in the profane sphere. The kabhod that YHVH has inasmuch as he is “king of
glory” ( melek hakabhod ) is also something that men owe him. “Give kabhod to YHWH, give him thanks” is the cry that ceaselessly resounds among the sons
of Israel. It culminates in Isaiah’s trisagion (Isaiah 6:3), where “the whole earth is full of his [God’s] glory.” It is the glorifying kabhod that liturgy formalizes in doxology proper, which in the synagogue takes the form of the Kaddish, which
exalts, blesses, and praises the name of YHVH.
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In the great eschatological doxology of Revelation 4:3, which we shall need
to consider below, and in Paul’s Letters one discovers early testimonies of the
Christian doxologies concerning he who, as “lord” or “father” of glory is, or
should be, already firmly in possession of it (both in the form of the prescrip-
tion “Glorify!,” doxasate—1 Corinthians 6:20—as well as in the form of ritual
doxologies of the type found in Hebrews 13:21, “To whom be glory for ever and
ever. Amen”). In this case as well, the Church formalizes glorification, in ritual
fashion, as much in the daily duty of prayer as in liturgy.
One should note the singular explanation for this dual figure of glory that is
supplied by the theologians. Subjective glory is nothing but the joyous response
of man to the objective glory of God. We do not praise God because he has any
need of it (he is already filled with glory). Nor do we praise him because it is
useful for us. “The only reason for praising God is that he is worthy of praise”
(Mascall, p. 112). Through a perfectly circular line of argument, subjective glory
is due to objective glory, because the latter is worthy of glory. That is: glorifica-
tion is due to glory because in some sense it derives from it.
This vicious circle is what is crystallized in the thirteenth century by the
scholastic definition provided by William of Auvergne:
A very early meaning of the glory of God is nothing but his extremely eminent
magnificence and nobility, and this is the glory of God in himself or close to
himself, for which reason praise, glorification, and every form of worship are
owed him. Another meaning of what is named the glory of God is that through
which he is glorified, that is, honored, preached about, praised, and adored by the
elect and by all men. (William of Auvergne, De retributionibus sanctorum, p. 320)
א As we have already seen with regard to the term “order,” which means as much
a transcendent relation with God ( ordo ad Deum) as a property immanent in creatures ( ordo ad invicem), so glory is at once an essential attribute of God and something that creatures owe to him and that expresses their relation to him. Moreover, in the same way
that the dual meaning of the term “order” ultimately ends up befitting the very essence of God, so the ambiguity of the term “glory” makes of it the name that defines God’s most
intimate nature. In this sense, both terms are signatures [ segnature] rather than concepts.
8.11. Not even Barth’s treatise manages to escape the circularity of glory. On the
contrary, it takes an extreme form in which the Lutheran tradition’s reservations
with respect to the theology of glory are set aside. Barth’s treatise begins with the
statement that, in the New Testament, glory indicates the honor that God himself
enjoys, as well as the glory that he receives from creatures. This co-existence of
two contradictory meanings in the same term is, however, “absolutely necessary”
(Barth, p. 670). Glory and the hymn of praise that the creatures bestow upon
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God are, in fact, nothing but the “echo” ( Widerhall: ibid.) that answers the glory of God. Rather, insofar as it has its foundation in glory, glorification “can only be
understood in the proper and decisive sense as the work of God’s glory” (ibid.).
Furthermore, the being and liberty of creatures essentially depend upon the act of
glorification and thanksgiving. “The creature becomes free for the glory of God
not because it could and wanted to do so but because it only did so through the
glory of God” (ibid., p. 671). And they do not merely thank, but “are themselves
thankfulness [ Dank]” (ibid.). The circularity of glory here attains its ontological formulation: becoming free for the glorification of God means to understand
oneself as constituted, in one’s very being, by the glory with which we celebrate
the glory that allows us to celebrate it. “It does not belong to the essence of the
creature to have or to be the power to glorify God. This ability is God’s [ . . . ] God
gives Himself to the creature [ . . . ] And the creature to whom God gives Himself
may praise Him” (ibid.). The liberation of creatures from their “powerlessness” is
manifested in glorification and “results in the praise of God” (ibid., p. 672).
