Cardinal Kasper’s Error on God

Having read Father Serafino M. Lanzetta’s “Mercy according to Cardinal Kasper,” a couple of weeks ago, I was recently musing over the matter when it struck me: If, as Father Serafino Maria says, the Cardinal makes mercy God’s fundamental attribute, then he errs gravely on the nature of God, and for one principal reason.

Mercy is not an attribute that God would ever manifest in eternity. Why? Because mercy is a response to weakness, imperfection, or some harm that has been done. (The Latin word misericordia derives from the word for heart, cor, and the word for misery or wretchedness, miser: it is having a heart for the one in misery.) Mercy in God is a response to His creatures; it cannot be a response of one divine Person to Another. For God’s mercy to be exercized, creatures were necessary. But, absolutely speaking, creatures were not necessary, since only God is the necessary being. (He created freely, out of love. He was not constrained by necessity.) Since God’s fundamental attribute cannot be dependant on something outside of God, His fundamental attribute cannot be mercy.

Mercy, rather, is a manifestation of God’s Holiness, Goodness, and Love, all of which are absolutely attributed to God in His blessed eternity.

Here, by the way, are the Cardinal’s own words:

Mercy expresses God’s essence, which graciously attends to and devotes itself to the world and to humanity in ever new ways in history. In short, mercy expresses God’s own goodness of love. It is God’s caritas operativa et effectiva. Therefore we must describe mercy as the fundamental attribute of God. Mercy, of which we just spoken, stands in an indissoluble inner connection with God’s other attributes, especially holiness, justice, fidelity, and truth. It is surrounded by a crown of other divine attributes, which are organized into a whole around mercy and which express aspects of God’s mercy. Scheeben mentions: benevolence, magnanimity, favor, graciousness, friendliness to human beings, condescension, generosity, friendliness to human beings, generosity, clemency, leniency, mildness, gentleness, patience and forbearance. This finding suggest that we should treat mercy not as an appendix to the exposition of God’s attributes, but rather as the organizing center of God’s attributes,with the other attributes grouped around it. (88-89) [Source]

Since God is simple, all the divine attributes are reducible to His essence. They may be logically distinguished, but they are really one — and really one with the Divine Nature Itself. Theologians will argue over which attribute is the one that we can call God’s fundamental attribute. Blessed Columba Marmion has it being holiness. (Brother Francis agreed with him.) Father Pohle has it being aseity (Latin: aseitas, i.e., being “from Himself” or a se).

If the “Scheeben” that Cardinal Kasper cites is the great German theologian and mystic, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, I am certain that he would consider Kasper’s thesis on mercy to be nonsensical. In stark contrast to the man that quotes him, Scheeben’s thought had a basis in sound metaphysics.

Readers can learn more about the Divine Attributes here and here.