Then, there were these three articles on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, two of them featured in L'Osservatore Romano on April 17, the day after the emeritus Pope's 86th birthday.
The books of Joseph Ratzinger:
Tracing a course of faith and reason
by Franco Garelli
Translated from
April 19, 2013
To celebrate God who is love; to make him credible in this world; to strengthen he faith of his brothers; to oppose the decadence of the West; to promote a dialog between faith and reason, faith and science; to show how relativism has impoverished modern culture; why men should not lose their desire for Truth; the truths about men that Jesus has taught us – these are just some of the great and vital themes in the theological output of Joseph Ratzinger, as articulated in the years of his formation, then as a professor of theology in the most prestigious German universities and as Archbishop of Munich-Freising, and finally in Rome, in the service of the Church under John Paul II, and finally as Pope himself.
The many books he has written reflect not just a solid and highly refined theology but a confrontation with the major theological currents of the 20th century, offering singular perspectives of study and research, but also communicating to his contemporaries the novelty and rationality of the Christian message.
Initially, his books were scientific, aimed at qualified scholarly circles. But in recent decades, after he came to Rome, the content of his books were accessible to the wider public, from an intellectual who never ignored pastoral concerns and who did not wish to keep his spiritual reflections only to himself.
The roots of his theological thought (and therefore of his first works) derive from those whom Benedict XVI has not failed to acknowledge as his ‘travelling companions’ in his theological reflections and throughout his life.
His doctoral dissertation in 1951 was about the idea of the People of God in St. Augustine, who in his dialog with the culture of his time, offered decisive points that defined the essence of the Christian religion. For the Bishop of Hippo, Christianity was not in continuity with previous religions but was aligned with a philosophy that celebrated the triumph of reason over superstition.
For Joseph Ratzinger, Augustine was also a teacher of life, who is very relevant to the contemporary age which considers relativism the ‘truth’ that ought to guide man’s thought and behavior. Augustine’s incessant thirst for knowledge brought him beyond pseudo-truths to find out that it is not man who discovers God, but that it is God himself who comes after us and takes hold of us.
Another intellectual source in the formation of Joseph Ratzinger was St. Bonaventure, who was the subject of his dissertation in 1955 to earn his Habilitation, or license to teach at German universities. In particular, Bonaventure’s theology of history.
Ratzinger clarified the idea of the great Franciscan theologian of the 13th century that human history is a succession of events that tend toward a single conclusion. And that history has dynamism and significance thanks to the action and revelation of God in the world. That, in fact, Revelation precedes and ‘justifies’ Scripture – it is something that anticipates and gives meaning to events which are subsequently recorded.
These are the foundations on which the theologian Ratzinger based his vast scientific and essayistic production which over time applied to the issues of the Church, the spirit of liturgy, Christian anthropology, the relationship between faith and reason, the rationality of Christianity.
Ecclesial and pastoral concerns that would lead him to play a role alongside one of the prime movers of Vatican II, Cardinal Frings, Archbishop of Cologne (to whom he provided the canvas for a decisive intervention at the start of the Council, and earlier, at a pre-
Council conference of bishops in Genoa); to found the theological journal
Communio with his senior colleagues Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar; to be called to Rome by John Paul II to his Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to complement the mission of the first non-Italian Pope in centuries with his theological guidance, with books and important documents.
Among his most important books, we cannot forget
Introduction to Christianity, which was translated into 17 languages, and is considered by many to be the most communicative masterpiece of theologian Ratzinger: a work that offers a new understanding of the faith, and
is intended as a resource for the contemporary world to discover its true humanity [???? It is first of all a theological textbook, based on the lectures in fundamental theology that he gave in Tuebingen, in which he presents Christianity, to believers and non-believers alike, through the articles of faith that we profess in the Credo.]
Then there are his most demanding dogmatic and ecclesiological texts (such as
The new People of God (1969),
Faith and the future (1970);
Dogma and preaching (1973),
The salvation of man (1975), etc.), all meant, on the one hand, to reaffirm the mystical character of the Church (rescuing her from some arbitrary post-Conciliar interpretations), and on the other, to offer a response to the many questions raised about the inculturation of the faith and distancing the Church from an a-critical acceptance of modernity.
