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The Vatican did not post till Thursday the Holy Father's German text for his address last Monday to participants of a symposium on the late German theologian Erik Peterson - a convert from Lutheranism. The event was poorly reported at the time, and not even Vatican Radio provided enough text excerpts in its English service. Certainly, not enough emphasis to the Pope's recounting of Peterson's impact on him as a young priest and theologian... The text makes a companion piece to his remarks about Romano Guardini four days later and posted earlier on this page... The Pope had a prepared text, but much of what he said was extemporaneous, thus the delay in the posting of the transcript.
Benedict XVI praises German theologian
whose writings showed him in 1951
'the theology I was looking for'
Oct. 25, 2010
Eminences,
Dear brothers in the Priesthood,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends:
With great joy, I greet you all who have come to Rome for the international symposium on Erik Peterson. I thank you, especially, Cardinal Lehmann, for the friendly words with which you opened this encounter.
As you said, 120 years ago this year, this outstanding theologian was born in Hamburg, and almost on this very day, 50 years ago, on Oct. 26, 1960, he died in his native city.
Since 1930, he lived here in Rome at certain times, and then, from 1933 onwards, as a resident of the city, first on the Aventine near [the church of] Sant'Anselmo, and later near the Vatican, in a house across the street from the Porta Sant'Anna.
Therefore, it is a special joy for me to welcome his family, who are here with us - his distinguished daughters and his son, together with their respective families. In 1990, together with Cardinal Lehmann, I delivered to your cherished mother, in the apartment that you shared then, an autographed portrait of John Paul II for her 80th birthday, and I gladly recall meeting you then.
"Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come" (Heb 13,14). This passage from the Letter to the Hebrews could be considered the motto for Erik Peterson's life. In fact, he never found a real place all his life in which he could obtain recognition and a stable residence.
The start of his scientific activity coincided with a time of upheaval in Germany after the first World War. The monarchy had fallen. Civilian order was at risk in the face of political and social upheavals. This was also reflected in the religious field, particularly, in German Protestantism.
The liberal theology which had prevailed till then, with its widespread optimism about progress, was in crisis and had given way to new and conflicting theological breakthroughs. The situation posed an existential problem for the young Peterson. With both historical and theological interest, he had already chosen the subject of his studies, saying "when we are left with human history alone, then we stand before a puzzle that makes no sense" (Eintrag in das Bonner „Album Professorum" 1926/27, Ausgewählte Schriften, Sonderband S. 111).
Peterson decided - and I quote further - "to work in the historical field, especially the problem of the history of religions", since in the evangelical theology of his time, he claimed he "could not make his way through the jungle of opinions to get to the facts in themselves" (ibid).
Along this path, he came more and more to the certainty that there is no history detached from God, that in this history, the Church has a special place and finds its meaning.
I cite further: "That there is a Church and that she is constituted in a specific way depends closely on the fact that... there is a history that is specifically theological" (Vorlesung „Geschichte der Alten Kirche" Bonn 1928, Ausgewählte Schriften, Sonderband S.88).
The Church received from God the mission to lead men out of their constricted and isolated existence to a universal society, from the natural to the supernatural, from transience to fulfillment at the end of times. In a beautiful booklet on the angels, he says of this: "The way of the Church goes from the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly city... to the city of the angels and the saints" (Introduction).
The starting point for his journey was the binding character of Holy Scripture. According to Peterson, Scripture becomes and is binding, not as such - it is never just 'by itself' - but in the hermeneutic of the Apostolic Tradition, which in turn, is concretized in the Apostolic succession - and that is how the Church maintains Scripture living and actual while interpreting it.
Through the bishops who are in the apostolic succession, testimony to SCripture remains alive in the Church, laying down the foundation for the beliefs of faith that are premanently valid in the Church, which we find above all in the Credo and in Church dogma. These beliefs are continually manifested in the liturgy as the Church's favored means for praising God.
The Mass celebrated on earth thus stands in an indissoluble relationship with the heavenly Jerusalem - where the true and eternal sacrifice of praise is offered to God, and of which the earthly celebration is merely a representation.
The participant in the Holy Mass remains standing outside the threshold of the heavenly sphere, from which he contemplates the worship carried out by the angels and saints. Wherever the earth Church intones her eucharistic praise, she joins this festive celestial assembly, in which, through the saints, part of her has already arrived, giving hope to all those who are still in pilgrimage on earth towards eternal fulfillment.
Perhaps at this point I will interpose a personal reflection. I first came across the figure of Erik Peterson in 1951. I was a chaplain in Bogenhausen, and Herr Wild, the head of the local publishin house Koesel, gave me a copy of the just published Theologische Traktate.
I read it with growing curiosity and found myself truly gripped by it, because here was the theology that I was looking for. Theology, that on the one hand, brought historical seriousness to studying and understanding [Scriptural] texts, analyzing them with all the seriousness of historical research, but not remaining in the past, going beyond the literal text, and into it, allowing it to lead the theologian into contact with him from whom theology itself comes - the living God himself.
Thus the gap between the past, which philology analyzes, and the present is bridged, since the words lead to an encounter with reality, and one realizes the entire relevance of the written word which has transcended itself.
Thus I learned from him, in a more essential and deeper way, what theology really is, and I also felt admiration that this book did not just express what he thought, but was the expression of the path that was the passion of his life.
