Saturday, November 19, 2005

Scalia on "Meaning"

Review of Steven D. Smith’s “Law’s Quandary” by Antonin Scalia (First Things, November 2005 pp. 37-46)

At the philosophic nub of his review, Justice Scalia tries his hand at semiotics. He digs in his heels and takes the firm stand that words are signs or symbols that have meaning independent of any sign-giver. Standing alone, they have meaning unto themselves. He accuses Steven Smith’s “Law’s Quandary” of confusing the question whether words merely “convey a concept from one intelligent mind to another (communication) with the question whether words produce a concept in the person who reads or hears them (meaning).” Obviously, he understands the primary function of words as symbols to “produce” concepts.

Launching into concreteness, he asserts that “The bridegroom who says `I do,’ intending by that expression to mean `I do not,’ has not succeeded in communicating his intent; but what he has said unquestionably means that he consents to marriage.”

Or “If the ringing of an alarm bell has been established, in a particular building, as the conventional signal that the building must be evacuated, it will convey that meaning even if it is activated by a monkey.”

Or, “to a society in which the conventional means of communication is sixteenth-century English, The Merchant of Venice will be The Merchant of Venice even if it has been typed accidentally by a thousand monkeys randomly striking keys.”

Perhaps a rejoinder to this could be the amusement that a parrot or mynah bird would produced if trained to squawk “I do” in a matrimonial setting. We laugh because the symbolic sounds, “I do,” mean: “I intend to give myself to you forever. ” Those sounds are our conventional symbols signifying the interior intention of a self – an “I” – to give self to another. What’s funny is there is no “I” to give. Incongruity is funny. However, when the bridegroom – a self - says “I do” but means “I don’t,” the “I do” does mean something because there is an “I” who can intend meaning and therefore the words “I do” should “mean” “I do”(when in reality they “mean” “I do not”). Where there is an "I" speaking a word, the word is a symbol that should make sense (have meaning) because the "I" intends it. If he doesn't intend it, Scalia is right: the words still carry meaning; but not because they have self-evident meaning or some autonomous and objective intelligibilityi in themselves. Rather, every "I" before this has intended the words to mean "I give myself to you." This is convention. You cannot separate meaning from the intentionality of a subject. “I do” is assumed to have meaning in the mouth of the bridegroom because it is assumed that words as symbols have the meaning that an “I” intends them to have precisely as symbols. Otherwise, they would not be "symbols." However, the symbols may be false because “I do” should really be “I do not.” And so, we may say that symbols may be false, but not that they have meaning independent of an intending subject.

In the case of the fire bell, as the Justice says, the bell has meaning from convention that has been given to it by an intending subject or subjects. And that intention of persons has been so understood even if set off by a monkey.And indeed, The Merchant of Venice is The Merchant of Venice precisely because one thousand monkeys randomly striking keys could never have written it in an infinity of time.What is astounding is that Scalia takes Smith’s claim that “legal meaning depends on the (semantic) intentions of an author” as “extravagant and nonsensical.” Equally astounding is that he contrasts meaning with convention, as if convention has nothing to do with meaning.

Scalia and Dualism:

Scalia shows himself to be a child of his time as he and Alice in Wonderland “believe that words, like conventional symbols, do convey meaning, an objective meaning, regardless of what their author `intends’ them to mean.” He next says that “What is needed for a symbol to convey meaning is not an intelligent author, but a conventional understanding on the part of the readers or hearers that certain signs or certain sounds represent certain concepts.” But, one must ask, what is convention at all but the participated meaning that subjects impart to objective signs and symbols? Such a radical separation of subject and object is nothing but the defunct dualism that has impaired the very use of reason and has led us into the “dictatorship of relativism” and the nihilism of absolutes that then-Cardinal Ratzinger announced on the cusp of his becoming Benedict XVI.

Ratzinger: Toward a Solution:

Since Scalia’s point turns on the hermeneutic of words, the analogy of Josef Ratzinger’s (now Benedict XVI’s) discoveries in the interpretation of the words of Scripture could be helpful. Ratzinger had difficulty with his director Michael Schmaus in the approval of his habilitation thesis as professor of theology in Germany. In his research, he had found in St. Bonaventure that the words of Scripture were not in themselves “revelation” as in “meaning.” Rather, that Revelation was an action of the Person-subject of the revealing Christ that was “deposited” in the words of Scripture. That Scripture itself was not revelation, and that its real meaning could not be found objectively in itself independently of the revealing Subject and the believing self. The words themselves did not have the full meaning. He wrote: "`revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the conciliar discussions on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura (`by Scripture alone’), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[1]

It is revolutionary in an epistemological climate dominated by positivism to affirm “that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down.” I submit that if the involvement of the self as believer is constitutive of the revealed meaning of the words of Scripture, it is analogically supportive of Smith’s contention that “legal meaning depends on the (semantic) intentions of an author” and far from “extravagant and nonsensical” as Scalia maintains. The question is large and involves the escape from or imprisonment within the hard dualism of mind and matter that has come to us for the past 400 years. Scalia works within that dualism, and being a lover of truth and impatient with subjective whimsicalness, he takes the hard road of the plaster cast that protects the broken leg until it heals. As he once wrote, “You can’t beat somebody with nobody.” Within dualism, he has nothing real except the word. As a judge, his task is the interpretation of the law. His workbench is words that express and hold that law. His mission is not judicial activism that would make law. That is the task of the elected legislature in a representative democracy. The received philosophic heritage has given him no tools to ground truth ontologically on the side of subjectivity. So he chooses the objective realism of words and - not being able to refute philosophy without doing philosophy – he inevitably backs himself into the corner of legal positivism.

One of the great minds in semiotics, Owen Barfield (an “Inkling” with J.R.R.Tolkien, Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis, the latter calling him “the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers”) remarked, “Lovers do not intend to talk about the emotion of love; they intend to talk qualitatively about each other, and a speaker’s intention is his meaning; indeed it is another word for it.”[2]

Breaking the Dilemma of Dualism.

How great it would be if Scalia could open himself to the discovery that the “I” can be experienced as being, in fact, as the “privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry” (Fides et Ratio #83) and so ground the “self evident truths” and “inalienable rights” that are symbolized in the wording of America’s constitutive law. When asked why he has no recourse to natural law as the intention that is the meaning of our law, he retorted (to me), “which natural law, Brennan’s or mine?”

The One "Natural Law:"

Irving D. Yalom, long time professor at Stanford University, in his existential therapy suggests that the anxieties experienced in society, such as fear, guilt, yearning for ecstacy, sadness and depression, correspond to the real absolutes of Christian Revelation such as death, judgment, Heaven and Hell. We fear death; we are guilty in the anticipation of judgment; we yearn for joy, and not finding it in the asceticism of self-gift, procure it for ourselves in orgasmic sexuality and the technology of drugs; we experience sadness in isolation that ends in depression. There is no escaping the effects of the inner ontology of the human person that grounds the one "natural law" (or, better, law of the person). Man is constantly experiencing the truth or falsity of the real self. If the self were not real, there would be no experiences. The cartesian self of consciousness is an abstract fiction.

Remarking on the deep experiences of man's revealed origin, John Paul II suggested that "The important thing is not that these experiences belong to man's prehistory (to his `theological prehistory'), but that they are always at the root of every human experience. That is true even if in the evolution of ordinary human existence, little attention is paid to these essential experiences. They are so intermingled with the ordinary things of life that we do not generally notice their extraordinary character" ("Theology of the Body," 51) .Corresponding to these experiences, which are ultimately "conscience" is the above mentioned ontological structure of the person. Ratzinger commented: "This means that the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man's being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from whtin. He sees: That's it! That is what my nature points to and seeks" (Conscience and Truth, 1990). To grasp this would liberate Scalia from the tyrrany of being trapped in symbols the meanings for which he cannot explain except by bluster. The truths of the American founding cannot be mined only in the wording of the Constitution and Bill of Rights but in the original intent behind them, which historically was a Christian experience.

Conclusion:

It is worth repeating: without the lived experience of Christian faith as an act of self-transcendence, there is no breaking the dilemma of Enlightenment dualism with the bogus choice of subjective relativism or reductive objectivism. The fact that faith is an act and involves a lived experience means that the believing subject is being. This experience of self-transcendence is accompanied by the consciousness of the “self-evident” truths and inalienable rights grounding the American experiment in liberty. By the experience of self-transcendence, we regain the self-evident consciousness (truth) of the dignity of the human person with inalienable human rights that ground and protect the separation of Church and State, and the consciousness that is the truth and intention of the words of our law that must be sought out in judicial interpretation.

[1] J. Ratzinger, Milestones, Memoirs 1927-1977 (1997) 108-109.[2] Own Barfield, “Language and Discovery,” The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays, Wesleyan (1987).





Thursday, November 10, 2005

Self Knowledge and Knowledge of God: November 11, 2005

Self Knowledge and Knowledge of God

"Knowledge by Experience of the Self."

1) We are confronting the Absolute existentially in death, judgement, Heaven and Hell. It will happen to you necessarily, and it is final.