If creatures are essentially the glorification of glory, a glory that divine glory
bestows upon itself, it is clear that the life of creatures culminates in obedience
( Lebensgehorsam: ibid., p. 674). “It has no alternative but to thank and praise
God. And in this thanks and praise it has nothing else to offer God but itself—
nothing more and nothing less” (ibid.). The preeminent location for this service
is the Church. At the end of his treatise, and in singularly lofty tones that seem
more suited to a Catholic theologian, Barth celebrates the Church as the proper
space of glory. Certainly the Church is not identified, as it is in Peterson, with
the community of angels and the blessed who celebrate the glory of God in the
heavens (ibid., p. 675). However, the Church is the form in which we are “sur-
rounded by the glory of God, and in which we participate in it” (ibid., p. 676).
It should now be clear in what sense the preliminary exclusion from the the-
ory of glory of any reference to the political sphere is misleading. For as we have
seen already with respect to Peterson, after the repression of politics in theology,
it reappears—as is the case with all forms of repression—in an improper form
in doxology. Such an absolute reduction of creatures to their glorifying function
is clearly reminiscent of the behavior demanded of their subjects by the profane
powers in Byzantium and in the Germany of the 1930s, which Barth voluntarily
abandoned. Here, as well, the highest dignity and the highest freedom are to
be found in the glorification of the sovereign. Here, as well, the glorification is
due to the sovereign not because he needs it but, as his resplendent insignia, his
throne, and crown reveal, because he is glorious in himself. The circularity of the
paradigm is the same in both cases.
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8.12. The paradox of glory has the following form: glory is the exclusive
property of God for eternity, and it will remain eternally identical in him, such
that nothing and no one can increase or diminish it; and yet, glory is glorifica-
tion, which is to say, something that all creatures always incessantly owe to God
and that he demands of them. From this paradox follows another one, which
theology pretends to present as the resolution of the former: glory, the hymn of
praise that creatures owe to God, in reality
derives from the very glory of God;
it is nothing but the necessary response, almost the echo that the glory of God
awakens in them. That is (and this is the third formulation of the paradox):
everything that God accomplishes, the works of creation and the economy of
redemption, he accomplishes only for his glory. However, for this, creatures owe
him gratitude and glory.
The paradox, in its three forms, culminates in post-Tridentine and Baroque
theology, that is, when the theory of profane sovereignty achieves a new config-
uration. We could say that the first formulation of the paradox implodes in the
motto of Ignatius of Loyola, which became something similar to the insignia of
the Society of Jesus: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam. There has been much discussion
of the origin and meaning of this motto, which perfectly summarizes Ignatius’s
intentions when he decided to abandon worldly honors for the honor of God.
One thing that is clear is that he takes the paradox of glory to its extreme,
since the human activity of glorification now consists in an impossible task: the
continual increase of the glory of God that can in no way be increased. More
precisely—and perhaps this is the real meaning of the motto—the impossibil-
ity of increasing the inner glory of God translates into an unlimited expansion
of the activity of external glorification by men, particularly by the members
of the Society of Jesus. What cannot be increased—glory in the first sense of
the term—demands the infinite increase of glory in the exterior and subjective
sense. This means, on the one hand, that the nexus of glory and glorification has
now been severed and that the worldly work of glorification relies on the glory
of God, which should justify it. On the other hand, it means that glorification
begins to react on glory, and the idea begins to form that the action of men can
start to influence divine glory and increase it. In other words, while the differ-
ence between glory and glorification begins to become indeterminate, the accent
shifts progressively from the former onto the latter.
The manifesto for the primacy of glorification over glory can be found in the
booklet De perfectionibus moribusque divinis (1620), by Leonard Lessius, a Jesuit
theologian who had an enduring influence on the theology of glory between the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Under the heading De ultimo fine, he poses
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the following simple question: “What benefit could God draw from the creation
and from the government of the world?” The answer that is at first glance sur-
prising is, logically speaking, entirely consistent. God, “being infinitely perfect
and in every way blessed,” can draw no benefit for himself from the multiplicity,
variety, and beauty of creatures, which are as though “suspended over nothing-
ness by the beam of divine light” (Lessius, p. 513). The purpose of the creation
and the government of the world must, therefore, be “something external [ quid
extrinsecum], such as having children similar to himself, who participate in his
glory and his blessedness” (ibid.).
Lessius is certainly aware of the distinction between internal glory—which
is the same as the splendor and excellence of the divinity himself (that is the ob-
jective internal glory) and amounts to the knowledge, love, and enjoyment that
God has within himself (formal internal glory)—and external glory. But the spe-
cific contribution of his manifesto springs from its overturning of the relation
between the two glories. God cannot have created the world in order to acquire
or increase his internal glory, which he already possesses plenissime. So his pur-
pose cannot be anything but the acquiring and increasing of his external glory.
