The essays gathered in this issue take up the sacrament of Confirmation as a gift that deepens baptismal life by strengthening the Christian for ecclesial belonging, worship, mission, and the fruitful communication of what has been received.

In “Confirmation: The Generative Sacrament,” José Granados takes up the question that lies at the heart of any theology of Confirmation: what distinguishes it from Baptism? What does Confirmation “add”? The Reformers denied that Confirmation is properly a sacrament, regarding it instead as a kind of catechetical profession of the faith already received in Baptism. Another solution distinguished the two sacraments by assigning them different spiritual gifts. But, as Aquinas saw, this answer divides the work of the Spirit himself.

Granados therefore seeks another way of understanding the “addition” of Confirmation. Confirmation does not give “more” of the Spirit, as though Baptism were deficient. Rather, it gives the Spirit in a new mode: as the strengthening and maturing of baptismal life into a generative capacity. In Baptism, the Christian is received into the filial and fraternal communion of Christ’s body. In Confirmation, this same life is brought to maturity, so that the Christian becomes capable of communicating what he has received.

This understanding of Confirmation as a “strengthening,” rather than an addition, is rooted in the temporal form of creaturely life. Human life is first received, and only later matures into the capacity to hand on this life. This temporal structure is not bypassed by grace, but assumed and sanctified in Christ, who takes up the fullness of human nature. So too in the life of grace: the believer who has truly received life in Baptism is strengthened in Confirmation to become fruitful for others.

Confirmation reveals, then, that true strength is a fruitful and generous capacity. Therefore a deeper understanding of Confirmation can serve as a corrective to the technocratic paradigm operative today. For the generative power bestowed in Confirmation is not domination, but responsibility. The kind of “power” bestowed by the grace of Confirmation is, in other words, the power to serve the other in his deepest need, the need for God.

D.C. Schindler engages the same question of the distinctiveness of Confirmation from his perspective as a philosopher in “Illuminating the Christian Logic of Confirmation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Nature of Anointing.” Confirmation, Schindler notes, presents us with a challenge, not because the Church’s teaching is uncertain, but because the language used to express the sacrament’s distinctiveness immediately raises questions: if Confirmation “perfects” Baptism, what was imperfect in Baptism? If it gives a “special strength” and a “more strict” obligation to spread and defend the faith, how does this differ from the strength that is already given and the obligation that is already taken on in Baptism?

Schindler proposes to contemplate the distinctiveness of Confirmation by developing, not first a theology of Confirmation, but a philosophy—that is to say, by contemplating the “natural” phenomenon of anointing, which is taken up into Confirmation and made an efficacious sacramental sign of grace. He begins, therefore, with the matter of the sacrament itself: olive oil, mixed with balsam. In the ancient world, the olive stood at the center of a whole range of symbolic meanings: excellence, civilization, blessing, consecration, covenant. Its oil, moreover, is characterized by a kind of hidden abundance: the oil is not simply the fruit itself, but rather that which comes forth when the fruit is crushed; and once released, it becomes fuel, medicine, nourishment, fragrance, and radiance.

On the basis of oil’s hidden origin, and the great variety of uses to which it can be put, Schindler can distinguish anointing from other actions that are taken up into the sacramental life of the Church. While washing, for instance, restores by removing impurity, and eating sustains life from within, anointing, by contrast, enhances. It comes from without, penetrates within, and makes the body shine with a radiance that is at once its own and received. It is, in this sense, an elevation: a thing is made more fully itself by being lifted beyond itself.

Schindler clarifies this through Aristotle’s distinction between first and second actuality. By way of illustration, with first actuality, a sleeping human being, who is by nature rational, is truly a “knower”; but a human being who is awake and engaged in a philosophical discourse is a “knower” with second actuality. The first actuality is a genuine state of being while also being a kind of potency for the higher second actuality; for its part, the second elevates the first without changing it.In this way, Confirmation is an elevation, a strengthening, of Baptism. Baptism makes one a Christian simply and definitively; there is no imperfection in this gift. Confirmation does not repair or supplement Baptism, but elevates what Baptism gives into a new mode of actuality: the public, ecclesial, Spirit-given exercise of Christian life. The sacrament that can seem most elusive thus reveals something central to the logic of Christianity itself: the movement from gift to superabundance, from being made Christian to being anointed in the Anointed One.