2) All experience involves the self. There is no such thing as experience where there is no one experiencing. Experience is an action of the self that is cognitive. Karol Wojtyla introduced “The Acting Person” with: “Man’s experience of anything outside of himself is always associated with the experience of himself, and he never experiences anything external without having at the same time the experience of himself” (3).

3) Experience works on two (2) levels: 1) sense + abstract thought; 2) the acting self involving cognition such as love, responsibility, freedom, obligation, guilt, joy, etc.

Meaning of Experience: “sense of reality” and “sense of knowing.” Wojtyla wants to disclose “experience” as larger than just sensation. He struggles with this on 115 -117 of “The Problem of Experience in Ethics.”[1]

Wojtyla’s rendering of Christian faith as the response of the whole person as being that becomes gift is a new metaphysics that embraces the two traditions of classical metaphysics (reaching it apogee in St. Thomas) and modern subjectivity from Descartes to the present day.
There is a constellation of thinkers[2] who have been circling around this same flame with this same insight but have never passed through the flame of recognizing the ontological source of their deep awareness. However, it has been Wojtyla who has passed through this flame and struck at the heart of both dimensions – the experience of the I, and the experience of the I experiencing things as sensed.. Wojtyla has had the sensitivity not to confuse the I with consciousness as thought. The disclosure of this hitherto obfuscated experience binds together the two seemingly incompatible threads of idealism and empiricism that have come down to us as static intelligibility (the universal concept) and ceaselessly changing irrationality of a constantly changing world. Wojtyla, instead of trying to solve the conundrum from within conceptual rationality, has begun from lived experience, concretely the mysticism of lived Christian faith as a privileged access to an as yet undisclosed dimension of being - the “I.” For him, the truth of Being[3] is the dynamism of self-transcendence as found in action, or as we find in Gaudium et Spes #24, one comes to the truth of oneself by the dynamics of the act of self-gift. In this regard, Josef Seifert has pointed out,

“The philosophical originality of the work [The Acting Person] manifests itself especially in the deliberate attempt to overcome a one-sidedness in the philosophical approach to the person which has dominated philosophy since Descartes, but which actually goes back to Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. The one-sidedness in question lies in approaching the person primarily through knowledge and cognition. The book The Acting Person tries to correct this one-sidedness by viewing the person primarily as he manifests himself in action, and action as it reveals the person. This approach itself is highly original…”[4] (italics mine).


1) The experience of the self when sensing and conceptualizing is objectifying, reductive and leaves the existential reality of the self out, as well as the existential reality of the object. As Walker Percy says: “The fateful flaw of human semiotics is this: that of all the objects in the entire Cosmos which the sign-user can apprehend through the conjoining of signifier and signified (word uttered and thing beheld), there is one which forever escapes his comprehension – and that is the sign-user himself.
“Semiotically, the self is literally unspeakable to itself. One cannot speak or hear a word which signifies oneself, as one can speak or hear a word signifying anything else, e.g., apple, Canada, 7-Up.
“The self of the sign-user can never be grasped, because, once the self locates itself at the dead center of its world, there is no signified to which a signifier can be joined to make a sign. The self has no sign of itself. No signifier applies. All signifiers apply equally
…. (see Lost in the Cosmos 107 *)

2) The experience of the self mastering the self, possessing the self, governing the self and finally either giving or taking back the self for itself gives one a consciousness of self as “I.” That consciousness appears as a value of self-approval or self-disapproval, either “good” or “bad.” And if the self is real being (and just thought), then the experience of good and bad is empirically based in concrete, existing being. Ultimately, the experience of the self conforms or disconforms with the ontological tendency as created persons in the image of relational Persons. If we have been affirmed and have made the gift of ourselves, we experience ourselves as O.K., or “good.” If not, if we have not been affirmed and loved for ourselves simply because we are what and who we are, then we cannot accept ourselves, nor others, nor the world. All of the neuroses of self-hatred, unworthiness, lack of self-confidence which boils over into criticism, negativity, contempt for the other and ultimately into revolutionary disconformity with the world of social injustice such as Communist revolution and terrorism, stem from the experience of evil in the self and therefore the recognition of evil outside the self.

This experience of real value – good and evil - is achieved not by reflective thinking but by the “mirroring” of these moments of self-determination in which the self is conscious of passing from potency to act in itself by its own agency. The grasping of the passage of the “I” – by Wojtyla’s unique attempt at phenomenological description – from potency to act testifies to the ontological reality of the “I” as totally transcending consciousness, although consciousness is the vehicle of this self perception. This is the same account John Henry Newman gives of the experience of causality that is not found in the senses(see footnote 2). Notice that this is not done by reflective thinking but by direct pre-conceptual mirroring. There are no concepts. Therefore there is no medium that would distort the perception. It is for this reason that John Paul II says in Fides et Ratio #83 that “in a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being [actu essendi], and hence with metaphysical enquiry.”

This is a huge step in the history of thought since 300 hundred years of Enlightenment thought had not known how to solve the riddle of the dualism established by the Cartesian “cogito” as irreducibly other than the empirically senses “body.” The best philosophic minds of the period perceived that good and evil resided in the self (Kant, concretely, found value to be category of the practical intellect), but they were not able to see through “consciousness” to self as “being.” Wojtyla was able to do so from the experience of himself as believer and real being. Did he not suggest that the entire proposal of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council was the question, “What does it mean to be a believer…” rather then “What should men believe?”[5] He steeped himself in the methodology of phenomenology that is the description of inner experience and discovered that there was indeed an experience of the self as being in the moral act. And that experience was not about thought but about being, the being of the “I.” In the light of it, John Paul II was able to give an account of the faith experience as an experience of the absolute: “what good must I do to gain eternal life” (Mt. 19, 16)? The answer to that “good” is the radical response: “go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt. 19, 16-21). Make the gift of yourself!
In sum, as Josef Seifert says, all the philosophic inquiry prior to Wojtyla sought the initial access to being through the senses. This includes the latter Greeks like Plato and Aristotle through St. Thomas and down through a scholasticism that became increasingly rationalized. The only experience that was acknowledged was the sensible: Nihil in intellectu nisi in sensu (“There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses”). But we have learned from modern science that Nihil in sensu nisi per intellectum (“There is nothing in the sense without the prior action of the intellect”). For example, we sense the sun rising and setting, but the intelligence corrects the senses that it is the earth that is rotating, and not the sun that is moving. What is actually taking place is not the way it is perceived through sensation. “The senses experience nothing if no question has been raised, if there is no preceding command from the intellect without which sensory experience cannot take place. Experimentation is possible only if natural science has elaborated an intellectual presupposition in terms of which it controls nature and on the basis of which it can bring about new experiences. In other words, it is only when the intellect sheds light on sensory experience that this sensory experience has any value as knowledge and that experiences thus become possible.”[6]
Ratzinger points out that this lesson learned from modern science is exactly what he had discovered in his study of the meaning of revelation and faith in St. Bonaventure: “I had ascertained that in Bonaventure (as well as in theologians of the thirteenth century) there was nothing corresponding to our conception of `revelation,’ by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: it has even become a part of linguistic usage to refer to Sacred Scripture simply as `revelation.’ Such an identification would have been unthinkable in the language of the High Middle Ages. Here, `revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura (`by Scripture alone’), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[7]

The revelation that takes place because of the giving of the self is the goodness that is God and is experienced in the self on the occasion of responding to that Good. In a word, like is known by like; Good is known by good.

Value


3) The Experience of the “I” as the value “Good:”

a) The “good” is the “I” experienced (not an a priori nor deduced) as affirmed by another:

“The root of man’s joy is the harmony he enjoys with himself. He lives in this affirmation. And only one who can accept himself can also accept the thou, can accept the world. The reason why an individual cannot accept the thou, cannot come to terms with him, is that he does not like his own I and, for that reason, cannot accept a thou.
“Something strange happens here. We have seen that the inability to accept one’s I leads to the inability to accept a thou. But how does one go about affirming, assenting to, one’s I? The answer may perhaps be unexpected: We cannot do so by our own efforts alone. Of ourselves, we cannot come to terms with ourselves. Our I becomes acceptable to us only if it has first become acceptable to another I. We can love ourselves only if we have first been loved by someone else. The life a mother gives to her child is not just physical life; she gives total life when she takes the child’s tears and turns them into smiles. It is only when life has been accepted and is perceived as accepted that it becomes also acceptable. Man is that strange creature that needs not just physical birth but also appreciation if he is to subsist…When the initial harmony of our existence has been rejected, when that psycho-physical oneness has been ruptured by which the `Yes, it is good that you are alive’ sinks, with life itself, deep into the core of the unconscious – then birth itself is interrupted; existence itself is not completely established.”
[8]



b) The “good” is the “I” experienced as affirming the other: This is the great work of Veritatis Splendor, Chapter 1, #6-21.

