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What in Fact Is Theology? | Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
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The
following essay is excerpted from the recently published Pilgrim
Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion. On
the occasion of Cardinal Ratzingerss seventy-fifth birthday, his
former students selected essays, lectures, letters, and conferences that
Ratzinger has written in recent years writing that they feel best
represents his position on issues of theology, the modern world, secularism,
non-Christian religious, and other key topics of the Catholic Church.
This book, characterized by Ratzingers concisely reasoned style,
is an invaluable resource to those who wish to understand the modern Church
and the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI, as well as a treasured volume for
those who are students of Ratzingers theology.
Expression of thanks for the conferring of the degree of Doctor honoris
causa at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre in Pamplona
Excellentissimo y Reverendissimo Señor Gran Canciller!
Dear Professors!
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I should first of all like to express to you, my dear Chancellor, and likewise
to the most honorable Theological Faculty, my profound thanks for the great
honor you have shown me in conferring on me the title of Doctor honoris
causa. Most especially I should like to thank you, my very dear colleague,
Señor Rodriguez, for the sensitive and very thorough way you have
praised my theological work far beyond my just deserts. Through discovering
and furnishing the critical edition of the original manuscript of the Catechismus
Romanus, you have rendered a service to theology that goes beyond the
present moment and that was of great significance for my own task in the
preparation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You are a member
of a faculty that, in the relatively short period of its existence, has
won a significant place in the worldwide discussions of theology. Thus it
is a great honor and a joy to me, through this doctorate, to belong to this
faculty, to which I have already long been bound by personal friendships
as also by academic discussion.
On such an occasion, the question inevitably arises: What in fact is a doctor
of theology? And besides that, in my case, the quite personal question:
Am I justified in regarding myself as one? Do I come up to the standard
implied by this dignity? As far as I personally am concerned, for many people
a serious objection will arise: Is not the office of Prefect of the Congregation
of the Doctrine of the Faith, which people nowadays like to characterize
and also thereby criticize with the title "inquisitor"is this not
in contradiction to the very nature of academic study and, thereby, with
the nature of theology? Are not scholarly study and external authority mutually
exclusive? Can scholarship recognize any authority other than its own insights
and perceptions, other than that of argument? Is not a teaching office that
tries to set limits for thought in academic study a contradiction in itself?
Such questions, which touch on the very nature of Catholic theology, no
doubt demand a constantly renewed examination of conscience by theologians,
as also by those in official positions, who of course also have to be theologians
in order properly to fulfill their office. They bring before us the basic
problem: What in fact is theology? Has it been adequately described when
we say that it is a methodically ordered reflection on the questions of
religion, of men's relationship with God? I would answer: No. For that takes
us only as far as what is called "religious studies". The philosophy of
religion and religious studies in general are no doubt very significant
disciplines, but their limitations can least of all be overlooked at the
point at which they try to move beyond the academic world. For they can
offer man no counsel. Either they are talking about what is past or they
describe what exists in contradictory fashion, side-by-side and linked together,
or else they become a fumbling after what has to do with man's ultimate
questions, a fumbling that must always in the end remain a question without
being able to overcome the darkness that surrounds man most of all when
he is asking where he comes from and where he is going, asking about himself.
If theology wishes and should be something other than religious studies,
other than occupying ourselves with ever unsolved questions concerning what
is greater than ourselves and nonetheless makes us what we are, then it
can only be based on starting from an answer that we ourselves have not
devised; yet in order for this to become a real answer for us, we have to
try to understand it, not to resolve it. That is what is peculiar to theology,
that it turns to something we ourselves have not devised and that is able
to be the foundation of our life, in that it goes before us and supports
us; that is to say, it is greater than our own thought. The path of theology
is indicated by the saying, "Credo ut intelligam": I accept what is given
in advance, in order to find, starting from this and in this, the path to
the right way of living, to the right way of understanding myself Yet that
means that theology, of its nature, presupposes auctoritas. It exists
only through awareness that the circle of our own thinking has been broken,
that our thinking has, so to say, been given a hand and helped upward, beyond
what it could achieve for itself. Without what was given in advance, which
is always greater than we can devise ourselves and never becomes part of
what is just our own, there is no theology.
But now the next question arises: What does this advantage, which was given
in advance, look likethis answer that alone can get our thinking under
way and that shows it the way? This authority is a word, we can say to start
with. Given the subject we are dealing with, that is quite logical: the
Word comes from understanding and is intended to lead to understanding.
The advantage given to the seeking human spirit is the Word, which is quite
reasonable. In the procedure of science, the idea comes before the word.
