more even than our metaphysics.

A moralist, for instance, would listen to the symptoms and call out our self-centredness. A spiritual director might identify a mercenary love of the Lord. A systematic theologian might wax abstract about concupiscence. And none of that would be wrong. But the matter seems important enough to me to merit a more thorough examen, especially one seeking, honouring, and integrating multiple viewpoints.

The way I see things, bias for Divine Mercy over Divine Vulnerability eventually comes back to the ideologies and structures of sin that are manifest in, e.g., colonialism, capitalist structures, environmental destruction, the abuse crisis, racism, misogyny—basically, ideologies and structures of sin that (supposedly) orthodox Christians are emphatically not known for getting a handle on, not even a theoretical grip, let alone a practical one. Those are the real reasons why we, as a community, say that God is Merciful but not the Most Vulnerable. It has little to do with doctrinal correctness, intelligibility, and truth. It’s not about keeping our thoughts on the straight and narrow. At a collective level, it’s all about patterns of evil. It’s about power.

If vulnerability is just something about the historical Jesus’ Humanity or about the humanity of the members of Christ’s Body spread out in time, well, that’s one thing. We have to think about it. It might present some difficulties now and then. But there remain ways around treating vulnerability as good in itself. It’s at best a limited good. It’s not an uncreated one. The historical Jesus and the continuing members of his Body may be vulnerable—but the divine face here is just power. Loving power, we say. But invulnerable power. In the Divinity, we always have, or so we tell ourselves, a pattern of power without vulnerability. We can at times fall back on that. Our exemplar bifurcates. An instability emerges. In our theory and in our living, we can seesaw between the model of Jesus and what we tell ourselves is the model of God. Consciously or unconsciously, the possibility is open. The pattern repeats itself. And some little voice inside says it’s deifying, so it’s Christian. We call it love.

If, however, God himself, in his very essence or M.O., is more vulnerable than we could possibly conceive, then that changes everything.

Our aspiration integrates. The vulnerability that Jesus manifested, and which he gives preference for in the wounded and the marginalized, is not some kind of discontinuous addition to God, but rather an expression of God the Most Vulnerable. No more bifurcation. No more instability. No more seesaw.

Without so much as a flick of a finger, every last possible justification for domination—colonialism, capitalism, treating the earth as we do, clericalism, corruption, cover-up, racism, misogyny—shatters.

We have a choice to make. There is today an urgent need to re-express the Christian message as one about vulnerability. And that touches the question of God—who is the most vulnerable of beings, who remains eternally omnipotent and of infinite happiness, and who can only then be described as transforming, in his unquenchable fire, all the potential infinities of his suffering of our sin, into joy, not over time, but as if at an infinite rate in the pure intensity of eternity. It’s a mystery. But we either choose this mystery or we leave the Christian message to fall to the ground, for it can no longer be propped up by one-sided pictures of God’s power that have for far too long been used to support so many ideologies and structures of sin characteristic of our age.