Veritatis Splendor opens chapter 1 with “Teacher, “what good must I do to gain eternal life?” (Mt. 19, 16) and receiving the answer, “go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt. 19, 16-21). That is, the good as absolute value (“You therefore are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Mt. 5, 48]) is the action of self-transcendence that is relation. This action belongs to empirical experience that has forbidden us to look for absolutes in the sensible, contingent finitude of experience. But Wojtyla has opened up another level of experience that has no mediation either in sensation or in conceptual symbolization. (And that is why it was not discovered by entire previous tradition of philosophic thought. Only phenomenology has yielded it). By describing an experience that is consciousness but is not symbolized by concepts, Wojtyla has given us the unmediated experience of the being that is “I” for which we have no symbol or category. This is the key to answering the whole Enlightenment dualism that had split thought from things. They sought an empirical experience of absolute value. Failing to find it, they denied the absolute, and have delivered to us the “dictatorship of relativism.” Wojtyla has retrieved this experience and the absolute in the experience of the self in the act of faith. Hence, the goal of all direction (as well as all catechetics) is the recovery of this experience: to listen and freely let oneself be controlled, rather than control.



Faith As Existential Experience:

[It is reported that the theme of Benedict’s first encyclical is a 46-page spiritual meditation focusing in large part on “Eros” (love) and “Logos” (the word) and their relationship to the person of Christ. The below is Ratzinger’s development of that]

“In `existential experience,’ on the contrary, the decisive factor is not control but letting oneself be controlled and the new way of `going where one would rather not go’ that is thus made possible… Let us quote Hans Urs von Balthasar on this subject: `It can be said with certainty that there is no Christian experience that is not the fruit of the overcoming of one’s own self-will or, at least, the determination to overcome it. And with this self-will we must include also all our willful efforts to evoke religious experiences on the basis of our own initiative and by our own methods and techniques.’ `It is only when we renounce all partial experiences that the wholeness of being will be bestowed upon us. God requires unselfish vessels into which to pour his own essential unselfishness.’[9]

Ratzinger continues: “I regard the last point as essential. To say that God is Trinitarian means, in fact, to confess that he is self-transcendence, `unselfishness,’ and, consequently, that he can be known only in what reflects his own nature. From this there follows an important catechetical conclusion: the being-led to a religious experience, which must start in the place where man finds himself, can yield no fruit if it is not , from the beginning, directed to the acquisition of a readiness for renunciation. The moral training that, in a certain sense, belongs to the natural sciences, as does the asceticism of transcendence, becomes more radical here because of the meeting of the two freedoms…. The possibility of `seeing’ God, that is, of knowing him at all, depends on one’s purity of heart, which means a comprehensive process in which man becomes transparent, in which he does not remain locked in upon himself, in which he learns to give himself and, in doing so, becomes able to see. From this perspective of Christian faith, we might say that religious experience in its most exalted Christian form bears the mark of the Cross. It embraces the basic model of human existence, the transcendence of self. The Cross redeems, it enables us to see. And now we discover that the structure of which we are speaking is not just structure; it reveals content as well.”[10] The Biblical Example: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. They talk “thing” (water). He suggests water of eternal life. She, unknowingly, asks for it. He challenges her to transcend herself by telling the truth about herself: “Bring me your husband.” She answers: “I have no husband.” She reveals self. He then reveals Himself: “I, who speak with you, am he.” That is, to know Him who is self-gift, one must become self-gift. One experiences Christ and knows Him when one experiences self as self-transcending. Ratzinger will say importantly below: “One must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God” And one knows self only when there is the existential experience of self-gift, of telling the truth about self which is already the faith of entrusting self to the Other. Keep in mind that the only “I” you can experience is your own “I.” You experience that when you freely determine self, i.e., master self, get possession of self and therefore are able to make the gift if you so choose. Then, in doing that, you experience yourself as imaging God and therefore being like Him [one being with Him] who is the image of God as pure Relation: Logos. You know yourself as image, and you know Him who is the prototypical image. You are then able to say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God [“I and the Father are one” Jn. 10, 30] because I, too, am Christ the Son of the living God [by sacramental and participation].
Therefore, we do not know God the way we are in ourselves, but the way He is in Himself. Christ is total relation to the Father. And we achieve this likeness to His relationality by this internal experience of self-determination in the act of faith that is the gift of the whole person, and not merely the accidental activity of the faculties of intellect and will. The whole self must be given to be likened to this Relationality, which is symbolized in the changing of the name of Simon, son of John into “Peter” (rock). The name of Jesus Christ is “cornerstone” (Acts 4, 11). The name of one who “knows” Him, who reads Him from within the self (intellegere = legere ab intus [to read from within]), knows Him as a Self, an “I.” One must experience oneself as relation to know Him who is relation. This unmediated experience (no sensation or concepts/symbols) of self as gift (and therefore as relation) is transferred to the Person of Christ. Thus one knows the divine Person of Christ as one knows self experientially.
This is the reason for a deeper examination of conscience as to whether one is really making the gift of self – or simply running on fumes.
______________________________________________

Josef Ratzinger on John 4: The Samaritan Woman and the Experience of God

“This periscope seems to me to be a beautiful and concrete illustration of what we have just been saying. It opens with the meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the context of a normal, human, everyday experience – the experience of thirst, which is surely one of man’s most primordial experiences. In the course of the conversation, the subject shifts to that thirst that is a thirst for life, and the point is made that one must drink again, must come again and again to the source. In this way, the woman is made aware of what in actuality she, like every human being, has always known but to which she has not always adverted: that she thirsts for life itself [Zoë] and that all the assuaging that she seeks and finds cannot slake this living, elemental thirst. The superficial `empirical’ experience has been transcended.
“But what has been revealed is still of this world. It is succeeded, therefore, by one of those conversations on two levels that are so characteristic of John’s technique of recording dialogue, the Johannine `misunderstanding,’ as it is called by the exegetes. From the fact that Jesus and the Samaritan woman, though they use the same words, have in mind two very different levels of meaning and, separated thus by the ambiguity of human speech, are speaking at cross-purposes, there is manifested the lasting incommensurability of faith and human experience however extensive that experience may be. For the woman understands by “water’ that of which the fairy tales speak: the elixir of life by virtue of which man will not die and his thirst for life that is familiar to her, whereas Jesus wants to reveal to her the true life, the Zoë.
“In the next stage, the woman’s full attention has been attracted to the subject of a thirst for life. She no longer asks for something, for water or for any other single thing, but for life, for herself. This explains the apparently totally unmotivated interpolation by Jesus: `Go and call your husband!’ (Jn. 4, 16), It is both intentional and necessary, for her life as a whole, with all its thirst, is the true subject here. As a result, there comes to light the real dilemma, the deep-seated waywardness, of her existence: she is brought face to face with herself. In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God. Admittedly, the circle could also be closed in the opposite direction: it could be said that it is only by first knowing God that one can properly know oneself.
“But we anticipate. As we have said, the woman must come first to the knowledge of herself, to the acknowledgement of herself. For what she makes now is a kind of confession: a confession in which, at last, she reveals herself unsparingly. Thus a new transition has occurred –to preserve our earlier terminology, a transition from empirical and experimental to `experiential’ experience, to `existential experience.’ The woman stands face to face with herself. It is no longer a question now of something but of the depths of the I itself and, consequently, of the radical poverty that is man’s I-myself, the place where this I is ultimately revealed behind the superficiality of the something. From this perspective, we might regard the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman as the prototype of catechesis. It must lead from the something to the I. Beyond every something it must ensure the involvement of man himself, of this particular man. It must produce self-knowledge and self-acknowledgment so that the indigence and need of man’s being will be evident.
“But let us return to the biblical text! The Samaritan woman has achieved this radical confrontation with her own self. In the moment in which this occurs, the question of all questions arises always and of necessity; the question about oneself becomes a question about God. It is only apparently without motivation but in reality inevitable that the woman should ask now: How do things stand with regard to adoration, that is, with regard to God and my relationship to him? (cf. Jn 4, 20). The question about foundation and goal makes itself heard. Only at this point does the offering of Jesus’ true gift become possible. For the `gift of God’ is God himself, God precisely as gift – that is, the Holy Spirit (cf. v10-24). At the beginning of the conversation, there seemed no likelihood that his woman, with her obviously superficial way of life, would have any interest in the Holy Spirit. But one she was led to the depths of her own being the question arose that must always arise if one is to ask the question that burns in one’s soul. Now the woman is aware of the real thirst by which she is driven. Hence, she can at last learn that it is for which this thirst thirsts.
“It is the purpose and meaning of all catechesis to lead to this thirst. For one who knows neither that there is a Holy Spirit nor that one can thirst for him, it cannot begin otherwise than with sensory perception. Catechesis must lead to self-knowledge, to the exposing of the I, so that it lets the masks fall and moves out of the realm of something into that of being. Its goal is conversion, that conversion of man that results in his standing face to face with himself. Conversio (`conversion,’ metanoia) is identical with self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is the nucleus of all knowledge. Conversio is the way in which man finds himself and thus now the question of all questions: How can I worship God? It is the question that means his salvation; it is the raison d’etre of catechesis.”
[11]


Amnesia

Sin is the act of turning back on self. It is the loss of the act of self-gift that had been the obedience to till the garden and name the animals. As Adam had experienced the “original solitude” that is crossing the threshold from being “Adam” – man - as “rational animal” to being a subject – “I” – as God is a “We,” now by sin, that experience of subjectivity is lost. And with it the consciousness of being image of God in act. Hence, sin and bourgeois life where the self is unengaged in self-transcending as gift leaves the human person with an ignorance of self.

