Science of the Cross: Edith Stein's Theocentric Humanism

With the seemingly never-ending sequence of misfortunes and disasters that occupy today's world, it takes only a cursory glance at the news headlines to evoke one’s interest in a book which promises a “science of the cross.”[1] What could such a science be, and might it offer some hope for our human predicament? Despite being somewhat understudied compared with her more metaphysical writings, Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross (Kreuzewissenschaft) stands out in her corpus for at least three reasons: 1) its singularly beautiful prose and passionate style; 2) its eminent applicability to day-to-day life; and 3) its timing as the final work she wrote.

For the uninitiated, the rough contours of Stein’s life can be summarized in a few broad strokes. Born into an observant German Jewish family in 1891, she developed a gift for philosophy from an early age, and would later study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. In the summer of 1921, she had a chance encounter with a book by St. Teresa of Ávila, which she read in a single sitting. Forever changed by the experience, she made the decision to enter the Catholic Church, and was baptized on January 1, 1922. She then taught for several years in Speyer, Germany, before entering the Carmel of Cologne in 1933, where she took the name Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. In 1938, she made her final profession, and later that year was secretly moved to Echt, Holland, for fear of the Nazis’ increasing animosity towards people of Jewish descent. The Nazis conquered Holland in 1940, and two years later, on the evening of Sunday, August 2, 1942, the SS arrived at the door of the convent in Echt to deport Stein and her sister, Rosa, to Auschwitz. The sisters were murdered there in a gas chamber on August 9. St. John Paul II beatified Stein in 1987, and canonized her in 1998.

Stein was putting the final touches on her Science the day she was arrested.[2] Composed at the request of her superiors and originally intended as a kind of festschrift to mark the fourth centenary of the 1542 birth of St. John of the Cross, the work is described by Stein as “an attempt . . . to grasp John of the Cross in the unity of his being as it expresses itself in his life and in his works.”[3] We will now reflect on the “science of the cross” which Stein proposes as a system for understanding the life of John of the Cross in particular, and the life of the Christian in general.  

The Science of the Cross Defined

In the opening pages of her work, Edith Stein sets out to explain its enigmatic title. Conceived as a meditation on the lived philosophy of St. John of the Cross, the Science is rooted in the conviction that John’s life exemplifies a system of holiness—a system which can be studied, contemplated, and learned from.[4] Nor is this system of holiness unique to John. Stein sees great significance in Christ’s repeated injunctions in the Gospels that his followers should take up their crosses and follow him: “Therein lies a silent challenge to respond appropriately.”[5] It is Christ himself who calls his followers to enter into the science of the cross, a task which John of the Cross undertook in an exemplary way. As Stein notes at one point, John’s decision to add de la Cruz to his name was symbolic of his conviction that “participation in Christ’s cross was to be the life of the Discalced Carmelites.”[6]

This language of participation is instructive for understanding what Stein means in speaking of the Christian life as a “science.” Stein is clear that the expression “is not to be understood in the usual meaning of science,” that is, as a body of ordered propositions that together constitute a theory of knowledge.[7] The reason for this, she clarifies, is that the subject matter of the science of the cross is not something impersonal, but rather “a living, real, and effective truth,” one which “is buried in the soul like a seed that takes root there and grows, making a distinct impression on the soul.”[8] As Stein helpfully explains:

St. John’s doctrine on the cross could not be spoken of as a science of the cross in our sense, were it based merely on an intellectual insight. But it bears the genuine stamp of the cross. It can be likened to the wide-spread branches of a tree that has sunk its roots in the greatest depth of a soul and which has been nourished by the heart’s blood. Its fruits are seen in the life of the saint. The love he bears in his heart for the Crucified is manifested by his love for the crucifix, which was characteristically expressed in the little house of Duruelo.[9]

The science of the cross involves a system of holiness, yes, but it is a system which has the cross of Christ as its object of study. As such, the science of the cross, like theology as a whole, must be rooted in loving relationship. For Stein, any standoffish analysis of the cross is radically insufficient; an active engagement with the sufferings of Christ is required.

