The Theology of Robert Barron by Matthew Levering

(Park Ridge: Word on Fire Academic, 2022), 322

No Catholic theologian of our times has developed and practiced evangelization in the depth and to the degree that Barron has. (55)

I don't recall exactly when I first came across Bishop (then Father) Barron, but it was likely at some point during my time at Notre Dame. Suffice it to say that he has been a constant and positive influence in my continuing formation in the decade and a half or so since.

This work by Matthew Levering seeks to "inaugurate the scholarly reception of [Barron's] theology in a manner that is faithful to his insights and to the full scope of his work" (13). I'm not a scholar, but I found this to be a helpful systematic presentation of what Bishop Barron teaches. Over the years, many 'Barronisms' from his lectures, sermons, and videos have stuck with me, and this book helps place them into the orderly context of his theology.

Levering's task is challenging due to the sheer volume of Barron's work, but this also allows him to let Barron speak for himself. The structure of the book consists of chapters that first present the work of a theologian who influenced Barron and then illustrate the "constructive and critical dialogue" (10) Barron engages in with them. What is made apparent with this approach is the genuine brilliance of Barron's theology. Precisely because of the clarity and force with which Bishop Barron presents the Gospel we may be tempted to forget the post-Vatican II theological confusion he came of age amidst. Levering lifts the curtain to reveal how Barron overcame the "Beige Catholicism" of the Seventies and the equally problematic radical responses to Vatican II of Liberalism and Traditionalism (9) to articulate his forceful and compelling "postliberal theological project" (10). Levering reminds us that "theologians must articulate what distinguishes the Catholic Church and show why this distinctive way is worth giving one's life for" (3), while showing us how this is exactly what Bishop Barron's ministry does with such zeal.

One of the most repeated "Barronisms" is the noncompetititive Triune God. A key to Barron's intellectual formation is his reading of Aquinas, especially his Doctrine of God, which Barron distills to "Stop trying to reduce God to your level and allow yourself to be drawn ecstatically into God's mystery" (86, cf. Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master). We need not fear God overtaking us, but rather "in his utter transcendence, God can be and is more intimately present than any creature could be even to itself" (96, cf. Light from Light).

The simple God is the God who cannot be understood or controlled; the good God is the one who captivates us and draws us out of ourselves; the immutable God is the rock upon which we can build our lives; the God of knowledge and love is the spirit who searches us and knows us, who seeks us and who will never abandon us. (87)

My favorite chapter in this volume is Chapter 6 on the Spiritual Life. This is where Bishop Barron's ministry has borne the most fruit in my life, and the real center of his theology. (Also, as an aside, Levering delivers a helpful refutation of Richard Rohr in his own words and in contrast to the orthodoxy of Barron's theology.) Barron invites us to enter into the "theo-drama" of life with the Triune God eternally in view. His spiritual vision is both lofty (we find our true selves when we learn to love as Christ loves) and tangible (Christian spirituality is Scripture-centered and concrete). He gives us practical wisdom to grow in the spiritual life—I particularly recommend his book on prayer—while continually bringing the events of our life back to an eternal vision of God: "We can trust that there are no mere coincidences, because God is fully in charge and his plan encompasses everything" (298).

It is apparent from any encounter with Bishop Barron that his theology is always interwoven with Sacred Scripture and speaks from a biblical worldview. Levering highlights this aspect of Barron's theology in his chapters on the moral and spiritual life. It is also a major emphasis of Barron's Christocentrism in Chapter 3. Coming of age at perhaps the height of reductionist historical-critical biblical scholarship, Bishop Barron is able to simultaneously appreciate historical-critical insights while insisting upon deeper faith. His critique is telling, as it reveals his evangelical priorities: "What you end up with often is this very desiccated Jesus, just a few little nuggets of truth...I get the [historical-critical] method, and I appreciate it, but it's not evangelically compelling. You can undertake that exercise, and do it very well, but what do you end up with? It's a Jesus no one really cares about, a Jesus whom you can't really preach" (123-124). Barron's theology is compelling because it grows out of his personal love for Christ nurtured by the Scriptures and his desire to share that with others, with all the attendant beauty and richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Levering interprets Barron as such: "To understand and follow Christ, we must be guided by the Gospels...If we wish to come to know and follow Jesus Christ, then regular reading of the Gospels is the central way to do it" (138). Barron's commentary on the Old Testament in The Great Story of Israel presents this theology at its finest, and I'm eagerly awaiting volume 2 of this commentary.