But the more recent output by Joseph Ratzinger are those works that have been read by the wider public.
Such as the works about the faith-and-reason relationship, the Christian roots of Europe, and what it means to be a Christian in the third millennium. These are texts that arose sometimes from his dialog with intellectual non-believers, whom Ratzinger reminds of the Judeo-Christian roots of European civilization, from his denunciation of a West that appears to hate itself and forgets what had made its civilization great, and from his admonitions to Christians not to obscure the image of God and in so doing, open the doors to non-believing. “Only through men touched by God can God return among men”.
[A major category that the writer misses out are the interview books, with the groundbreaking Rapporto sulla Fede (The Ratzinger Report) with Vittorio Messori in 1984, to the interviews with Peter Seewald, the pre-Pontificate Salt of the Earth and God and the World and the equally unprecedented interview with a sitting Pope, Light of the World.]
His last books, as everyone knows, constitute the trilogy by Benedict XVI on JESUS OF NAZARETH. A work that the theologian Ratzinger had always planned to undertake but which was finally realized during his Pontificate
[There was always the consciousness that he had to do it while he had the opportunity because he did not know how much time the Lord would give him.]. Almost as if it was a reflective oasis to refresh and compensate for the laborious task of governing the Church.
Books which he signed Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI to underscore that they were not part of his Magisterium, but simply the reflections of the believer Ratzinger about the figure of Christ. Sustained by the belief that the Jesus of the Gospels is a figure who makes historical sense and is convincing as someone who represented something extraordinary in the world, who brought salvation to mankind that radically surpasses every human expectation.
In these books, Joseph Ratzinger renders great credit to the capacity of contemporary man to understand the Christian mystery,
in a way that was not always apparent in his generally pessimistic view of history and culture. [I don’t get this not infrequently expressed notion by some commentators who say Joseph Ratzinger, author of that brilliant encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, has a ‘pessimistic view’ of history and culture because he presents a realistic analysis of the times. To be realistic is not to be pessimistic, especially since he consistently points out how turning to God and the message of Jesus is the way out of modern man’s dilemmas.
[The writer inexplicably overlooks the Vatican publications of Benedict XVI’s Magisterium, not just in the formal series of ‘Teachings’ published for ech year of the Pontificate, but through the anthologies of his various catechetical cycles as Pope, from his reflections on the major figures that shaped Christianity through the ages, starting with the Apostles to the Doctors of the Church and outstanding Christian women, but also on Christian prayer, from the prayers of the Patriarchs and Prophets to the Psalms to Christ’s own prayers, and those of Mary and the Apostles after the Resurrection. Not to mention the three encyclicals and the Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortations on the Eucharist and the Word of God. All of them best-sellers.]
On April 17, 20l3, the OR, which carried not a single line about Benedict XVI's birthday in its April 16 issue, did report on Page 1 about Pope Francis offering his daily Mass and making a telephone call to Benedict XVI to greet him on his birthday. At the same time, it devoted an inside page to a couple of essays about the emeritus Pope's JESUS OF NAZARETH books...
An example of dialog:
Benedict XVI's Jesus triptych
by Maurizio Gronchi
Translated from the 4/17/13 issue of
The public ministry, the Paschal event, and the infancy of Jesus are the three panels of the Christologic triptych offered to us by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict VI in a manner that is traditional but also unusual.
Traditional insofar as it draws on the theological treatment of the mysteries of the life of Jesus, in the classical form that Thomas Aquinas presented it in classical form in his
Summa theologicae. Unusual, because the author is “guided by the hermeneutic of the faith, but at the same time, taking account responsibly of the historical reason that is contained in that faith” (Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. II).
Thus, we are faced with a profound Christologic meditation which draws from the Gospels, including their background in the Old Testament, in the light of the Church’s great Tradition.
The Forewords for each of the three books clarify the intention of the author, who addresses two types of readers –the scholar of religion and the ordinary reader. To the scholar, he offers a confrontation with exegetic and historical literature. To the ordinary reader, the content of our faith in the Lord Jesus, presented simply and clearly.