Paradoxically, it was his exchange of letters with Harnack* that was the best manifestation of the breakthrough that he had achieved. Harnack had confirmed for him, or had previously written independently, that the Catholic principle according to which "Scripture lives in Tradition, and Tradition is the living form of the apostolic succession" is the original and objective principle. and that 'sola Scriptura' does not work.
Peterson took this almost self-explanatory affirmation of a liberal theologian in all seriousness, and allowed himself to be stirred, shaken, plied and transformed by it, and thus, found the way to conversion.
With that, he had taken a truly Abraham-like step, as we hear at the start of the Letter to the Hebrews: "Here we have no lasting city". He left the security of a professorial chair to step into the uncertain, to be homeless, and for the rest of his life, remained without any sure ground to stand on nor a home to stay in, truly cast adrift with his faith and for the faith - trusting that in his homeless wandering, he was. in another sense, 'at home' in being always headed for the heavenly liturgy that had so touched him.
From all this, it is understood that much of what Erik Peterson thought and did - because of his precarious situation in life after losing his teaching post after his conversion - remained fragmentary.
Although he had to live without a fixed income, he got married here in Rome and started a family. Thus he gave expression concretely to his inner certainty that although one is a stranger - which he was, in a very particular way - one can find support in the communion of love, and that in love itself, there is something that lasts for eternity.
He experienced the alienation of the Christian. He had become an enemy of evangelical theology, and he remained somewhat alien even in Catholic theology as it was at the time.
And now we know that he belonged to both, that both had something to learn from him about the drama, the realism and the existential and human demands of theology.
Erik Peterson, as Cardinal Lehmann said, was certainly appreciated and loved by many, a hidden gem known only to a small circle, but he was not given the scientific recognition he deserved; it was also, perhaps, somewhat too early.
As I said, he was a stranger in both camps. So we cannot praise Cardinal Lehmann enough for having taken the initiative to publich Peterson's works in a magnificent complete edition, and Madame Nichtweiss, to whom this task was given, which she performed with admirable competence.
Thus the attention given to him because of this publication is only right and fair, and that many of his works have now been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, English, Hungarian and even Chinese.
I hope that through this, there will be wider dissemination of the thinking of Peterson, who never lingered on details but always had a view of theology in its wholeness.
I sincerely thank all who are present for coming here. My special thanks for the organizers of this symposium, not the least Cardinal Farina, as patron, and Dr. Giancarlo Caronello. I gladly extend my best wishes for an interesting and stimulating discussion, in the spirit of Erik Peterson. I look forward to the fruits of this congress and impart to you and all those who are dear to you, the Apostolic Blessing.
*Adolf Harnack (1851-1930) was a Lutheran theologian and church historian who argued that the relevance of Christianity to the modern world lay not in theological dogmatism but in the understanding of the religion as a historical development. He was widely influential in the movement to treat Jesus primarily as a historical character.
One of a trio of articles on Peterson published by L'Osservatore Romano last July on the actual 40th anniversary of his death, contained the following information about a direct involvement of Joseph Ratzinger in the 'rehabilitation' of Peterson's theology - or at least in keeping his reputation alive... Here is a translation:
Excerpted from
In Rome, Peterson deepened
his concept of 'Ekklesia'
by Giancarlo Caronello
Translated from
July 23, 2010
...With the publication of the article 'The Church' by Joseph Ratzinger for the second edition of the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, the rediscovery of Peterson's Catholic ecclesiology became clearly noticeable.
It was 1961. Peterson had been dead for a year. His position was taken up and partly integrated by Ratzinger with his constant references to the similar ecclesiology of the Biblical exegete Schlier*.
Some onesidedness in Peterson's essays of 1928 was taken in context and re-proposed with their original intention of returning to Patristic tradition, particularly its pneumatological [pertaining to the Holy Spirit] aspect.
Decisive for this was the perspective of the history of salvation, expressed by the unity of the two Testaments, which was the context for the 'rediscovery' of Peterson's ecclesiology.
It is equally significant that the publication of Peterson's lengthy manuscript Ekklesia took place in the same week as the publication of the eighth volume of Joseph Ratzinger's Opera omnia - Kirche: Zeichen unter den Völkern. Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene (Church: Signs among the People, Writings on Ecclesiology and Ecumenism), which includes the 1961 article (pp. 205-219).
Equally relevant is another article which appears in the same volume on the origin and nature of the Church written by Ratzinger in 1991, and available in Italian from the book La Chiesa. Una comunità sempre in cammino (The Church: A community ever on pilgrimage, Joseph Ratzinger, publ. San Paolo, 2008, pp. 9-40).
Ratzinger devotes careful attention to the ecclesiological formulations of Peterson - with revealing reflections on the self-determination of the Church as Ekklesia, as well as on the historiographic and eschatological paradigm with which he confronts the thorny problem of the constitution of the Church in time.
* Hermann Schlier is another favorite reference of Joseph Ratzinger. He was another famous Lutheran who, in 1953, converted to Catholicism. Ratzinger met and frequented him when he took the professorship in Bonn. He cites him in JESUS OF NAZARETH, because although Schlier was an acknowledged master of the historico-philological critical method, he, too, believed that the historical Jesus is the Jesus of the Gospels.
Yet another example of Joseph Ratzinger's amazing consistency through the decades!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 02:51] |