For "Many" or For "All"? | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | An
excerpt from "God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life"
For "Many" or For "All"? | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | An
excerpt from
God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/ratzinger_formany_nov06.asp
Editor: This excerpt from
God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life is taken from the chapter titled "God's Yes and His Love Are
Maintained Even in Death"
At this point I should like to include a question about which some people argue
in extremely heated fashion: The German translation no longer says, "for
many", but "for all", and this takes into account that in the
Latin Missal and in the Greek New Testament, that is to say, in the original text
that is being translated, we find "for many". This disparity has
given rise to some disquiet; the question is raised as to whether the text of
the Bible is not being misrepresented, whether perhaps an element of untruth
has been brought into the most sacred place in our worship. In this connection,
I would like to make three points.
I. In the New Testament as a whole, and in the whole of the tradition of the
Church, it has always been clear that God desires that everyone should be saved
and that Jesus died, not just for a part of mankind, but for everyone; that God
himself-as we were just saying--does not draw the line any- where. He does not
make any distinction between people he dislikes, people he does not want to
have saved, and others whom he prefers; he loves everyone because he has
created everyone. That is why the Lord died for all. That is what we find in
Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans: God "did not spare his own Son but gave
him up for us all" (8:32); and in the fifth chapter of the Second Letter
to the Corinthians: "One has died for all" (2 Cor 5:14). The first
Letter to Timothy speaks of "Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom
for all" (I Tim 2:6). This sentence is particularly important in that we
can see, by the context and by the way it is formulated, that a eucharistic
text is being quoted here. Thus we know that at that time, in a certain part of
the Church, the formula that speaks of a sacrifice "for all" was
being used in the Eucharist. The insight that was thus preserved has never been
lost from the tradition of the Church. On Maundy Thursday, in the old missal,
the account of the Last Supper was introduced with the words: "On the
evening before he died, for the salvation of all he . . ." It was on the basis of
this knowledge that in the seventeenth century there was an explicit condemnation
of a Jansenist proposition that asserted that Christ did not die for everyone.
[8] This limitation of salvation was thus explicitly rejected as an erroneous
teaching that contradicted the faith of the whole Church. The teaching of the Church
says exactly the opposite: Christ died for all.
We cannot start to set limits on God's behalf, the very heart of the faith has
been lost to anyone who supposes that it is only worthwhile, if it is, so to
say, made worthwhile by the damnation of others. Such a way of thinking, which
finds the punishment of other people necessary, springs from not having
inwardly accepted the faith; from loving only oneself and not God the Creator,
to whom his creatures belong. That way of thinking would be like the attitude
of those people who could not bear the workers who came last being paid a
denarius like the rest; like the attitude of people who feel properly rewarded
only if others have received less. This would be the attitude of the son who
stayed at home, who could not bear the reconciling kindness of his father. It
would be a hardening of our hearts, in which it would become clear that we were
only looking out for ourselves and not looking for God; in which it would be
clear that we did not love our faith, but merely bore it like a burden. We must
finally come to the point where we no longer believe it to be better to live
without faith, standing around in the marketplace, so to speak, unemployed,
along with the workers who were only taken on at the eleventh hour; we must be
freed from the delusion that spiritual unemployment is better than living with
the Word of God. We have to learn once more so to live our faith, so to assent
to it, that we can discover in it that joy which we do not simply carry round
with us because others are at a disadvantage, but with which we are filled, for
which we are thankful, and which we would like to share with others. This,
then, is the first point: It is a basic element of the biblical message that
the Lord died for all-being jealous of salvation is not Christian. [9]
2. A second point to add to this is that God never, in any case, forces anyone
to be saved. God accepts man's freedom. He is no magician, who will in the end
wipe out everything that has happened and wheel out his happy ending. He is a true
father; a creator who assents to freedom, even when it is used to reject him.
That is why God's all-embracing desire to save people does not involve the
actual salvation of all men. He allows us the power to refuse. God loves us; we
need only to summon up the humility to allow ourselves to be loved. But we do
have to ask ourselves, again and again, whether we are not possessed of the pride
of wanting to do it for ourselves; whether we do not rob man, as a creature,
along with the Creator-God, of all his dignity and stature by removing all
element of seriousness from the life of man and degrading God to a kind of magician
or grandfather, who is unmoved by anything. Even on account of the
unconditional greatness of God's love-indeed, because of that very quality-the freedom
to refuse, and thus the possibility of perdition, is not removed.
3. What, then, should we make of the new translation? Both formulations,
"for all" and "for many", are found in Scripture and in
tradition. Each expresses one aspect of the matter: on one hand, the
all-embracing salvation inherent in the death of Christ, which he suffered for
all men; on the other hand, the freedom to refuse, as setting a limit to salvation.
Neither of the two formulae can express the whole of this; each needs correct
interpretation, which sets it in the context of the Christian gospel as a
whole. I leave open the question of whether it was sensible to choose the
translation "for all" here and, thus, to confuse translation with
interpretation, at a point at which the process of interpretation re- mains in
any case indispensable. [10] There can be no question of misrepresentation here,
since whichever of the formulations is allowed to stand, we must in any case
listen to the whole of the gospel message: that the Lord truly loves everyone
and that he died for all. And the other aspect: that he does not, by some magic
trick, set aside our freedom but allows us to choose to enter into his great
mercy.