Stein drives this point home with the memorable image of an artist. Unlike the scientist of the natural world who studies external phenomena but can remain unmoved by them, the scientist of the cross—that is to say, the Christian—is duty-bound to enter into the realities she “studies”:

But the Crucified One demands from the artist more than a mere portrayal of the image. He demands that the artist, just as every other person, follow him: that he both make himself and allow himself to be made into an image of the one who carries the cross and is crucified.[10]

For Stein, then, the Christian life is not a spectator sport. She goes on to flesh out this concept with the biblical motif of childlikeness, but in so doing she adds an interesting twist: it is not merely the humility or simplicity of a child that prepares him or her to enter heaven, but also the fact that “the soul of a child is soft and impressionable.”[11] In other words, children possess the gift of spiritual malleability, and an innate willingness to be formed in the image of their mother and father. Just as the child internalizes new information quickly, picks up her parents’ traits, and happily follows the familial customs into which she is born, so too the Christian must learn to conform herself to the heart of God the Father.

Despite the fervor of her writing, Stein is not unaware of the profound challenge which the way of the cross presents to our sensibilities. While it may be true that the cross “is our only claim to glory,”[12] nevertheless the fact remains that it is only amid “all the burden and suffering in life”[13] that the science of the cross can be properly lived out. Stein pulls no punches: “A scientia crucis . . . can be gained only when one comes to feel the cross radically.”[14] Daunting though this may sound, it should not be an occasion for despair. For the promise of the science of the cross is the conveyance of that “holy realism” which characterizes the lives of the saints.[15] The saints do not pretend that all of life is plain sailing; they grasp better than anybody the nails in Christ’s flesh, the splinters in his back, the desolation in his soul. And yet, for Stein, it is precisely in that mystery of mysteries which is the cross of Christ that the holy realism of the saints finds its inner source. Just as Calvary constitutes the greatest conceivable paradox of life-from-death, hope-from-despair, consolation-in-abandonment, so too the lives of the saints give historical expression to the paradox of Christ’s solemn promise that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24).

In this exact spirit, the science of the cross becomes for the saints neither a coping mechanism nor a way of minimizing the pains of life. Rather, it becomes nothing less than a radical imitation of, and a lived participation in, the sufferings of Christ. Through that interior denudation, the seeds of abundant life begin to take root; precisely by virtue of her total surrender to the divine plan, the childlike heart of the saint “allows itself to be easily and joyfully led and molded by that which it has received.”[16] Doubtless there are few souls who have achieved this childlike conformity better than John of the Cross. Nevertheless, the path remains one to which all Christians are called.[17] All of us are called to that holy, hope-filled realism by which “the life-giving and life-forming power” of the science of the cross becomes manifest in our lives.[18] With this foundational summary of Stein’s understanding of the science of the cross in place, we can now turn our attention to a more precise account of how this science unfolds in the life of the Christian.

Self-Discovery Through Loss of Self

Stein envisions the science of the cross unfolding in the life of the Christian via a process of imitation, or what I refer to as “theomimesis.” As Stein explains, “Christ is our way. Everything depends on understanding how we are to model our journey on that of Christ.”[19] Notably for Stein, it is only in the arena of suffering that the human person can become all she was created to be. For the Christian, moreover, this suffering must not only be endured but also embraced in imitation of Christ’s pains. Stein’s primary schema for outlining this reality is drawn from the “dark night” symbolism of John of the Cross. If the Christian desires to live out the science of the cross and thereby discover the fullness of her humanity, then she cannot avoid the spiritual nights which John describes.