Bishop Barron, thank you for making the Catholic faith so attractive and accessible to millions. Matthew Levering, thank you for this helpful presentation of his theology, which is indeed doctrinally and liturgically rich (1).

Notes


Contents


Chapter 1: Evangelization

Summary: No Catholic theologian of our times has developed and practiced evangelization in the depth and to the degree that Barron has.

  • Fr. Andrew Greely: "bring together the intellectual and the spiritual dimensions of Catholic faith" and "tells stories rather than simply making arguments" (17-18)
  • Popular culture as a theological place where one may encounter God (24)
  • "Beauty comes first in evangelization and tehgology, because the beautiful attracts the beholder and opens the beholder to the good and the true." (24)
  • Against "Beige Catholicism: a Catholicism devoid of its historic color and vitality and energy" (25)
  • Be "both/and" Catholics: "The church needs the best insights of both sides, but it needs both sides to be intensified" (35)
  • "Reason itself takes many things 'on faith'": "The scientistic claim that anything outside the empirical order cannot be rationally considered is itself merely a philosophical claim not deducible from the empirical order" (48-49)
  • Barron seeks to develop an alternative to the prevailing choices of Liberalism and Traditionalism (9 & 54, cf. 2024-03-30-Word on Fire Vatican II Collection (Volume 2))

Chapter 2: Theocentrism

Summary: God is not a supreme being, but the creator. Christ is the answer to all our questions.

  • Michel Corbin, Barron's doctoral director at the Institut Catholique de Paris, "models a braodly Ressourcement approach to theology" (57), which Barron shows can work together with a recovery of Thomism (58)
  • Barron takes from Corbin the link between the doctrine of God and Christology, as well as God's superabundance (75)
  • Barron's summary of Aquinas' doctrine of God: "Stop trying to reduce God to your level and allow yourself to be drawn ecstatically into God's mystery" (86)
  • Barron: "The simple God is the God who cannot be understood or controlled; the good God is the one who captivates us and draws us out of ourselves; the immutable God is the rock upon which we can build our lives; the God of knowledge and love is the spirit who searches us and knows us, who seeks us and who will never abandon us." (87)
  • Barron against Scientism: science presumes and relies upon the intelligibility of the cosmos, and "The only finally satisfying explanation for objective intelligibility is something like a great intelligence that embedded these sophisticated patterns into the structure of the universe." (92)
  • Barron addresses the Problem of Evil with reference to Job: "God responds to Job's charges by making clear that God loves Job and that Job does not possess a comprehensive understanding of the universe, whereas God does" (93)
  • "In his utter transcendence, God can be and is more intimately present than any creature could be even to itself." (96)

Chapter 3: Christocentrism

Summary: Barron's Christocentrism is firmly grounded in the Gospel narratives as read in the context of the entirety of Scripture. The biblical story must be recovered. Historical-critical scholarship can add insight but is reductive in nature and does not replace Scripture itself.

  • Edward Schillebeeckx, OP emphasizes the first Christian's experience of Jesus and reduces his message to ethics.
  • Raymond E. Brown, SS emphasizes the literal sense of Scripture via historical-critical scholarship.
  • John P. Meier focuses on the "historical Jesus", the Jesus who we can recover and examine by using the scientific tools of modern historical research, and gives five criteria to evaluate evidence of Jesus: (118)
    1. The criterion of embarrassment or contradiction
    2. The criterion of discontinuity or originality
    3. The criterion of multiple attestation
    4. The criterion of coherence or consistency with the results of the first three criteria
    5. The criterion of Jesus' rejection and Crucifixion
  • Barron: "What you end up with often is this very desiccated Jesus, just a few little nuggets of truth...I get the method, and I appreciate it, but it's not evangelically compelling. You can undertake that exercise, and do it very well, but what do you end up with? It's a Jesus no one really cares about, a Jesus whom you can't really preach." (123-124)
  • Barron's two criticisms of the historical-critical method (135)
    1. Historical-critical methodology is historicist, excluding ontology and divine realities on unwarranted philosophical grounds that characterize the method from the outset
    2. Historical-critical methodology focuses on origins and casts a highly suspicious eye upon interpretative traditions such as that of the Church
  • Levering interpreting Barron: "To understand and follow Christ, we must be guided by the Gospels...If we wish to come to know and follow Jesus Christ, then regular reading of the Gospels is the central way to do it." (138)

Chapter 4: The Catholic Tradition

Summary: Christianity is a form of life whose truth is often elusive until one has been attracted by its beauty and entered into its practice. To understand Christianity, we have to participate in it.