It is translated into the word. But here, where our own thinking fails,
down to us from the eternal reason is thrown the Word, in which is hidden
a splinter of its splendor-as much as we can bear, as much as we need, as
much as human speech can encompass. To perceive the meaning in this Word,
to understand this Word-that is the ultimate basis of theology, something
that can never be entirely absent from the path of faith, not even from
that of the most humble believer.

   
The advantage, what is given in advance, is the Word--thus, it is Scripture,
we might say, and we might at once ask: Beside this essential authority
of theology, can there be any other? The answer would seem to have to
be No: this is the critical point in the dispute between Reformed and
Catholic theology. Nowadays, even the greater part of evangelical theologians
recognize, in varying forms, that sola Scriptura, that is, the
restriction of the Word to the book, cannot be maintained. On the basis
of its inner structure, the Word always comprises a surplus beyond what
could go into the book. This relativizing of the scriptural principle,
from which Catholic theology also has something to learn and on account
of which both sides can make a new approach to each other, is in part
the result of ecumenical dialogue but, to a greater degree, has been determined
by the progress of historico-critical interpretation of the Bible, which
has in any case learned thereby to recognize its own limits. Two things
have above all become clear about the nature of the biblical word in the
process of critical exegesis. First of all, that the word of the Bible,
at the moment it was set down in writing, already had behind it a more
or less long process of shaping by oral tradition and that it was not
frozen at the moment it was written down, but entered into new processes
of interpretation"relectures"that further develop its hidden
potential. Thus, the extent of the Word's meaning cannot be reduced to
the thoughts of a single author in a specific historical moment Pent;
it is not the property of a single author at all; rather, it -lives in
a history that is ever moving onward and, thus, has dimensions and depths
of meaning in past and future that ultimately pass into the realm of the
unforeseen.
It is only at this point that we can begin to understand the of inspiration;
we can see where God mysteriously into what is human and purely human
authorship is transcended. Yet that also means that Scripture is not a
meteorite fallen from the sky, so that it would, with the strict otherness
of a stone that comes from the sky and not from the .:earth, stand in
contrast to all human words. Certainly, Scripture carries God's thoughts
within it: that makes it unique and constitutes it an "authority". Yet
it is transmitted by a human history. It carries within it the life and
thought of a historical society that we call the "People of God", because
they are brought together, and held together, by the coming of the divine
Word. There is a reciprocal relationship: This society is the essential
condition for the origin and the growth of the biblical Word; and, conversely,
this Word gives the society its identity and its continuity Thus, the
analysis of the structure of the biblical Word has brought to light an
interwoven relationship between Church and Bible, between the People of
God and the Word of God, which we had actually always known, somehow,
in a theoretical way but had never before had so vividly set before us.
The second element that relativizes the scriptural principle follows from
what we have just said. Luther was persuaded of the "perspicuitas" of
Scripture-of its being unequivocal, a quality that rendered superfluous
any official institution for determining its interpretation. The idea
of an unequivocal meaning is constitutive for the scriptural principle.
For if the Bible is not, as a book, unequivocal in itself, then in itself
alone, as a book, it cannot be what was given in advance, which guides
us. It would then still be leaving us again to our own devices. Then,
we should still be left alone again with our thinking, which is helpless
in the face of what is essential in existence. Yet this fundamental postulate
of Scripture's unambiguousness has had to be dropped, on account of both
the structure of the Word and the concrete experiences of scriptural interpretation.
It is untenable on the basis of the objective structure of the Word, on
account of its own dynamic, which points beyond what is written. It is
above all the most profound meaning of the Word that is grasped only when
we move beyond what is merely written. Yet the postulate is also untenable
from its subjective side, that is to say, on the basis of the essential
laws of the rationality of history. The history of exegesis is a history
of contradictions; the daring constructions of many modern exegetes, right
up to the materialistic interpretation of the Bible, show that the Word,
if left alone as a book, is a helpless prey to manipulation through preexisting
desires and opinions.
Scripture, the Word we have been given, with which theology concerns itself,
does not, on the basis of its own nature, exist as a book alone. Its human
author, the People of God, is alive and through all the ages has its own
consistent identity. The home it has made for itself and that supports
it is its own interpretation, which is inseparable from itself. Without
this surviving and living agent, the Church, Scripture would not be contemporary
with us; it could then no longer combine, as is its true nature, synchronic
and diachronic existence, history and the present day, but would fall
back into a past that cannot be recalled; it would become literature that
one interpreted in the way one can interpret literature. And with that,
theology itself would decline into literary history and the history of
past times, on one hand, and into the philosophy of religion and religious
studies in general, on the other.