The experience of responding to the call of Revelation in the Person of Christ activates the “I” precisely as “I” and awakens reason to the ever fuller exposure to the act of being that is its light. This is the profound reason for the statements of Ratzinger that “reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational…”[12] The goal of spiritual direction is always to activate the person to give self in prayer (that is the first act of faith [fourth part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church]) so as to climb the road of anamnesis (non-forgetting). Ratzinger reinterprets natural law in terms of the law of the person (or as “Law of the Gift” as in John Paul II). It is the recovery of conscience as the memory of what it was like to experience God as Person in Paradise. This means that “the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (bot are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.”[13]

It is because of this that Ratzinger quotes John Henry Newman’s remark that “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please, - still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”[14] This means that the voice of the truth of the being of the person must be liberated by the action of self transcendence, and it is to this voice that seeks the absolute that the voice of Revelation interpreted by Tradition and Magisterium answers. The answering voice is not imposed on the person but reveals to the person what he is seeking from within his own being as imaging person. But first that ontological tendency must be activated. That is the deep work of spiritual direction.

Sincerity


As in the periscope of the Samaritan woman, sincerity as gift of self must be elicited from the person. One must tell the truth about self.

“We never really face ourselves, until we face someone else as well, some other human being. This is, for example, at the heart of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. You must not only face your faults and the harm they have caused, but you must face someone else and admit this to him. The very existence of the Sacrament of Penance is psychologically sound. This is why we need confession of our sins before another human being.
“It is all too easy to try to console ourselves by thinking that we need only go to God. In fact, this really means that we simply stay inside ourselves. I can speak of this with a good deal of certainty, because it is part of my own experience. For a long time I preached on penance and spoke of the necessity of it, but I was not really using it. There were parts of me that I did not want anyone to see, and I was convinced that I could handle them myself somehow, and then come before God or another human being with the satisfaction of being repentant, but having done a good job at self-rehabilitation. It did not work…”

“Why must we face God and another? Because we cannot change ourselves, and we must be able to see that clearly. We must never make the mistake of thinking that we can change ourselves by will power…
“By using will power I had tried to change myself. I prayed for will power, and God gave me will power. Jesus said that if we pray for a fish or bread, God will not give us a snake or a stone. But what does He do if we pray for snakes and stones? And that was really what I was dong! I was not asking for the grace to be changed internally, I was merely asking for self-control over my own actions. And that I received. It was usually enough to stop sinful actions. But it was never enough to change my own sinfulness, because that is never changed by mere will power. If the sin was in my heart, it was still destructive whether it took the form of actions or not.

I can look back now and understand the cause for what I was doing. I was trying to cure myself so that I could somehow stand before God and be commended. I could stand before Him and deserve to be loved. But that was ridiculous. There is no way in which any of us can earn love. God simply loves. He knows my sinfulness better than I do. But he can change me from within, and yet there Iwas praying for the ppower to do it all by myself. I was simply standing in His way. Will power could never accomplish what I needed, because greater will power made me rely more and more onmyself, and that was the problem, not the solution….

“True victory over self is the victory of God in the man, not of the man alone.”
Go back to the absolute need for affirmation to have an identity and the desire to master self. This affirmation is the love of God for me that gives me precisely my “I.” Without this there can be neither self-identity nor the desire that becomes the freedom of self mastery.

Continuing need of the Sacrament of Penance:

“We all have the tendency to take our lives back into our own hands, especially when things seem to be going well. This is what makes regular use of the sacrament so important, because it causes us to continue to face ourselves. Regular confession lacks the drama of great conversion, but it is regular confession which sustains the conversion.

“Signs of the need: Hurried and harried. Rushed and restless. Impatient. Being constantly annoyed by the faults of others. Have a confessor who knows you. Realize that the form of your confession will change somewhat.”
[15]

The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis): A third example of the role of mentors in The Great Divorce occurs in the episode of the Ghost and the red lizard. Embarrassed by the creature's constant talking and its conspicuous position, the Ghost is leaving Heaven when he encounters a flaming Spirit. The Spirit acts as a mentor with his offer to kill the lizard. This mentor differs, however, from the others. He does not speak of love or theology, he only offers the Ghost a choice and exhibits the power of God to heal. Still, this approach qualifies him as a mentor. When the Ghost tries to rationalize his decision to keep the lizard, the Spirit does not try to persuade him; instead, he rejects the Ghost's self-serving arguments and offers again, "Shall I kill it?" (Divorce 97-99). What the Spirit lacks in eloquence, he makes up for in power; he is the only mentor able to take care of the problem on his own. Unlike the Dwarf, this Ghost listens to his mentor and is freed from his bondage.

“I saw coming towards us a Ghost who carried something on his shoulder….What sat on his shoulder was a little red lizard…. As we caught sight of him he turned his head to the reptile with a snarl of impatience. "Shut up, I tell you!" he said….
"Would you like me to make him quiet?" said the flaming Spirit…."Of course I would," said the Ghost."Then I will kill him," said the Angel, taking a step forward…."….I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it.""The gradual process is of no use at all.""….How can I tell you to kill it? You’d kill me if you did…..""It won’t. But supposing it did?""You’re right. It would be better to be dead than live with this creature."
39

A True Feminist Epistemology


It is true that Western thought has been dominated by a male epistemology, which Ratzinger would characterize as “experimental.” It is the attempt to dominate reality by controlling it, rather than listening and receiving it. The result, or course, is distortion and necrology of the real. If the approach to reality is analysis, which demands breaking it down into parts, the result inevitably will be to kill it. Ultimately, to render reality intelligible to us, we have to – Procrustean like – make it fit into our conceptual categories. Self-gift as reception is distinctively female and must be the other epistemological dimension that we must assume. Hence, Sandra Harding as editor introducing others on this topic:

“The attempts to add understandings of women to our knowledge of nature and social life have led to the realization that there is precious little reliable knowledge to which to add them. A more fundamental project now confronts us. We must root out sexist distortions and perversions in epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and the philosophy of science – in the `hard core’ of abstract reasoning thought most immune to infiltration by social values…. Human experience differs according to the kinds of activities and social relations in which humans engage. Women’s experience systematically differs from the male experience upon which knowledge claims have been grounded. Thus the experience on which the prevailing claims to social and natural knowledge are founded is, first of all, only partial human experience only partially understood: namely, masculine experience as understood by men. However, when this experience is presumed to be gender-free – when the male experience is taken to be the human experience – the resulting theories, concepts, methodologies, inquiry goals and knowledge-claims distort human social life and human thought…. (Contributors to this volume) show how men’s understanding of masculine experience shape Aristotle’s biology and metaphysics, the very definition of `the problems of philosophy’ in Plato, Descartes, Hobbes and Rousseau, the `adversary method’ which is the paradigm of philosophic reasoning, contemporary philosophical psychology, individuation principles in philosophical ontology, functionalism in sociological and biological theory, evolutionary theory, the methodology of political science, Marxist political economy, and concept ions of `objective inquiry’ in the social and natural sciences. On the other hand, many of the contributors also begin the feminist `reconstructive project.’ They identify distinctive aspects of women’s experience which can provide resources for the construction of more representatively human understanding. Some of the essayists focus extensively on this reconstructive project, showing us what is required in social practice and in scientific inquiry to make women’s experience into a foundation for a more adequate and truly human epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science.;” Sandra Haring and Merrill B. Hintikka, Discovering Reality D. Reidel (1983) Introduction IX-X.

[1] Person in Community, Lang (1993) 117- 119.
[2] John Henry Newman, "The assent which we give to the proposition, as a first principle, that nothing happens without a cause, is derived, in the first instance, from what we know of ourselves; and we argue analogically from what is within us [experienced] to what is external to us. One of the first experiences of an infant is that of his willing and doing; and, as time goes on, one of the first temptations of the boy is to bring home to himself the fact of his sovereign arbitrary power, though it be at the price of waywardness, mischievousness, and disobedience. And when his parents, as antagonists of this willfulness, begin to restrain him, and to bring his mind and conduct into shape, then he has a second series of experiences of cause and effect, and that upon a principle or rule. Thus the notion of causation is one of the first lessons, which he learns from experience, that experience limiting it to agents possessed of intelligence and will. It is the notion of power combined with a purpose and an end" Grammar of Assent, p. 70-71; Michael Polanyi, Walker Percy; Charles Peirce, Bernard Lonergan, etc.