Without sacrificing scientific rigor, the theologian Pope offers every reader the results of his own research “to know the face of the Lord” without any claims of speaking ex cathedra or magisterially.
Thus, one cannot fail to appreciate the humble and effortful effort of someone who, though invested with the supreme service of leading the universal Church, accepted the challenge of public contestation and cultural mediation in examining the texts most dear to Christians about their founding figure.
Therefore, what we have is both a cultural as well as a faith operation, since it places the message and the figure of Jesus of Nazareth at the disposal of everyone, believers (all who can read) as well as those who do not share the Christian faith.
His personal work of research on the figure and message of Jesus showed the need to confront historico-critical exegesis and undertake a constructive dialog in order to contribute to its theological evolution. The Pope intended this work as a service by way of conducting an inquiry.
From the standpoint of content, the Pope’s work has shown clearly and without effort the continuous dialog between the Old and New Testaments,
between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus professed by the faith [Is there a difference? I think he means ‘the Jesus of the Gospels’ and ‘the Jesus according to historico-critical exegetes'), between the rigor of scientific research and the theological illumination of the Gospel sources.
Through this process of ‘renewal in continuity’, the Church of the future can orient herself with her eyes fixed on Jesus – he who gives both the beginning and the fulfillment of the faith (cfr Heb 12,2).
That a theologian-Pope could bring to bear a long life of study and reflection on the mystery of Jesus Christ is a grace given to us for which we must thank God. But its consequence for the Church today perhaps is in the ongoing dialog among exegetes, theologians and pastors. In other words, what has been going on, in a singular manner, with the author, represents a model for the various components of the Church who study and announce Christ.
From what we read in Benedict XVI’s
Verbum Domini [his post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God], this is a task that must not only be placed on the agenda of the Church, but an exercise to be carried out without fear, even with the awareness of all the difficulties it entails.
“The authentic hermeneutic of faith carries with it some important consequences for the pastoral activity of the Church. The Synod Fathers recommended, for instance, a more assiduous contact among pastors, theologians and exegetes. It would be good for the bishops’ conferences to favor encounters that will promote such a communion in the service of the Word of God” (Proposition 28).
Such a cooperation would help everyone to carry out their own work for the benefit of the whole Church. In fact, to have this clear in the perspective of pastoral work means, even for scholars, to read Sacred Scripture as a communication from the Lord to men for their salvation.
Therefore, as the Dogmatic Constitution
Dei Verbum says, it is recommended that “Catholic exegetes and others who cultivate sacred theology, collaborating together with zeal, do all they can in order that, under the vigilance of the Sacred Magisterium, they may study and explain with appropriate teaching aids, so that the greatest number possible of ministers of the Divine Word, are up to the task of offering fruitfully to the People of God the nourishment of the Scriptures to enlighten the mind, to sustain the will, and to inflame the hearts of men with love of God [Dei verbum,23)]”
(Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 45).
With the image of Jesus’s blessing hands raised high, the Holy Father Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI concluded the 876 pages of his Christologic triptych, his last great act of love for the Church and for the world.
[Next to last! The last was his renunciation of the Papacy.]
With the same gesture, he had started his Pontificate, appearing as Pope for the first time in the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.
With the same gesture of hope, he bade farwell to the world in his last General Audience on February 27, 2013, after having chosen freely to renounce the Petrine ministry.
We are grateful to him, not because he chose to retire, but because he was a good father and a reliable teacher, and so he will be even from the cathedra of silence and prayer.
The Christ of faith and the Jesus of history:
Joseph Ratzinger’s Christological triptych
Translated from the 4/17/13 issue of
In 2012, Benedict XI finally finished and published the third and last part of his work on Jesus, around 900 pages written from 2004-2012. An exceptional and unprecedented fact in the history of the Papacy, just as the profile of Joseph Ratzinger – who dedicated the first fifty years of his life to study and university teaching – has been truly singular in the succession of Popes.
The profile is that of a theologian who knows Christian tradition well and is very attentive to history, an intellectual who never abandoned his reading and research, despite his new and grave responsibilities as a bishop, and later as the responsible authority for the doctrinal organism of the Church, and finally as Pope.
