MOTHERHOOD AND GIFT: AN IMAGE OF THE ETHICAL
In my previous post, I talked about John Milbank’s Christian construal of the truly ethical, an ethics beyond dependence on death and a death dealing morality. Here, I offer an analogy, what Milbank would call a “non-identical repetition”, and it is in motherhood. In motherhood we see God’s “parenthood”. He who is Father is also imaged in the mother, and is therefore appropriately (and analogically of course) called “Mother”.
In the gift giving economy of the Godhead, and therefore in creation and redemption, Milbank argues, a gift given is already being received, and given back. Critiquing Luther’s conception of Grace for lacking this reciprocity, he notes that:
Thus, for all his Christocentricity, eventually in the evolution of Luther’s thought the forensic comes first: the interval from the ineffably individual God to us can only be bridged by a descending decree to which we must ineluctably submit. Even in the case of Christ, transmission of this decree is his “proper” work and only accidentally is he our example, as reiterating the Law and encouraging our sanctification. Similarly, we must first have faith in God as all-powerful and only secondarily do we receive his love as this is revealed to us. This love is moreover dominated by God’s powerful will — a love that wills, disinterestedly, our well-being and in so sense offers, as Anders Nygren realised, an erotic fusion. Just by token of its agapeic unilaterality, it is at first purely received without supposed taint of mutuality, despite the fact that a love received entirely prior to our loving response would be indistinguishable from a violent blow. John Milbank, The Reformation at 500: Is There Any Cause for Celebration?
God’s gift is only a gift when it is ready to be received, and this reception is always a giving back. God’s gift of being is received by us in the giving of our lives to Him. There is no “interval” of “nothing” on either side. In this sense, we are eternal and yet not eternal in Him. We are contingent with respect to our nature as finite beings, but eternal with respect to the eternal election to Theosis that is the image of God the Father in God the Son by God the Spirit. Our election is a “non-identical repetition” of His eternal “election” and “begetting” as Son, and this image of simultaneous gift and reception is seen in motherhood.
She who “gives” the gift of life to her offspring also “receives” the gift of offspring. She gives her child life, yet her child is a gift of life to her. The synergy of creation and salvation is seen in the natural process of birth and is another way God’s “Image” is seen, glimpsed, and recognized, most of all in our Virgin Mother, whose “begetting” is an image of Son birthing church and Father begetting Son. A birth, which according to tradition, was without pain, a peaceful birth mirroring a shalom Trinity. Only here, Father is imaged in Mother, through her imaging of the Son. In this “sacrifice”, nothing is lost, but all is gained. The life the Mother gives is returned, and returned anew, more glorious than before, more lovely than before, from the Mothering Father, the giver of all good gifts.
Originally published at http://theosymmetry.wordpress.com on March 17, 2020.