[3] The justification for alternating between uppercase B and lowercase b will be the immediate and/or mediate access to reality by two types of experience.
[4] “Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) As Philosopher And The Cracow/Lublin School Of Philosophy,” Aletheia, Vol. II, 1981, p. 132.
[5] Karol Wojtyla, Sources of Renewal, Harper and Row (1979) 17.
[6] J. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology Ignatius (1987) 348.
[7] J. Ratzinger, Milestones Ignatius (1997) 108.
[8] See Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love Ignatius (1997) 163-210.
[9] Josef Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology Ignatius (1987) 353-355.
[10] Ibid. 349-350.
[11] Ibid. 353-355.
[12] J. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Crossroad (1988) 218.
[13] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” The Pope John Center, Proceedings of the Tenth Bishops’ Workshop, Dallas, Texas (1991) 18-22.
[14] Ibid. 14-15.
[15] Talk given in Washington, D.C. in 1991 by Msgr. James Mulligan.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Workshop: Fundamental Theology: October 31-November 5, 2005:

The Challenge as Seen by Benedict XVI:

“Ought we to accept modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution? Can this modern way of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great intuitions and the great gifts of the faith.”
“Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers, relegate it to the library as historically unsustainable, or we must reject modernity.
“And I think that the gift, the light of the faith , must be dominant, but the light of the faith has also the capacity to take up into itself the true human lights, and for this reason the struggles over exegesis and the liturgy for me must be inserted into this great, let us call it epochal, struggle over how Christianity, over how the Christian responds to modernity, to the challenge of modernity.”
“And it seems to me, that this was the true intention of the Second Vatican Council, to go beyond an unfruitful and overly narrow apologetic to a true synthesis with the positive elements of modernity, but at the same time, let us say, to transform modernity, to heal it of its illnesses, by means of the light and strength of the faith.”
[1]



Context in which we find ourselves to do “Fundamental Theology:” Dictatorship of relativism. Cause: hegemony of reductivist positivism.

“Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be `tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine,’ seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.
“We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An `adult’ faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth.
“We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith – only faith – that creates unity and is fulfilled in love…. Make truth in love [facientes veritatem in charitate]
.[2]

Necessity of the Mystical (Mystagogia):

Proposition 16” of the “propositions” of the Synod on the Eucharist (October 23, 2005)

Mystagogic Catechesis

[Mystagogy is consciousness of mystery as opposed to the problematic solved by concepts = “systematic understanding”]

“Not neglecting the systematic understanding of the contents of the faith, the ancient tradition of the Church reminds that the Christian journey is experience born from the proclamation and deepened in catechesis, which finds its source and summit in the liturgical celebration. [Mystagogic consciousness develops with the experience of self-giving: the common experience is “knowing” but not being able to say].Faith and sacraments are two complementary aspects of the Church's sanctifying activity. Awakened by the proclamation of the Word of God, faith is nourished and grows in the encounter of grace with the risen Lord in the sacraments[3]. Faith is expressed in the rite, and the rite reinforces and strengthens faith. Hence the exigency of a mystagogic endeavor lived in the community and with its help, which is based on three essential elements: -- Interpretation of the rites in the light of biblical events, in conformity with the tradition of the Church; -- Appreciation of the sacramental signs; -- Meaning of the rites in respect of the Christian commitment in life. It would be desirable to develop the mystagogic method above all with children receiving first communion and confirmation.”




Ratzinger: Interview[4]:

“Why publish a `universal catechism’ in 1992? Were previous catechisms inadequate?

Ratzinger: “The reason is that today we are in a situation exactly like that at the time of the council of Trent, which, held in the middle of the 16th century, marked the dawn of modern times.
“Now we are close to the end of a millennium and in an entirely new historical period, indicated by schemas of thought, science, technology, culture and civilization, breaking completely with all that we knew previously.
“This is why it was necessary to reformulate the logic and the sum total of the Christian faith. This is the fruit of a reflection, over some years, by the universal Church to rethink, re-articulate and bring up-to-date her doctrine.”


“You are, like the Pope, extremely worried by the crisis of faith in modern society. And the new situation in Europe only aggravates the diagnosis since in your last work on Europe you go as far as to say that nihilism is rapidly taking the place of Marxism. How do you analyze this divorce between faith and modernity?

Ratzinger: “It is explained by the encroachment of relativism and subjectivism, an inevitable consequence of a world overwhelmed by the alleged certainties of natural or applied science. Only what can be tested and proved appears as rational. [Sensible] Experience has become the only criterion guaranteeing truth. Anything that cannot be subjected to mathematical or experimental verification is regarded as irrational.
“This restriction of reason has the result that we are left in almost total darkness regarding some essential dimensions of life. The meaning of man, the bases of ethics, the question of God cannot be subjected to rational experience, verified by mathematical formulae. And so they are left to subjective sensibility alone. Thisis serious because if, in a society, the bases of ethical behavior are abandoned to subjectivity alone, released from common motives for being and living, handed over to pragmatism, then it is man himself who is threatened.
The great ideologies have been able to give a certain ethical foundation to socity. But today, Marxism is crumbling and liberal ideology is so split into gragments that it no longer has a common, solid, coherent view of man and his future. In the present situation of emptiness, there looms the terrible danger of nihilism, that is to say, the denial or absence of all fundamental moral reference for the conduct of social life. This danger becomes visible in the new forms of terrorism.”


That is to say…

Ratzinger: “Even though perverted, the political, social terrorism of the 1960’s had a certain kind of moral ideal. But today, the terrorism of drug abuse, of the Mafia, of attacks on foreigners, in Germany and elsewhere, no longer has any moral basis. In this era of sovereign subjectivity, people act for the sole pleasure of acting, without any reference other than the satisfaction of `myself.’
“Just as the terrorism that was born from the Marxism of yesterday put its finger on the anomalies of our social order, in the same way the nihilistic terrorism of today ought to show us the course to be followed for a reflection on the bases of a new ethical and collective reason”

…Are you not tempted, in this period of ideological emptiness, by a sort of Christian reconquest?

Ratzinger: “No, in the dialogue that I wish with all political and intellectual forces n order to define this minimum ethic, the Catholic Church is not seeking to impose a new kind of respublica Christiana. It would be absurd to want to go back, to return to a system of political Christendom. But it is true that we feel a responsibility in this world, and we desire to make our contribution as Catholics. We do not wish to impose Catholicism on the West, but we do want the fundamental view of Christianity and the liberal values dominant in today’s world to be able to meet and make one another mutually fruitful.”



Notes From Underground:” Recovery of the Patristic and Mediaeval Sources on Revelation and Faith:


Autobiographical Anecdote of Benedict XVI: Intellectual Formation.

“Glottlieb Soehngen had immediately read my habilitation thesis; he had accepted it enthusiastically and even quoted from it frequently in his lectures. Professor Schmaus, the other reader, was a very busy man, and so he left the manuscript untouched for a couple of months. From a secretary I found out that he had finally begun reading it in February. At Easter of 1956 he put out a call to German-speaking experts in dogma for the purpose of holding a congress in Koenigstein… During the Koenigstein congress Schmaus called me aside for a brief private conversation, during which he told me very directly and without emotion that he had to reject my habilitation thesis because it did not meet the pertinent scholarly standards. I would learn details after the appropriate decision by the faculty. I was thunderstruck. A whole world was threatening to collapse around me. What was to become of my parents, who in good faith had come to me in Freising, if I now had to leave the college because of my failure? And all of my future plans would likewise collapse, since these, too, were all contingent on my being a professor of theology. I thought of applying for the position of assistant pastor in the parish of Saint Georg in Freising, which came with a house; but this solution was not particularly consoling….

(What had happened?)

“In my research I had seen the study of the Middle Ages in Munich, primarily represented by Michael Schmaus, had come to almost a complete halt at its prewar state. The great new breakthroughs that had been made in the meantime, particularly by those writing in French, had not even been acknowledged. With a forthrightness not advisable in a beginner, I criticized the superseded positions, and this was apparently too much for Schmaus, especially since it was unthinkable to him that I could have worked on a medieval theme without entrusting myself to his direction. The copy of my book that he used was in the end full of glosses of all colors in the margins, which themselves left nothing to be desired by way of forthrightness. And while he was a t it, he expressed irritation at the deficient appearance of the graphic layout and at various errors in the references that had remained despite all my efforts.
“But he also did not like the result of my analyses. I had ascertained that in Bonaventure (as well as in theologians of the thirteenth century) there was nothing corresponding to our conception of `revelation,’ by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: it has even become a part of linguistic usage to refer to Sacred Scripture simply as `revelation.’ Such an identification would have been unthinkable in the language of the High Middle Ages. Here, `revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura (`by Scripture alone’), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”
[5]

The Point: The empirical and experimental experience of the words of Sacred Scripture is not the content of Revelation. Only the Person of Jesus Christ is. Hence, we need to understand an epistemology of the subject besides an epistemology of objects. How do we know an “I” as distinct from an “it” as “thing.”