It is perhaps helpful to express this interrelationship in a more concrete
way for the New Testament. Along the whole path of faith, from Abraham
up to the completion of the biblical canon, a confession of faith was
built up that was given its real center and shape by Christ himself The
original of existence of the Christian profession of faith, howwas the
sacramental life of the Church. It is by this criterion that the canon
was shaped, and that is why the 'Creed is the primary authority for the
interpretation of the Bible. Yet the Creed is not a piece of literature
: for a long time, people quite consciously avoided writing down the rule
of faith that produced the Creed, just because it is the concrete life
of the believing community. Thus, the authority of the Church that speaks
out, the authority of the apostolic succession, is written into Scripture
through the Creed and is indivisible from it. The teaching office of the
apostles' successors does not represent a second authority alongside Scripture
but is inwardly a part of it. This viva vox is not there restrict
the authority of Scripture or to limit it or even replace it by the existence
of another-on the contrary, it is its task to ensure that Scripture is
not disposable, cannot be manipulated, to preserve its proper perspicuitas,
its clear meaning from the conflict of hypotheses. Thus, there is a secret
relationship of reciprocity Scripture sets limits and a standard for the
viva vox; the living voice guarantees that it cannot be manipulated.
I can certainly understand the anxiety of Protestant theologians, and
nowadays of many Catholic theologians, especially of exegetes, that the
principle of a teaching office might impinge upon the freedom and the
authority of the Bible and, thus, upon those of theology as a whole. There
is a passage from the famous exchange of letters between Harnack and Peterson
in 1928 that comes to mind. Peterson, the younger of the two, who was
a seeker after truth, had pointed out in a letter to Harnack that he himself,
in a scholarly article entitled "The Old Testament in the Pauline Letters
and the Pauline Congregations", had for practical purposes expressed the
Catholic teaching about Scripture, tradition, and the teaching office.
To be precise, Harnack had explained that in the New Testament the "authority
of the apostolic teaching is found side by side with ... the authority
of 'Scripture', organizing it and setting limits to it", and that thus
"biblicism received a healthy correction". In response to Peterson's pointing
this out, Harnack replied to his younger colleague, with his usual nonchalance:
"That the so-called 'formal principle' of early Protestantism is impossible
from a critical point of view and that the Catholic principle is in contrast
formally better is a truism; but materially the Catholic
principle of tradition wreaks far more havoc in history." [1] What is
obvious, and even indisputable, in principle arouses fear in reality
Much could be said about Harnack's diagnosis of where more havoc has been
wreaked in history, that is, where the advance gift of the Word has been
more seriously threatened, This is not the time to do so. Over and beyond
any disputes, it is clear that neither side can dispense with relying
on the power of the Holy Spirit for protection and guidance. An ecclesiastical
authority can become arbitrary if the Spirit does not guard it. But the
arbitrary whims of interpretation left to itself, with all its variations,
certainly offers no less danger, as history shows. Indeed, the miracle
that would have to be worked there in order to preserve unity and to render
the challenge and stature of the Word effective is far more improbable
than the one needed to keep the service of the apostolic succession within
its proper bounds.
Let us leave such speculation aside. The structure of the Word is sufficiently
unequivocal, but the demands it makes on those called to responsibility
in succession to the apostles are indeed weighty. The task 'of the teaching
office is, not to oppose thinking, but to ensure that the authority of
the answer that was bestowed on us has its say and, thus, to make the
truth itself to enter. To be given such a task is exciting and dangerous.
It requires the humility of submission, of listening and obeying. It is
a matter, not of putting own ideas into effect, but of keeping a place
for what the Other has to say, that Other without whose ever-present Word
all else drops into the void. The teaching office, properly understood,
must be a humble service undertaken to ensure that true theology remains
possible and that the answers may thus be heard without which we cannot
live aright.
Endnotes:
[1] E. Peterson, Theologische Traktate [Theological tracts] (Munich,
1951), p. 295.
Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to be the 265th pope on April 19, 2005.
He took the name Benedict XVI.
As Pope John Paul II's chief doctrinal officer and key advisor, Cardinal
Ratzinger was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith from 1981 to 2005. He is the most revered prelate, scholar, theologian,
teacher and Catholic author of our time, under Pope John Paul II - having
spoken on everything from sexual consumerism, private revelation and the
"crisis of faith," to human rights, roles of men and women today,
marriage, the priesthood, and the future of the world.
A widely acclaimed theologian and author, he has written many important
books on theological and spiritual themes. Ignatius Press has published
over twenty of his books in English. His most recent Ignatius Press books include
Pilgrim
Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion and
Truth
and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, a masterful
study of the challenge of truth, tolerance, religion and culture in the
modern world.
A full listing of his books available from Ignatius Press, as well as a bio, can be found on
his IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page.
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