In “Confirmation: Sacrament of Liturgical Determination,” Jonathan Martin Ciraulo likewise considers the question of what makes Confirmation distinct. The difficulty, he argues, is not merely that the sacrament has been poorly understood, but that its history and various liturgical forms flow from and give rise to a variety of theological interpretations. Is the “matter” of the sacrament the laying on of hands, or the anointing with oil? Is it primarily a sacrament of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit? Does it impart spiritual maturity, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or a particular way of belonging to the Church? Ciraulo’s proposal is that Confirmation should be understood above all as the sacrament of ecclesial and liturgical determination.

Ciraulo begins by noting that chrism, essential for the sacrament, is particularly revealing. Oil is not universal and simply natural in the way water is. While water belongs to the symbolism of nature (birth, death, purification), oil is culturally and historically specified, rooted especially in Israel’s worship. The oil of anointing distinguishes what is sacred from what is profane, setting apart persons and objects for divine service. Taken up into the New Covenant of the Church, the anointing of Confirmation is therefore not simply another sacramental use of universal natural symbolism, but a historically and ecclesially specified act of consecration.The fact that the bishop is essential to the sacrament of Confirmation in a way that he is not for Baptism, notes Ciraulo, demonstrates the particular way in which Confirmation gives one a place in the ecclesial body: Confirmation remains in a fundamental sense the bishop’s sacrament, whether it is performed directly by the bishop or through chrism consecrated by him. Through this episcopal seal, the baptized person is recognized as belonging, not to Christ in some merely private way, but to the visible and universal Church. To be sealed with the Spirit is to be bound to the body the Spirit animates.

Confirmation thus determines the Christian for worship. It is not simply a matter of achieving a certain level of catechetical formation, or the expression of personal maturation. What Confirmation adds to Baptism is public ecclesial belonging: the baptized person is sealed as a member of the Church’s worshiping body. The anointing of Confirmation, then, marks the body itself as a temple, consecrated for liturgical praise and ordered toward the Eucharist.

In “Oedipus, Jesus Christ, and the Christian: Mission as the Framework for a Theology of Confirmation,” Ignacio María Díaz takes up the question guiding all of our authors: how does Confirmation relate to Baptism? How does it deepen the baptismal calling while distinguishing itself from it? A fruitful way of answering these questions, Díaz suggests, may be found in Balthasar’s category of mission, which depends upon the simultaneity of identity and calling: the expression, in concrete existence, of what—or more precisely, who—one is.

Díaz therefore begins with Balthasar’s dramatic anthropology. The question at the heart of human existence is not simply “What is man?” but “Who am I?” The classic Sophoclean plays concerning Oedipus demonstrate this urgency profoundly: while the king is able to deduce the answer to the Sphinx’s abstract riddle concerning man in general, such wisdom is not enough to prevent the tragedies besetting his kingdom. These flow, instead, from the objective disorder bound up with his ignorance of the concrete truth of his own person, a truth that is revealed to him in the end only through the mission he is given to enact.

Sophocles’s insight into this anthropological reality is in fact expressed perfectly only in Christ. In him alone, person and mission coincide perfectly: the Son’s being sent by the Father in time is the economic expression of his eternal procession from the Father. Christ’s mission is not something externally added to his identity, but is the historical form of his sonship. This mission is lived in obedience to the Father through the Holy Spirit, who guides the Son step by step through the humanity he has assumed, in all of its temporality and fragility.

Yet, even though identity and mission coincide perfectly in Christ alone, he nevertheless reveals and makes possible the calling of every Christian. By grace, the Christian is drawn into this Christological unity of person and mission: he receives a “name,” a concrete vocation, and is sent for the sake of the Church and the world. Confirmation may therefore be contemplated as the sacrament in which baptismal identity is reaffirmed (“confirmed”) and ordered toward mission: the Christian is strengthened to become who he is, precisely in and for his being sent.

In “Endlessly Giving, Already Given: The Logic of Love and the Question of Delaying Communion and Confirmation,” Michael Joseph Higgins asks how the Western practice of delaying Communion and Confirmation can be understood without treating the Eastern practice of giving all three sacraments of initiation at once as somehow deficient. His answer is not to oppose the two traditions, nor simply to see them as two viable but ultimately unrelated “options.” They are, rather, both manifestations of the two poles of a paradox at the heart of love. As such, each brings to light its own pole of the paradox, while at the same time requiring the other pole for its own intelligibility.