Existential experience:

“In `existential experience,’ on the contrary, the decisive factor is not control but letting oneself be controlled and the new way of `going where one would rather not go’ that is thus made possible… Let us quote Hans Urs von Balthasar on this subject: `It can be said with certainty that there is no Christian experience that is not the fruit of the overcoming of one’s own self-will or, at least, the determination to overcome it. And with this self-will we must include also all our willful efforts to evoke religious experiences on the basis of our own initiative and by our own methods and techniques.’ `It is only when we renounce all partial experiences that the wholeness of being will be bestowed upon us. God requires unselfish vessels into which to pour his own essential unselfishness.’[6]
“I regard the last point as essential. To say that God is Trinitarian means, in fact, to confess that he is self-transcendence, `unselfishness,’ and, consequently, that he can be known only in what reflects his own nature. From this there follows an important catechetical conclusion: the being-led to a religious experience, which must start in the place where man finds himself, can yield no fruit if it is not , from the beginning, directed to the acquisition of a readiness for renunciation. The moral training that, in a certain sense, belongs to the natural sciences, as does the asceticism of transcendence, becomes more radical here because of the meeting of the two freedoms…. The possibility of `seeing’ God, that is, of knowing him at all, depends on one’s purity of heart, which means a comprehensive process in which man becomes transparent, in which he does not remain locked in upon himself, in which he learns to give himself and, in doing so, becomes able to see. From this perspective of Christian faith, we might say that religious experience in its most exalted Christian form bears the mark of the Cross. It embraces the basic model of human existence, the transcendence of self. The Cross redeems, it enables us to see. And now we discover that the structure of which we are speaking is not just structure; it reveals content as well.”[7]

The Biblical Example: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. They talk “thing” (water). He suggests water of eternal life. She, unknowingly, asks for it. He challenges her to transcend herself by telling the truth about herself: Bring me your husband. She answers: I have no husband. She reveals self. He then reveals Self: “I, who speak with you, am he.” I.e., to know self-gift, one must become self-gift. One experiences Christ and knows Him when one experiences self as self-transcending. Ratzinger will say importantly below: “One must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God” And one knows self only when there is the existential experience of self-gift, of telling the truth about self which is already the faith of entrusting self to the Other. Keep in mind that the only “I” you can experience is your own “I.” You experience that when you freely determine self, i.e., master self, get possession of self and therefore are able to make the gift if you so choose. Then, when you do that, you experience yourself as imaging God and therefore you are like Him who is the image of God as pure Relation: Logos. You know yourself as image, and you know Him who is the prototypical image. You are then able to say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God [by nature]” because I, too, am Christ the Son of the living God [by sacramental and participation].
Therefore, we do not know God they way we are in ourselves, but the way He is in Himself. And we do this by this internal experience of self-determination that is the act of faith as act of the whole person, and not merely an accidental act of the accidents (faculties) of intellect and will. The whole self must be given, which is symbolized in the changing of the name of Simon, son of John into Peter. The name of Jesus Christ is “cornerstone” (Acts 4, 11). The name of one who “knows” Him, who reads Him from within the self (intellegere: legere ab intus), knows Him as a Self, an “I.” This is knowing without objectification or reduction to abstraction.

Josef Ratzinger on John 4: The Samaritan Woman and the Experience of God


“This periscope seems to me to be a beautiful and concrete illustration of what we have just been saying. It opens with the meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the context of a normal, human, everyday experience – the experience of thirst, which is surely one of man’s most primordial experiences. In the course of the conversation, the subject shifts to that thirst that is a thirst for life, and the point is made that one must drink again, must come again and again to the source. In this way, the woman is made aware of what in actuality she, like every human being, has always known but to which she has not always adverted: that she thirsts for life itself [Zoë] and that all the assuaging that she seeks and finds cannot slake this living, elemental thirst. The superficial `empirical’ experience has been transcended.
“But what has been revealed is still of this world. It is succeeded, therefore, by one of those conversations on two levels that are so characteristic of Jon’s technique of recording dialogue, the Johannine `misunderstanding,’ as it is called by the exegetes. From the fact that Jesus and the Samaritan woman, though they use the same words, have in mind two very different levels of meaning and, separated thus by the ambiguity of human speech, are speaking at cross-purposes, there is manifested the lasting incommensurability of faith and human experience however extensive that experience may be. For the woman understands by “water’ that of which the fairy tales speak: the elixir of life by virtue of which man will not die and his thirst for life that is familiar to her, whereas Jesus wants to reveal to her the true life, the Zoë.
“In the next stage, the woman’s full attention has been attracted to the subject of a thirst for life. She no longer asks for something, for water or for any other single thing, but for life, for herself. This explains the apparently totally unmotivated interpolation by Jesus: `Go and call your husband!’ (Jn. 4, 16), It is both intentional and necessary, for her life as a whole, with all its thirst, is the true subject here. As a result, there comes to light the real dilemma, the deep-seated waywardness, of her existence: she is brought face to face with herself. In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God. Admittedly, the circle could also be closed in the opposite direction: it could be said that it is only by first knowing God that one can properly know oneself.
“But we anticipate. As we have said, the woman must come first to the knowledge of herself, to the acknowledgement of herself. For what she makes now is a kind of confession: a confession in which, at last, she reveals herself unsparingly. Thus a new transition has occurred –to preserve our earlier terminology, a transition from empirical and experimental to `experiential’ experience, to `existential experience.’ The woman stands face to face with herself. It is no longer a question now of something but of the depths of the I itself and, consequently, of the radical poverty that is man’s I-myself, the place where this I is ultimately revealed behind the superficiality of the something. From this perspective, we might regard the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman as the prototype of catechesis. It must lead from the something to the I. Beyond every something it must ensure the involvement of man himself, of this particular man. It must produce self-knowledge and self-acknowledgment so that the indigence and need of man’s being will be evident.
“But let us return to the biblical text! The Samaritan woman has achieved this radical confrontation with her own self. In the moment in which this occurs, the question of all questions arises always and of necessity; the question about oneself becomes a question about God. It is only apparently without motivation but in reality inevitable that the woman should ask now: How do things stand with regard to adoration, that is, with regard to God and my relationship to him? (cf. Jn 4, 20). The question about foundation and goal makes itself heard. Only at this point does the offering of Jesus’ true gift become possible. For the `gift of God’ is God himself, God precisely as gift – that is, the Holy Spirit (cf. v10-24). At the beginning of the conversation, there seemed no likelihood that his woman, with her obviously superficial way of life, would have any interest in the Holy Spirit. But one she was led to the depths of her own being the question arose that must always arise if one is to ask the question that burns in one’s soul. Now the woman is aware of the real thirst by which she is driven. Hence, she can at last learn that it is for which this thirst thirsts.
“It is the purpose and meaning of all catechesis to lead to this thirst. For one who knows neither that there is a Holy Spirit nor that one can thirst for him, it cannot begin otherwise than with sensory perception. Catechesis must lead to self-knowledge, to the exposing of the I, so that it lets the masks fall and moves out of the realm of something into that of being. Its goal is conversion, that conversion of man that results in his standing face to face with himself. Conversio (`conversion,’ metanoia) is identical with self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is the nucleus of all knowledge. Conversio is the way in which man finds himself and thus now the question of all questions: How can I worship God? It is the question that means his salvation; it is the raison d’etre of catechesis.”
[8]

Pentecost contrasts with Babel in that the Apostles are speaking Christ with the giftedness that the Spirit gives them. And those hearing, are moved by the same Spirit to self-transcend, and therefore hear.

The Father is Self-gift. The Son is Self-gift. The Spirit is the Self-gift of the Father and the Son. Hence, the Spirit is the Personification of the Gift of self, the true meaning of “Love.” First, in God, who gives Self in Creation, and then in Redemption. Only one who has received the Spirit can “know” Christ, “re-cognize” Him by “cognizing” Him in the existential experience of giving themselves like the Samaritan woman. She received the water of life (Zoë) that is the Holy Spirit and engendered Christ in her such that she could re-cognize Him in “I who speak with thee am He” (Jn. 4, 26). At Pentecost, the apostles speak and the 3,000 hear the same Word. Moved by the Spirit, they “understand” each other (intellegere = legere [to read] ab intus [from within]). That is the task of the apostolate today known as the “new evangelization.”

This is the formation of his mind: to understand (to know) is to become one being with the subject to be known. This is not achieved by experience through the external perception, which reduces the perceived reality to an object. St. Thomas suggested that “whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.” That is, it is not sensed nor intellectually grasped as it is in itself, but as the knower is in himself. Hence, since we are both matter and spirit, we spiritualize what is apparently just matter, and we materialize what is just spirit. That’s why we need images and examples to understand very abstract things.

But more is involved here. Abstractions are not real since they don’t exist “outside” the mind. Only individuals exist and are real. God is real as a Communio of Three “I.” as Father, Son and Spirit. The Father is “I,” the Son is “I,” and the Holy Spirit is “I.” But each “I” is a relation in opposing directions. The Father is the act of engendering the “I” of the Son. The “I” of the Son is the obeying and glorifying of the “I” of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the personification of the “I-gift” of the other two. God is not a substance in the sense that we use the word as category for a created thing. God is an irreducible plurality of three “I’s” that are so one that one cannot be without the others.
Since we are trying to understand God, and God is not part of the world, and “He” is three “I’s,” we cannot render him an object as another object. Hence, we cannot know the Son as an object. We must know Him as Subject.

Theological Epistemology:

The Tower of Babel (objectified knowing) and Pentecost (experiencing the subject [self in consciousness]). Both of them NOW.