Primary among these is the dark night of the senses, a “purgative dryness,”[20] or “crucifixion,”[21] into which the soul freely enters in order to be freed from all disordered attachment to the things of this world. In this dark night, it is the being “purged of all sensory inclinations and appetites” which “leads to a freedom of the spirit in which the twelve fruits of the spirit ripen.”[22] The soul experiences dryness and emptiness in her relationship with God, as the wounds of love permeate her senses and deprive her of the usual consolation she would find in prayer, the sacraments, friendships, and the natural world: “For visions, revelations and sweet sensations are not God himself nor do they lead us to him.”[23]

Despite the painful nature of this process, the soul who freely cooperates with this divine medicine allows this dark night to become “the school of all virtues” and the locus of profound encounter.[24] Like the Psalmist who comes to recognize God’s presence not in the grandeur of a mountain range or the majesty of a sunrise, but instead in “a dry and weary land without water” (Ps 63:1), so too the soul who willingly undergoes the dark night of the senses comes to a place of intimate dialogue with God. By her willingness to imitate Christ’s own desolation of the senses in Gethsemane, this soul has opened herself up to a deeper union with the life of the Holy Trinity. Nevertheless, for Stein, there is a deeper purification still to place. Following the dark night of the senses, a more radical and more intense imitation of Christ’s suffering will be necessary if the soul is to fully experience the science of the cross.

This second night is the dark night of the soul, which builds on and deepens the purification of the night of the senses: “The powerful reality of the natural world and the supernatural gifts of grace must be upset by an even mightier reality. This takes place in the passive night.”[25] The language of passivity is of essential importance for Stein. Whereas the night of the senses is entered into actively by the soul, the night of the soul cannot be chosen; it can only be received. As Stein explains in a memorable image: “One can deliver oneself up to crucifixion, but one cannot crucify oneself. Therefore that which the active night has begun must be completed by the passive night, that is, through God himself.”[26] In this way, the night of the soul becomes the far darker and more excruciating of the two nights, not only because it affects the higher human faculties,[27] but also because it calls for a much more violent imitation of the abandonment Christ experienced on the cross. “What is demanded here,” Stein explains, “is not merely a small degree of withdrawal from the world, a certain improvement in this or that circumstance, praying a little longer, or practicing a little renunciation while at the same time enjoying consolations and spiritual feelings.”[28] Instead, what is required is “extreme abandonment, and precisely in this abandonment, union with the Crucified.”[29] In the night of the soul, it is not mere external consolations that are taken away, but God himself: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” thus becomes the heart-aching cry of those souls who undergo this radical experience of theomimesis at the highest levels of the science of the cross.

Stein highlights this intense experience with recourse to various images. On the one hand, the night of the soul reveals Christ’s deep trust for those friends of his who, like Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple, remain with him even in his darkest moments:

No searching human spirit can penetrate the unfathomable mystery of the dying God-man’s abandonment by God. But Jesus can give to chosen souls some taste of this extreme bitterness. They are his most faithful friends from whom he exacts this final test of their love.[30]

Later on, however, Stein switches the analogy from friend to bride. She notes:

Impossible as it is for a human spirit or a human heart to imagine or to feel what eternal bliss is like, so impossible is it to penetrate the unfathomable mystery of being robbed of so much! He alone, the only one who experienced it, can give a taste of it to those he chooses, in the intimacy of the bridal union.[31]

Both the bridal and the fraternal imagery have their place in Stein’s thought, and both underscore the paradox which lies at the heart of the science of the cross: the closer the soul is to God, the more she can expect to suffer; the deeper her theomimesis, the deeper her sharing in the pains of Christ. This sharing aspect is critical for Stein, since Christians who embrace the science of the cross are called to be more than mere epigones mimicking Christ’s passion in some extrinsic, perhaps even masochistic way. On the contrary, the imitation to which Christians are called is always and everywhere a participation in Christ’s saving work.[32]

Stein bluntly acknowledges the painful nature of this participation. As she concedes at one point, “The destruction of the natural way of understanding is profound, frightful, and extremely painful.”[33] So much for the bad news! Does the science of the cross offer good news in equal measure? For Stein, the answer is undoubtedly affirmative, and it begins with the conviction that “the soul may take dryness and darkness as fortunate symptoms: symptoms that God is freeing her from herself.”[34] Amidst the most bitter trials, the pruning touch of the divine gardener is at work. The soul is being led to “union with God,” a process which necessitates that she be “painfully reborn” as she “is remodeled from the natural to the supernatural.”[35] Painful though this is, it is at the same time tremendously liberating: in the crucible of suffering, the spirit is being “elevated to the true being for which it was created.”[36]