Now let us turn back to look at yet a third saying in the Last Supper accounts:
"This is the new covenant in
my blood." We saw just now how Jesus, in accepting his death, gathers together
and condenses in his person the whole of the Old Testament; first the theology
of sacrifice, that is, everything that went on in the Temple and everything to
do with the Temple, then the theology of the Exile, of the Suffering Servant.
Now a third element is added, a passage from Jeremiah (31:31) in which the
prophet predicts the New Covenant, which will no longer be limited to physical
descendants of Abraham, no longer to the strict keeping of the law, but will spring
from out of the new love of God that gives us a new heart. This is what Jesus
takes up here. In his suffering and death this long-awaited hope becomes
reality; his death seals the Covenant. It signifies something like a blood
brotherhood between God and man. That was the idea underlying the way the
Covenant had been depicted on Sinai. There, Moses had set up the altar to
represent God and, over against it, twelve stones to represent the twelve
tribes of Israel and had sprinkled them with blood, so as to associate God and
man in the one communion of this sacrifice. What was there only a hesitant attempt
is here achieved. He who is the Son of God, he who is man, gives himself to the
Father in dying and thus shows himself to be the one who brings us
all into the Father. He now institutes true
blood brotherhood, a communion of Godand man; he opens the
door that we could not open for ourselves. We can do no more than give a little
tentative thought to God, and it is not in our power to know whether or not he responds.
This remains the tragic element, the shadow hovering over so many religions,
that they are simply a cry to which the response remains uncertain. Only God
himself can hear the cry. Jesus Christ, both Son of God and man, who carries on
his love right through death, who transforms death into an act of love and
truth, he is the response; the Covenant is founded in him.
Thus we see how the Eucharist had its origin, what its true source is. The
words of institution alone are not sufficient; the death alone is not
sufficient; and even both together are still insufficient but have to be
complemented by the Resurrection, in which God accepts this death and makes it
the door into a new life. From out of this whole matrix-that he transforms his
death, that irrational event, into an affirmation, into an act of love and of
adoration-emerges his acceptance by God and the possibility of his being able
to share himself in this way. On the Cross, Christ saw love through to the end.
For all the differences there may be between the accounts in the various
Gospels, there is one point in common: Jesus died praying, and in the abyss of
death he upheld the First Commandment and held on to the presence of God. [11]
Out of such a death springs this sacrament, the Eucharist.
We finally have to return to the question with which we started. Did Jesus
fail? Well, he certainly was not successful in the same sense as Caesar or
Alexander the Great. From the worldly point of view, he did fail in the first
instance: he died almost abandoned; he was condemned on account of his preaching.
The response to his message was not the great Yes of his people, but the Cross.
From such an end as that, we should conclude that Success is definitely not one
of the names of God and that it is not Christian to have an eye to outward
success or numbers. God's paths are other than that: his success comes about
through the Cross and is always found under that sign. The true witnesses to
his authenticity, down through the centuries, are those who have accepted this
sign as their emblem. When, today, we look at past history, then we have to say
that it is not the Church of the successful people that we find impressive; the
Church of those popes who were universal monarchs; the Church of those leaders
who knew how to get on well with the world. Rather, what strengthens our faith,
what remains constant, what gives us hope, is the Church of the suffering. She
stands, to the present day, as a sign that God exists and that man is not just
a cesspit, but that he can be saved. This is true of the martyrs of the first
three centuries, and then right up to Maximilian Kolbe and the many unnamed
witnesses who gave their lives for the Lord under the dictatorships of our own
day; whether they had to die for their faith or whether they had to let
themselves be trampled on, day after day and year after year, for his sake. The
Church of the suffering gives credibility to Christ: she is God's success in
the world; the sign that gives us hope and courage; the sign from which still flows
the power of life, which reaches beyond mere thoughts of success and which
thereby purifies men and opens up for God a door into this world. So let us be
ready to hear the call of Jesus Christ, who achieved the great success of God
on the Cross; he who, as the grain of wheat that died, has become fruitful down
through all the centuries; the Tree of Life, in whom even today men may put
their hope.
Endnotes:
[8] Denzinger-Hünermann, no. 2005.
[9] I have fully developed this idea in my little book Vom Sinn des Christseins (Munich, 1965), pp. 39ff.
[10] The fact that in Hebrew the expression "many" would mean the
same thing as "all" is not relevant to the question under
consideration inasmuch as it is a question of translating, not a Hebrew text
here, but a Latin text (from the Roman Liturgy), which is directly related to a
Greek text (the New Testament). The institution narratives in the New Testament
are by no means simply a translation (still less, a mistaken translation) of
Isaiah; rather, they constitute an independent source.
[11] This reflection was adumbrated by E. Käsemann in 1967, in an address at the
Congress of the German Evangelical Church (published under the title: "Die
Gegenwart des Gekreuzigten" [The presence of the Crucified], in E. Käsemann,
Kirchliche Konfiikte, vol. I
[Göttingen, 1982], pp. 76-91, especially 77, 8of.).
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Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was for over two decades
the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope
John Paul II. He is a renowned theologian and author of numerous books.
A mini-bio and full listing of his books published by Ignatius Press are
available on his IgnatiusInsight.com
Author Page.
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