“But let us come at last to the main question. What is the real Christian message of Pentecost? What is this `Holy Spirit’ of which it speaks? The Acts of the Apostles gives us an answer in the form of an image; perhaps there is no other way of doing it, since the reality of the Spirit largely escapes our grasp. As the story is told, the disciples were touched by fiery tongues and found themselves speaking in a manner which some (the “positivists”) regarded as drunken stammering, a meaninglessness, useless babbling, while others, from all parts of the then known world, each heard the disciples speaking in his own tongue.
In the background of this text is the Old Testament story of the tower of Babel; the two stories, taken together, provide us with a penetrating insight into the theology of history. The Old Testament account tells us that human beings, their sense of independence augmented by the progress they had made, attempted to build a tower that would reach heaven. That is, they believed that by their own powers of planning and constructing they could even build a bridge to heaven, make heaven accessible to themselves by their own efforts, and turn human beings into gods. The result of their effort was the confusion of tongues. The human race, which sought only itself and looked for salvation in the satisfaction of a ruthless egoism by means of economic power, suffered instead the consequence of egoism, which is the radical hostility of each to his fellows, so that no one can understand anyone else and therefore even egoism inevitably remains unsatisfied.
The New Testament account of Pentecost picks up these same ideas. It implies the conviction that contemporary mankind is sundered to its very roots; that is characterized by a superficial coexistence and a hostility which are based on self-divinization. As a result, everything is seen in a false perspective; human beings understand neither God nor the world nor their fellows nor themselves. The `Holy Spirit’ creates such an understanding because he is the Love that flows from the cross or self-renunciation of Jesus Christ.
We need not attempt here to reflect on the various dogmatic connections that are implied in such a description. For our purpose it is enough to recall the way Augustine tried to sum up the essential point of the Pentecost narrative. World history, he says, is a struggle between two kinds of love: self-love to the point of hatred for God, and love of God to the point of self-renunciation. This second love brings the redemption of the world and the self.
In my opinion it would already be a giant step forward if during the days of Pentecost we were to turn from the thoughtless use of our leisure to a reflection non our responsibility; if these days were to become the occasion for moving beyond purely rational thinking, beyond the kind of knowledge that is used in planning and can be stored up. To a discovery of spirit, of the responsibility truth brings, and of the values of conscience and love. Even if for a moment we were not to go a step further into the properly Christian realm, we would already be touching the hem of Christ and his Spirit.”
[9]


The Tower of Babel: “Dictatorship of Relativism”
(exclusiveness of the experimental method)

1) There are three levels of experience: empirical, experimental and “existential.

Empirical and Experimental (2): Nihil in intellectu nisi in sensu: “that immediate and uncritical perception by the sense that is common to all of us. We see the sun rise; we see it set. We see a train pass. We see colors; and so forth. This manner of experience is, certainly the beginning of all knowledge, but it is always superficial and inexact. And therein lies its danger. Because of its immediate certainty, it can be an obstacle to deeper knowledge…”[10] Galileo confronted “empirical” empiricists (Aristotelians) as a Platonists insisting that thought trumps immediate experience. “Galileo rejected what everyone can see. The same is true of the laws of gravity, which never actually occur in reality as Galileo formulated them but are a mathematical abstractions and, for that reason, also contrary to our immediate experience. Modern natural science is built on the rejection of pure empiricism, on the superiority of thinking over seeing” (my underline)….

“It is only when the intellect sheds light on sensory experience that his sensory experience has any value as knowledge and that experiences thus become possible.”

Ratzinger makes the major point here that “the structure of the experience of faith is completely analogous to that of the natural sciences; both have their source in the dynamic link between intellect and senses from which there is constructed a path to deeper knowledge.

But we must point, here, also to a crucial difference. In a scientific experiment, the object of experience is not free. The experiment depends, rather, on the fact that nature is controlled… [Heidegger calls it “set-up”; Brague says: “Because we have removed from it everything that might be a a freedom (vagueness, contingency, etc.), it can become the object of science.” “In this connection, L. Kolakowski has made the interesting observation that the way in which the natural sciences deal with nature is actually a form of necrophilia. They dissect it as though it were a dead object and, in this form, are able to control it. If we apply this thought also to the human sciences, we might conclude that their way of dealing with human beings is likewise a kind of necrophilia. The fact that a similar way of dealing with faith and with God must of necessity lead to a God-is-dead theology need hardly be elaborated.”


(Let me add: This is where right thinking feminists insist on the damage done by male dominated epistemology)[11].


Key Turning Point of Vatican II: Is Jesus Christ an Exception to Man, or the Revelation of Man?

a) The Human Person: Major advertence: Scholastic theology considered Jesus’ Person as existential relation “from above,” i.e., from the side of the Trinity. But that same theology took the meaning of person from Boethius in substantialist (to be in self, and not in another [accident]) terms. The meaning of man taken from Greek and Latin philosophy as substantialist was “from below.”

“In this light, Boethius’s concept of person, which prevailed in Western philosophy, must be criticized as entirely insufficient. Remaining on the level of the Greek mind, Boethius defined `person’ as Naturae rationalis individual substantia, as the individual substance of a rational nature. One sees that the concept of person stands entirely on the level of substance. This cannot clarify anything about the Trinity or about Christology; it is an affirmation that remains on the level of the Greek mind which thinks in substantialist terms.”

The Great Caveat: Christ as Exception to Man: “Scholastic theology developed categories of existence out of this contribution given by Christian faith to the human mind. Its defect was that it limited these categories to Christology and to the doctrine of the Trinity and did no make them fruitful in the whole extent of spiritual reality. This seems to me also the limit of St. Thomas in the matter, namely, that within theology he operates… on the level of existence, but treats the whole thing as a theological exception (my underline), as it were. In philosophy, however, he remains faithful to the different approach of pre-Christian philosophy. The contribution of Christian faith to the whole of human thought is not realized; it remains at first detached from it as a theological exception, although it is precisely the meaning of this new element to call into question the whole of human thought and to set it on a new course.”
This brings us to the second misunderstanding that has not allowed the effects of Christology to work themselves out fully. The second great misunderstanding is to see Christ as the simply unique ontological exception which must be treated as such. This exception is an object of highly interesting ontological speculation, but it must remain separate in its box as an exception to the rule and must no be permitted to mix with the rest of human thought…. This seeming exception is in reality very often the symptom that shows us the insufficiency of our previous schema of order, which helps us to break open this schema and to conquer a new realm of reality. The exception shows us that we have built our closets too small, as it were, and that we must break them open and go on in order to see the whole.”
[12]

The Result: Man does not image the divine Persons as Relations in his very being. Jesus Christ is not the prototype of man, but an exception. There would then be such a thing as “pure nature” or the “natural man” to whom the supernatural is added as a “second tier” to safeguard the gratuitousness of the supernatural. Holiness would not (as in fact it has not been) an intrinsic orientation of the very being of the human person, and therefore there is no de facto universal call to holiness.

* * * * * *

Vatican II Integrates Christ and the human person in Gaudium et Spes #22:

“In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling…. He who is the `image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1, 15), is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin.”

The Positive Meaning of the Human Person in the Light of Christology: “Man, the only earthly being that God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et spes #24).

In the light of this, Benedict XVI, on June 6, 2005, outlined the theology of the body as the enfleshed person imaging the Trinitarian Relations:

“Marriage and the family are not a casual sociological construct, fruit of particular historical and economic situations. On the contrary, the question of the right relationship between man and woman sinks its roots in the most profound essence of the human being, and can only find its answer in the latter. It cannot be separated from the always ancient and always new question of man about himself: Who am I? And this question, in turn, cannot be separated from the question about God: Does God exist? And, who is God? What is his face really like? The Bible’s answer to these two questions is unitary and consequential: Man is created in the image of God, and God himself is love. For this reason, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of god: He becomes like God in the measure that he becomes someone who loves.

From this fundamental bond between God and man another is derived: The indissoluble bond between spirit and body. Man is, in fact, soul that expresses itself in the body and [the] body that is vivified by an immortal spirit. Also, the body of man and of woman has, therefore, so to speak, a theological character, it is not simply body, and what is biological in man is not only biological, but an expression and fulfillment of our humanity. In this way, human sexuality is not next to our being person, but belongs to it. Only when sexuality is integrated in the person does it succeed in giving itself meaning.”

This notion of “finding self by the sincere gift of self” carries on in, and is the defining center of, the Social Doctrine of the Church, to be found thematically presented in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Libreria Editrice Vaticana).

* * * * * * *

Images Employed by Benedict XVI That Illustrate His Thought.

1) “If the Eye Were Not Solar, It Could Not Recognize the Sun” (Goethe)

Catechesis is Catechumenate. Christianity is “Way,” Before it is “Book.”

“We must familiarize ourselves with God’s style, so as to learn to bear His presence within us. In a theological expression: the image of God must be liberated within us, that image which gives us the capacity to have a communion of life with him.
Tradition compares this to a sculptor’s way of acting, when, piece by piece, he chips away at the stone until the shape he has in mind becomes visible.
Catechesis should also always be a process involving a type of assimilation with God, since in reality we can recognize only that for which a correspondence is found in us.”
[13]

2) The Lamb, The Lion and The Dog: (The Dictatorship of Relativism:” The Hegemony of Objectifying (reductive) Thought: Rationalism).