The Christian soul who undergoes a dark night is thus stripped of all those unhealthy parts of herself which have accumulated over time but do not really belong. This purifying process is unpleasant yet hope-filled, for the sacrifice of the old self is the instrument which brings about the discovery of the new. As Stein asserts of the soul who participates in Christ’s sufferings: “In his poverty and abandonment she rediscovers herself.”[37] The exact nature of this self-discovery as it appears in Stein’s thought is worth reflecting on. Like St. Teresa of Ávila before her, Stein is keen to emphasize that the location of the Holy Trinity in relation to the soul of the Christian is not external or adjacent but radically immanent: “God is in the inmost depth of the soul and nothing that is in her is hidden from him.”[38] For this reason, she can assert that the more the soul ascends to God, the more she descends into herself, for God is within her.[39] In this markedly theocentric anthropology, the divine indwelling becomes the hinge upon which human self-discovery must turn.[40] Discovery of self can only come about through discovery of the Blessed Trinity, a dynamic which requires the letting go of the old self and an entrance into Christ’s passion. On this account, the Gospel appellation Emmanuel becomes not just “God with us,” but more pointedly, “God within us.” Stein draws these strands together in an astounding passage which ought not leave the reader unmoved:

The progressive collapse of nature gives more and more room to the supernatural light and to divine life. It overpowers the natural faculties and transforms them into divinized and spiritualized ones. Thus a new incarnation of Christ takes place in Christians, which is synonymous with a resurrection from the death on the cross. The new self carries the wounds of Christ on the body: the remembrance of the misery of sin out of which the soul was awakened to a blessed life, and a reminder of the price that had to be paid for that.[41]

Through the loss of self—what Stein terms the “progressive collapse of nature”—the very fullness of humanity is opened up for the soul who walks with Christ. In finding her truest self, the soul becomes a new Incarnation: she discovers the divine indwelling within her.

Finding God Within: The Science of the Cross and the Fifth Joyful Mystery

Although Stein only touches briefly on Luke’s story of the finding of the child Jesus in the temple (see Luke 2:41-52),[42] the Gospel vignette nevertheless offers a helpful lens through which to understand the way the science of the cross functions in the life of the Christian. Certainly Stein accepts the biblical notion that the human person is a temple in which God dwells,[43] a concept she sometimes expresses in the language of sanctuary: “Human beings are called upon to live in their inmost region. . . . The angels have the task of protecting it. Evil spirits seek to gain control of it. God himself has chosen it as his dwelling.”[44] Given Stein’s conviction that the essential task of the scientist of the cross is that of discovering God within the sanctuary of the self, what lessons might she then draw from the fifth joyful mystery? A few thoughts will suffice.

When Mary and Joseph finally discover their beloved Son after three days of searching, theirs is the relief not only of finding their child again, but also of discovering that their experience of profound pain and loss took place for a reason: Jesus knew what he was doing all along. Yet we know that the dark night preceding this joy was an agonizing one. Presumably Mary and Joseph had already experienced various nights of the senses, whether in the ordeal of the Bethlehem birth, the tragedy of the Holy Innocents, or the forced flight into Egypt. On the occasion of losing their Son, however, night was to be far more painful, far more extreme: a night of the soul, not of the senses, where God himself is removed from their midst. The evangelist Luke pointedly captures this reality when he describes how Mary and Joseph searched “anxiously” for their Son, employing a word he uses only one other time in his Gospel, when describing the fiery anguish experienced by the rich man in hades (see Luke 16:24-25). This points us to a startling truth: for Mary and Joseph, the three days of searching were hell on earth. In their ultimate act of theomimesis, Jesus’s human parents were rewarded—albeit passively, and certainly not through their own choosing—with a taste of the same abandonment which he himself would experience on Calvary.