Higgins begins from the fact that love, understood as self-gift, must give the whole of itself from the beginning. This is true first in the Father’s eternal generation of the Son: the Father gives the whole of himself to the Son, eternally and completely. It is true also in Christ’s self-offering on the Cross, which is given once for all, and yet made present continually in the Eucharist. And it is true in the human vow, in which one gives not merely a part of oneself, nor only one’s present, but one’s whole life and future. A husband does not give part of himself in the marriage vows, and then more and more with each year of the marriage; the gift of self is whole from its very beginning.

Yet this complete gift does not remain static. The gift already given must continue to unfold. The Father eternally gives what he has eternally given; Christ’s sacrifice is continually made present at each Mass; the vow is lived day by day in fidelity to the gift already made. The husband of thirty years takes out the trash, not to “add” something to the vow, but as the ongoing presence and unfolding of the vow in the here and now. Higgins then develops the same paradox in terms of desire: drawing on Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and Dionysius, he argues that possessing God and yearning for God are not opposed. The more God is already enjoyed, the more he is desired.

The Eastern practice of giving Communion and Confirmation to infants thus manifests the truth that the whole gift is given from the beginning. The Western practice of delaying them manifests the truth that the gift already given opens into deeper reception and desire. Together, the two traditions disclose more fully the logic of divine love: already complete, endlessly unfolding.

Also in this issue are two essays on the theological significance of Dante, each exploring, in a different way, how Dante’s poetic vision bears on questions at the heart of Christian theology.

In “Rival Versions of Dante and Theologies of Beauty: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pierre Mandonnet,” George Corbett revisits Balthasar’s reading of Dante by placing it alongside that of the Thomist medievalist Pierre Mandonnet. The comparison is revealing, not only because the two men interpret Dante so differently, but because these differences disclose two distinct ways of understanding beauty.

For Balthasar, Dante is the pioneer of a new “lay style” of theology, written in the vernacular and grounded in concrete existence. On this reading, the Commedia is not reducible to poetic fiction, nor is Beatrice merely a symbol of some eternal reality. Dante’s poem is a genuine visionary experience, and Beatrice is the concrete woman whose beauty is a path for the purification of eros. For Balthasar, in other words, Dante’s vision is incarnational and, we could say, “sacramental”: the universal and eternal are revealed and made present through particular creatures, in all their reality and specificity.

Mandonnet understands Dante differently. For him, Dante is best understood as rendering scholastic theology in poetic form. The Commedia is a sacred fiction, the purpose of which is to communicate the truths of the Christian faith. Beatrice is herself the symbolic figure of Christian revelation: the supernatural order in its truth, goodness, and beauty. Her significance lies not first in her historical concreteness or in Dante’s love for her, but in the theological reality she represents: “[F]or Mandonnet, Beatrice is not a Portinari, not from Florence, and not a woman at all, but pure symbol.”

By exploring the disagreement between Balthasar and Mandonnet regarding Beatrice, Corbett helps us to consider more deeply the nature of beauty, its symbolic expression, and the interplay of theology and literature.

John Nepil’s “The Antlitz of Beatrice: Dantean Theodramatics in Balthasar’s Marian Ecclesiology” contemplates the theological meaning of Beatrice herself. From within a Balthasarian perspective, Nepil asks what Beatrice discloses about woman, the Church, and the Marian form of Christian existence.

Nepil begins with Dante’s encounter with Beatrice, whose eyes, smile, and countenance become the “master-image” through which Dante comes to perceive the beauty of created love elevated by grace. For Balthasar, Beatrice’s importance goes beyond being the particular woman loved by the man, Dante; yet at the same time, she is not simply a figure to be left behind as Dante ascends toward God. She is the concrete woman in whose beauty Dante comes to perceive the form of love transfigured by grace: “After seven centuries,” Nepil writes, “Dante remains a preeminent expositor of how feminine beauty reveals the mystery of the living God.” Dante’s eros is not abolished but purified, drawn through suffering and conversion into agape.

Nepil develops this reading through Balthasar’s concept of the Antlitz: the “face” or countenance that meets another with an answering gaze. The face of woman, in this account, is not simply an object presented to the sight of an observer, but a receptive gaze that answers man’s searching look and gives him back to himself. In beholding this face, man is brought into a deeper knowledge of who he is. This is why Dante looks to Beatrice not merely as beloved, but as the one through whom he is taught how to see.

For Nepil, then, the Antlitz of Beatrice in Dante opens onto the Marian mystery of the Church: the feminine, receptive, answering form in which love is received and made fruitful. In Beatrice, Nepil sees an image of the Church’s own Marian countenance, the face that receives the divine Word and returns it in love.

—William R. Hamant