The worldwide impact of the three books, from the mediatic angle and the success they have had with readers, has been of remarkable consequence even if the intentions and the real weight of the work have somehow been obscured.
[???]
The first chapter of the third volume, dedicated to the canonical Gospel accounts of the childhood of Jesus, and which the author presents as a brief prologue to the entire work, says it explicitly, beyond the Forewords for each of the three books (of which the first has the greatest weight and breadth).
It is a little book written at the end of long study in which one finds, beyond an explanation of the Gospel texts, the author’s concluding reflections. An author who has the gift, unanimously acknowledged, of going to the essence and of clarity in the service of being able to speak to everyone.
The third volume opens with a scene - almost a flashback to the previous narrative which began with the Baptism on the Jordan, and therefore the start of the public life of Jesus – from John’s account of the last hours of Jesus when he was brought to Pontius Pilate, who represented the imperial power of Rome.
Pilate asked him, “Where do you come from?” (19,9). A question that is immediately placed alongside that asked by some residents of Nazareth in the Gospel of Mark: “Is this not the carpenter, son of Mary, brother of James, Jude and Simon? And are his sisters not among us?” (6,3).
At the heart of the entire work is the question about who Jesus is, as presented in the two Gospel texts cited, from persons who saw him as just another person but who did seem to sense dimly at the same time that he was different.
To this question, which has recurred down the centuries, the author has responded with his triptych on Jesus of Nazareth, three-fourths of it written during and despite the immense burden of the Pontificate. According to the Foreword of Volume 1. which examines the Gospel texts of the life of Jesus from his Baptism on the Jordan to the Transfiguration, he decided to undertake this work “after a long interior journey”.
In the Foreword to Volume II (2011), which follows the Gospel narratives from Jesus's entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, he expresses the hope that “I have been able to come close to the figure of our Lord in a way that can be useful to all readers who which to encounter Jesus and to believe in him”. To the hope expressed in the foreword to Volume III, that in this way, he may be able “to help many persons in their journey towards and with Jesus”.
A work therefore of spiritual reflection? Certainly, this dimension is explicit and present in these pages, signed by Joseph Ratzingfer/Benedict XVI to underscore its nature as a personal study that does not claim papal authority
(even if the distinction, which is very clear, is subtle and objectively not easy to make) [The writer of this article is creating a difficulty where there is none. How can the distinction be ‘very clear’ and then be called ‘subtle’? And no one has had any difficulty in understanding that Benedict XVI, even if he published all three books as Pope, is not presenting the JESUS books as part of his Magisterium, only as part of his personal theological work.]
But it is not merely a spiritual reflection, as the Foreword to Volume 1 makes clear. The work also illustrates the tension between the two classic poles of scientific research on the life of Jesus that has gone on for more than two centuries. In other words, from the historical figure of the Judean preacher who lived in the time of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, how much is conserved in the image evoked by the writings of his first followers, especially those of the canonical Gospels?
Thus, the question concerns – following a now-classic scheme – the relationship between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of the faith’ – two dimensions that increasingly grew wider apart in the 20th century after the work of Rudolf Bultmann, to the point of casting doubt and historically discrediting the sources of the Gospel. A critical point that Joseph Ratzinger met head on in the JESUS OF NAZARETH books from the outset.
The work thus examines the simple and radical question about the figure of the preacher from Nazareth who is present in all the New Testament books. What happened in the two decades between his crucifixion and the Christology that is attested by the letters of
St. Paul?
To this question, the author replies: “Is it not more logical, even from the historical angle, that the greatness was there from the beginning, and that the figure of Jesus had shattered all available categories that it could be understood only by starting from the mystery of God?” He answers Yes, and by doing so, overturns the thesis according to which high Christology (such as that expressed in the Gospel of John) was the fruit of subsequent theological elaboration by the Christian communities.
He is convinced that the Jesus of the Gospels – whom 20th-century research has called ‘the Christ of the faith’ – coincides with the historical Jesus: “I am cnonvinced of this, and I hope that the reader will agree, that this figure is much more logical, and from the historical point of view, even more understandable then the reconstructions which we have been presented with in recent decades. I maintain that this Jesus – the Jesus of the Gospels – is a figure who is historically sensible and convincing”.