Yet the abandonment does not last forever, and it gives way to a deeper discovery of self. For this reason, to view the finding in the temple as nothing more than a bizarre anecdote speaking of the need for parental vigilance is to miss the point entirely. After all, it is not some failing on the part of Mary or Joseph which causes their Christ to go missing, but rather a deliberate decision on his part. Christ consciously allows his human parents to feel the loss of his presence in order that they might discover themselves more intimately in him. This reality finds symbolic expression in the temple itself, which in the Christian tradition (as Stein herself points out) at once represents the human being and the person of Christ. It is in the temple that Mary and Joseph discover Jesus, and it is in the temple of our souls that we discover that same Christ-child who permits our pains for a time, but always for the deeper purpose of love.

Transformation in Charity

In a profound way, the finding in the temple points to that lived experience of charity which forms the apotheosis of Stein’s science of the cross. Consider the question on the lips of Mary and Joseph when they are finally reunited with their Child: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Luke 2:48). It is a question which echoes down the ages in the heart of every believer who has ever experienced intense pain; in the midst of grief, loneliness, trauma, and hurt, our cry to Jesus becomes no less spirited than that of his human parents: “Why, Jesus, why have you treated us so?” For Stein, through the science of the cross, it is love which stands as the answer to this question. Love is why he has treated us so, and our final transformation in charity is the reason he asks us to suffer—and to discover ourselves in him. Commenting on Christ’s cryptic response to his parents (“Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?”), Stein cites from John of the Cross in his own commentary on these first-recorded words of the Savior:

Nothing else can be meant by that which is the eternal Father’s business than the salvation of the world, above all the salvation of souls, since Christ our Lord applied the means foreordained by the eternal Father. . . . But what is most wonderful and divine is to cooperate in the conversion of souls and in bringing them home; for in this God’s own activity is reflected and this imitation is the greatest glory. That is why Christ, our Lord, called this the work of his Father, the business of his Father. It is also an evident truth that sympathy with the neighbor grows the more, the more the soul is united with God through love.[45]

The Son is about the Father’s business: namely, the salvation of sinners, and the proliferation of love. For Stein, as for John of the Cross, the soul encounters God within the deepest recesses of her soul, and that encounter cannot leave her unchanged. A metamorphosing union now takes place: a union manifested in charity and in the soul’s “supernatural transformation” in God.[46]

It now becomes evident that the science of the cross is precisely for the sake of that “transforming union through perfect love that divinizes the soul.”[47] To be sure, union with God is the primary goal of the science, and Stein is careful to highlight Christ’s insistence that his followers “seek first the kingdom” (Mt 6:33).[48] From this thoroughly theocentric point of departure, however, a horizontal dimension of charity also begins to emerge, and the science of the cross completes its cruciform structure. For Stein, worship must indeed precede ethics; love of God ranks before love of neighbor. At the same time, the two maxims are not competitive in her thinking, but rather complementary. Love of God is incarnated through the love of neighbor; theomimesis is ever a communal affair. Stein is emphatic: “Self-fulfillment, union with God, and laboring for the union of others with God and for their self-fulfillment belong inseparably together.”[49] Through the power of the cross, the people of God are gathered into one and bonded together in perfect charity. In their shared participation in Christ’s sufferings, the body of believers discover themselves in God and in one another: “And all the holy souls together form on their part a garland, which the bride-Church weaves together with Christ the Bridegroom.”[50]

Conclusion

The finding in the temple is illustrative of the painful but life-giving role which the science of the cross must play in the life of the Christian. It is suggestive, too, of a distinctively theocentric humanism which is the hallmark of Stein’s thinking, and a possible interpretative key for unlocking her theological vision. Stein’s profound reflections on the cross present a challenge to modern man to ponder anew that mystery of mysteries: almighty and transcendent God nailed naked to a tree. For Stein, it is by taking this reality to heart that our conception of the human person is unalterably elevated. As such, an authentic humanism must begin and end with the divine; only then can the dignity of the human person be secured: “So the bridal union of the soul with God is the goal for which she was created, purchased through the cross, consummated on the cross and sealed for all eternity with the cross.”[51] Divinization through suffering—theosis through kenosis—is the promise Christ extends to all mankind, and one in which we are invited to share. Herein lies Stein’s science of the cross, and the only reliable seedbed for an authentically Christian humanism.