Glory is not necessarily an intrinsic good. The glory of kings and princes, which
mortals so value and desire, consists in external things, in the splendor of the
courts, in the magnificence of their palaces, in military power, and the like. Even
if no internal increase in divine glory is possible, nevertheless an extrinsic increase
is possible through the addition of those things in which the glory of persons
consists: that is, an increase in the sons of God by whom glory is recognized,
loved, and praised. In this sense, the glory of God is greater; in this sense, it can be
said that it is increased. This is the glory that God wanted to acquire for himself
through all his external works. (Ibid., pp. 516–517)
Lessius also ruthlessly sacrifices to the logical coherence of this vainglorious God
the idea of God’s love for creatures. Since every creature “is nothing when com-
pared to him” and since “the glory of God is more important than any of the
creatures’ goods,” God’s actions must “necessarily advance his glory rather than
the perfection of his creatures” (ibid., p. 538). It is of this external glory that God is jealous (as testified to in Isaiah 48:11: “I will not give my glory unto another”); and
it is this glory that man must propose as the end of all his actions (Lessius, p. 539).
Without the preliminary comprehension of this theory of glory, it is difficult
to fully understand the post-Tridentine politics of the Church, the fervor of the
missionary orders, and the imposing activity ad maiorem Dei gloriam—and, at
the same time, the notoriety—of the Society of Jesus. Once again, in the dimen-
sion of glory, the Church and the profane power enter into a durable threshold
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of indetermination, in which it is difficult to measure the reciprocal influences
and the conceptual exchanges. At the same time as the sovereign territorial state
begins to adopt the figure of the “government of men,” the Church, setting
aside its eschatological preoccupations, increasingly identifies its own mission
with the planetary government of souls, not so much for their salvation, as for
the “increased glory of God.” The indignant reaction of a twentieth-century
Catholic philosopher in the face of this God who is merely egotistical, a sort of
“eternal Caesar,” who only uses men “as an instrument to demonstrate to himself
his glory and power,” stems from this.
א It is against the background of the theory of glory from the Baroque era that one
can understand how such usually sober-minded thinkers as Malebranche or Leibniz
have been able to think the glory of God in terms of his self-satisfaction with his own
perfection. Malebranche calls glory “the love that God has for himself,” and he pushes
the principle according to which God acts only for his own glory to the point at which
he ends up denying that the reason for the incarnation is nothing but the will to redeem
humanity from sin. Through the incarnation of the Word, God receives a “glory of infinite
splendor,” and for this reason Malebranche denies that “the Fall was the only cause of the Incarnation of the Son of God” (Malebranche 1923, dialogue 9, §5, p. 232).
Equally unedifying is the idea of glory that, following Bayle, Leibniz ascribes to God
in his Theodicy:
“God,” [Bayle] says, “the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good, holy, wise
and powerful, posses
ses from all eternity a glory and a bliss that can never increase
or diminish.” This proposition of M. Bayle’s is no less philosophical than theolog-
ical. To say that God possesses “glory” when he is alone, that depends upon the
meaning of the term. One may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one
finds in being aware of one’s own perfections; and in this sense God possesses it
always. But when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections,
one may say that God acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent
creatures; even though it be true that God thereby gains no new good, and it is
rather the rational creatures who thence derive advantage, when they apprehend
aright the glory of God. (Leibniz, §109, p. 183)
It is enough to confront these conceptions of glory with what Spinoza writes in the scholium to Proposition 36 of Book V of the Ethics to measure the abyss that separates them.
8.12. The title of Lessius’s brief treatise ( De ultimo fine) refers to the condition of the blessed after the Last Judgment. In paradisiacal blessedness, when the
work of salvation is complete and “all the movements and ministries” (Lessius,
p. 549) have been deactivated, nothing will be left to the angels and the blessed
but the contemplation, love, and celebration of the glory of God. They will sim-
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ply “contemplate his infinite beauty, exult in his glory with ineffable joy, with
perpetual praise, benediction, and thanksgiving” (ibid.).
One of the most important points to be discussed with regard to glory is,
in fact, precisely the “glory of the elect,” that is, the condition of the blessed in
paradise. Not only does this imply a transformation of the body that, according
to Paul’s teaching (1 Corinthians 15:44), now becomes a “glorious body,” but the
whole rational creature, with its intelligence and will, must participate in the glory
of God as the highest good. The heated debate that divides theologians from the
time of the early Scholastics concerns the character of this participation. Accord-
ing to Thomas Aquinas and the Dominicans, the element that defines paradisiacal
blessedness is the intellect, which is to say, knowledge or the “beatific vision” of
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