The insistence on historical truth brings Ratzinger in his second Foreword to say that he has not attempted to write a Christology, but “to find the true Jesus”, on the basis alone of which a ‘Christology from the base’ can be possible.
The historical Jesus, as he appears in the main current of historic-critical exegesis on the basis of its assumed hermeneutic, is too insignificant in substance to have exercised such a great historical power. Moreover, he is too circumscribed by the past to make it possible to have a personal relationship with him.
And finally, in the Foreword to Volume III, the statement that “one cannot just leave the (Gospel) texts in the past” because in the face “of a text like the Bible, whose ultimate and most profound author, according to our faith, is God himself, the question about the relationship of the past with the present becomes indispensably part of the same conclusion". With which the seriousness of historical research is not diminished but augmented.
At the heart of Benedict XVI’s concerns – and in this work, he shows once again that he is both a theologian who is rigorously mindful of history as well as a wise pastor – is once more the credibility of the faith and its compatibility with reason. Which nonetheless do not coincide, even if reason is no foe to the heart from which the work was born.
Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger continues, with methodological awareness, in the Foreword to Volume I: “Of course, to believe that though he was a human being, he was God, and that he had made this known indirectly through his parables in a manner that became increasingly clear, goes well beyond the possibilities of the historico-critical method. On the contrary, if in the light of this conviction of faith, the texts are then read through the historico-critical method, by opening up to something far greater, these texts will disclose a life and a figure worthy of faith”.
For Benedict XVI, therefore, if the perspective of faith is quite distinct from that of history, neither is it in opposition to it, but that both perspectives enrich each other.
In the Preface to Volume II, Benedict XVI refers once more to historic-critical exegesis. He notes with satisfaction the reactions to Volume I and “the fact that the discussion over the method and hermeneutic of exegesis as well as of exegesis as a historical discipline that is also theological, is becoming more lively, notwithstanding the not inconsiderable resistance to new steps forward”.
After Volume I was published, some critics wrote that Joseph Ratzinger showed adequacy in employing the historico-critical method while having a dismissive attitude, although in the Foreword to that volume, he expressed great acknowledgment for the contributions of the method, calling it “an irremovable dimension of exegetical work’ and as a method that is “indispensable in considering the structure of the Christian faith”.
Of course, he also underscores the limitations of the method, because “individual Biblical texts must somehow relate to the vital process of Scripture which is at work in the texts”. In other words, the Biblical texts must be “reprised, understood and read in a new way. In re-reading, in progressive reading, through corrections, analyses and amplifications, the formation of Scripture is configured as a process of the word”.
In this perspective, the Bible is better understood through ‘canonical exegesis’ which developed in the United States especially during the 1980s, characterized by reading and interpreting Scriptural texts in relation to the whole as articulated in the canons of Judaism and Christianity.
Rztzinger defines it as ‘reading single texts from the Bible in the context of its entirety’, underscoring that it is “an essential dimension of exegesis that is not in opposition to the historico-critical method, but develops it in an organic manner to arrive at true and proper theology.”
In short, faith and history are woven together in the Pope’s work on Jesus, which has both heart and reason, to interpellate the reader, as he summarizes it well in the Foreword to Volume III: “Is it true what has been said? Does it concern me? If it does, how?”
Dense with content and at the same time fluid reading, the almost 900 pages of JESUS OF NAZARETH teem with topical themes and can be read at various levels. With many emphases and important statements that will certainly have consequences.
Among this, his attention to Judaism in Jesus’s time, his evident interest in an increasingly more profound relationship with contemporary Judaism, his ecumenical openness, the unified view of the Gospels with his evident and significant appreciation of the Gospel of John, and his dialog with contemporary Catholic and Protestant exegesis.
And through it all, the work captivates and fascinates with evident immediacy because of the personal involvement of the author. As the Swabian Lutheran Johann Albrecht Bengel, who had been one of the founders of textual analysis of the New Testament in the 18th century, advocated in Latin, "Apply yourself wholly to the text: apply the whole matter to yourself".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/04/2013 11:49]