  • What Barron takes from After Virtue: "The kind of person that a Christian aspires to be is not intuited through universal reason, abstracting from particularity, but is rather displayed in the biblical narratives themselves." (160)
  • Macintyre's conclusion: "There is no universal ethics freed from particularity, and there is no way to possess the virtues except as part of a tradition" (164)
  • "Dante's work suggests to Barron that Christian doctrines are best understood when we recognize their connection to the spiritual life...Reading Dante is a path for relearning the nature of doctrine." (174)
  • "A traditionless universal rationality is a myth, since all accounts of rationality stand within inherited contexts, cultures, and practices." (177)
  • Heaven in Stone and Glass: "For the medievals, everything points in some way to God." (179)
  • Barron's appreciation of Hans Urs von Balthasar: "To see Christ's beauty in full, we need t obe experiencing Christ from within the Catholic tradition rather than measuring Christ from a supposedly neutral, universal experiential point outside the Catholic tradition." (189-190)
  • Letter to a Suffering Church: "I would suggest that the story of Eli and his sons is an almost perfect biblical icon of the sexual abuse scandal...which God is using to purify and renew the Church." (197)

Chapter 5: The Moral Life

Summary: Hauerwas teaches that we must follow Christ even when it is painful to separate ourselves from worldly practices, and influenced Barron in the Christian moral tradition. God as revealed in Christ is at the center of Christian moral life.

  • "Barron recognizes that for Aquinas, moral theology is inseparable from the doctrines and sacramental practices of the Church." (224)
  • Against Kant, Barron agrees with medieval and patristic ethics that argue that "human morality is grounded in a relation to God as the ultimate good and end toward which all human action is in some way oriented." (226)
  • Barron turns to Scripture, and shows that Discipleship, grounded in God's call in Christ, is the center of Christian ethics. (237)
  • Barron agrees with Dorothy Day that "everything a baptized person does should be either directly or indirectly related to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy." (245)
  • Barron on Amoris Laetitia chapter 7: "there is no real freedom without virtuous habituation" (250, cf. Freedom for, not freedom from)

Chapter 6: The Spiritual Life

Summary: Your life is not about you and we must enter into the "theo-drama" with the Triune God eternally in view. We find our true selves when we learn to love as Christ loves. Christian spirituality is Scripture-centered, particular, and concrete.

  • "Richard Rohr was ordained a priest in the immediate post-Vatican II period, and in many ways his work is representative of the Seventies' theological vision that Barron has long opposed." (259)
    • Levering is level-headed, but even he gets annoyed at Rohr: "A good case could be made that Rohr is the self-righteous one in his devate with these young adults..." (262), "Rohr thinks that he himself knows and many other Catholics and Christians to do not know" (265)
    • He also let's Rohr speak for himself: "Many people have not done their first-, second-, and third-level work of conscience. They're really not bad-willed; they just can't understand a higher, more complex understanding. I've had to accept this from some who attack me. They're not necessarily ill-willed; they just have no idea where the Gospel is coming from." (268)
    • The Universal Christ: "In Rohr's view, the core truth of Christianity has been lost int he West for a thousand years...The core truth of Christianity, according to Rohr, is that 'Christ' means something much more than 'Jesus'...According to Rohr, then, to say 'Christ is God' is accurate, whereas to say, 'Jesus is God' would not strictly be correct." (271-274)
  • For Barron, Christianity entails "finding the center, knowing you are a sinner, and realizing your life is not about you." (276)
  • Barron proposes to reinvigorate an embodied Catholic spirituality. (277)
  • Spiritual Disciplines Barron recommends include: Prayer, pilgrimages, fasting
  • Universalism: "Barron considers that Scripture provides evidence both that God will damn some humans and that God may somehow save all humans": the Catholic tradition contains some ambiguity. "Barron considers that the spiritual life is best guided by allowing this matter to remain unresolved—by confessing our hope that all humans might be saved, while confessing equally our ignorance of whether it will be so and thereby affirming that it may not be so. Hell is a real and dreadful possibility." (287-288)
  • Make an Examination of Conscience with Thomas Merton's meditation ~The Sign of Jonas (293)
  • "Your life is not about you": we should think big in service to God and neighbor, and abandonment to God's will produces fruits that we could not have generated on our own. (295)
  • "We can trust that there are no mere coincidences, because God is fully in charge and his plan encompasses everything." (298)

Conclusion

Topic: Bishop Robert Barron

Source

Created: 2025-05-28-Wed
Updated: 2025-09-07-Sun