“In the magnificent Romanesque cathedral of the little Apulian town of Troy, my interest was attracted, above all, by a somewhat enigmatic relief of the year 1158 that adorned the chancel. This relief shows three animals in whose hostile relationship the artist clearly intended to depict the condition of the church of his time. At the bottom of the group is a lamb that has been pounced upon by a greedy lion which holds it fast with his powerful claws and teeth. The lamb’s body has already been mangled. The bones are plainly visible and one sees the parts of the body have already been devoured. Only the infinitely sad expression on the animal’s face tells the viewer that the half-consumed lamb is still alive. In contrast to the powerlessness of the lamb, the lion is the expression of a brutal power to which the lamb has nothing to oppose but its helpless fear. It is clear that the lamb symbolizes the church, or better, the faith of and in the Church. What we see in this sculpture is a kind of `Report on the State of the Faith’ that seems to be deeply pessimistic. The true Church, the Church of faith, seems to have been already half-devoured by the powerful lion in whose claws she is held captive. She has no choice but to suffer her fate in defenseless woe. But this sculpture, which depicts with fitting realism the, humanly speaking, hopelessness of the Church’s plight, is likewise the expression of a hope that is convinced of the invincibility of the Faith. This hope is reflected in a remarkable way. A third animal, a small white dog, leaps upon the lion. Its strength seems totally disproportionate to that of the lion; nevertheless it attacks the lion with teeth and paws. It may itself still fall victim to the lion, but its intervention causes the lion to lose its grip on the lamb. While the symbolism of the lamb is relatively clear, this is not so of the other two animals. What does the lion symbolize? What does the little white dog symbolize? I have not been able to consult a history of art to find an answer to this question, nor do I know it. But another question must also be answered. What does the dramatic struggle of these three animals have to do with theology? The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that the sculpture is not making a theological statement, but a rather a challenge, an examination of conscience, a deliberately open question. Only the lamb is clearly defined. But the other two animals, the lion and the dog – do they not stand for the two divergent orientations of theology, for its contradictory goals? The lion – does it not embody the historical attempt of theology to dominate faith? Does it not embody that violentia rationis – that despotic and brutal reason that Bonaventure would castigate a century later as distortion of theological thinking? And the courageous little dog – surely it symbolizes the opposite way, a theology that knows it is at the service of the Faith and is therefore prepared to make itself laughable by criticizing the want of moderation and the authoritarianism of reason alone. [Consider also Ratzinger’s use, in “Introduction to Christianity, of Kierkegaard’s story of the clown calling the people of the village out to the circus to help put out the fire, which eventually burns up both circus and village]. But if this is so, what a pointed question the relief in the chancel of Troy poses to the preacher and the theologian of all ages! It holds a mirror up to those who speak and to those who hear. It is an examination of conscience for pastors and for theologians alike, for either of these can prey upon the Church or be a shepherd to her. It follows, then, that that his sculpture, as never-to-be-answered question, can apply to all of us.”[14]

2) David, Dressed in the Armor of Saul, Sent Out to do Battle with Goliath ( The Church Turned Back on Herself: Clericalism and Objectified Thinking).

“There are some very real grounds to fear that the Church may assume too many institutions of human law, which then become the armor of Saul making it difficult for the young David to walk. We must always ascertain if institutions which were once useful still serve a purpose. The only institutional element the Church needs is the one given to it by the Lord: the sacramental structure of the people of God, centered on the Eucharist.”[15] (This is why Opus Dei is not an primarily an institution in the Church, but “a little bit of the Church” herself: laymen, priests in communio living the Mass on the occasion of secular work).

* * * * * * *

“The more organism we created, however up-to-date they may be, the less space we leave for the spirit, the less space there is for the Lord, and still less for liberty. From this point of view, I think we must embark on an examination of conscience in the Church, at all levels and without reserve. At all levels, such an examination of conscience should bring concrete results as well as ablation (elimination), which would allow the Church’s true face to shine through once again.”[16]

“The more we give ourselves to do in the Church, the less liveable it becomes because everything human is limited and all human things are contrasted by other human things. The more the Church stops to listen and the more central all that comes from Him – the Word and the Sacraments he gave us – is within it, the more it will be the dwelling place of the heart of men.”[17]



The Subjacent Anthropology to the Church’s Theological Epistemology: Prayer, the Act of Self-Gift, as Necessary Condition to Experience God as Person and therefore to do theology by Reflection on that Experience.


Revelation and faith are two parts of the same reality. The “what” -or content of faith - is the “who” of the believer [refer back to Ratzinger’s autobiography in “Milestones” (108) where “The receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it”]. This act of self-gift is made possible by the sacrament of baptism (or a previous grace of the Spirit) whereby the self becomes image of God and therefore capable of experiencing in self the Perfect image of the Father, Jesus Christ (Col. 1, 15). Person is revelation (“Ego eimi” of Christ). Person is faith ("ego eimi" of believer). Therefore, the whole transcends faculties and concepts, yet includes them.

Direct experience of the self in the unique act of self-transcendence that is the profound meaning of Christian faith. Hence, Christianity, more than "religion," is an anthropology - that of Christ.



The development of reason, theological and otherwise, within this experience of faith. Experience: without faith, reason cannot be reason.

[1] J. Ratzinger, Let God’s Light Shine Forth, ed. R. Moynihan, Doubleday (2005)34-35.
[2] Homily of His Eminence Card. Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals, Monday 18 April, 2005.
[3] Then-Cardinal Ratzinger called the sacrament of Baptism a “death-event.” He said, “©onversion in the Pauline sense is something much more radical than, say, the revision of a few opinions and attitudes. It is a death-even. In other words, it is an exchange of the old subject for another. The `I’ ceases to be an autonomous subject standing in itself. It is snatched away from itself and fitted nto a new subject. The `I’ is not simply submerged, but it must really release its grip on itself in order then to receive itself anew in and together with a greater `I;’” “The Spiritual Basis and Ecclesial Identity of Theology,” The Nature and Mission of Theology, Ignatius (1995) 51.
[4] “And Marxism Gave Birth to… NIHILISM,” Henri Tinq: Catholic World Report January 1993, 52-55:



[5] J. Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 Ignatius 107-109.
[6] Both quotes are from von Balthasar “Gotteserfahrung biblisch und patristisch,’ in IKZ 5 (1976) 500.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “The Anthropological Element in Theology,” Principles of Catholic Theology op. cit., 349-350.
[8] Ibid., 353-355.
[9] J. Ratzinger, “Mind, Spirit and Love: A Meditation on Pentecost,” Dogma and Preaching, Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 69-70.
[10] J. Ratzinger, “The Anthropological Element in Theology… Stages of experience,” Principles of Catholic Theology, Ignatius (1982Ger. 1987 Eng.) 346-355.
[11] “The attempts to add understandings of women to our knowledge of nature and social life have led to the realization that there is precious little reliable knowledge to which to add them. A more fundamental project now confronts us. We must root out sexist distortions and perversions in epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and the philosophy of science – in the `hard core’ of abstract reasoning thought most immune to infiltration by social values…. Human experience differs according to the kinds of activities and social relations in which humans engage. Women’s experience systematically differs from the male experience upon which knowledge claims have been grounded. Thus the experience on which the prevailing claims to social and natural knowledge are founded is, first of all, only partial human experience only partially understood: namely, masculine experience as understood by men. However, when this experience is presumed to be gender-free – when the male experience is taken to be the human experience – the resulting theories, concepts, methodologies, inquiry goals and knowledge-claims distort human social life and human thought…. (Contributors to this volume) show how men’s understanding of masculine experience shape Aristotle’s biology and metaphysics, the very definition of `the problems of philosophy’ in Plato, Descartes, Hobbes and Rousseau, the `adversary method’ which is the paradigm of philosophic reasoning, contemporary philosophical psychology, individuation principles in philosophical ontology, functionalism in sociological and biological theory, evolutionary theory, the methodology of political science, Marxist political economy, and concept ions of `objective inquiry’ in the social and natural sciences. On the other hand, many of the contributors also begin the feminist `reconstructive project.’ They identify distinctive aspects of women’s experience which can provide resources for the construction of more representatively human understanding. Some of the essayists focus extensively on this reconstructive project, showing us what is required in social practice and in scientific inquiry to make women’s experience into a foundation for a more adequate and truly human epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science.;” Sandra Haring and Merrill B. Hintikka, Discovering Reality D. Reidel (1983) Introduction IX-X.
[12] J. Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17 (Fall 1990) 449.
[13] J. Ratzinger, “What Does the Church Believe?” The Catholic World Report March 1993, 59.
[14] J. Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth Ignatius (1992) 202-203.
[15] J. Ratzinger, 30 Days, No. 5 – 1998, p. 22.
[16] J. Ratzinger, 30 Days, No. 1-- 1992, p. 3.
[17] J. Ratzinger, Ibid. Compare this affirmation with the opening remarks of Benedict’s homily at the Mass for his inauguration: “My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history. Instead of putting forward a programme, I should simply like to comment on the two liturgical symbols which represent the inauguration of the Petrine Ministry… the Pallium…, an image of the yoke of Christ… the lamb’s wool is meant to represent the lost, sick or weak sheep which the shepherd places on his shoulders and carries to the waters of life….The second symbol… is… the fisherman’s ring. Peter’s call to be shepherd… comes after the account of a miraculous catch of fish… `Master, at your word I will let down the nets’… And then came the conferral of his mission: `Do not be afraid… Put out into the deep sea of history and … let down the nets, so as to win men and women over to the Gospel – to God, to Christ, to true life.”