Commentary on Paul Vitz's "The Psychology of Atheism:" A Presentation at Columbia University’s Augustine Club in the late 90’s.
Dear Paul,
1. I obviously enjoyed and appreciated your talk at Columbia's Augustine Club. As per our short conversation at the conclusion, let me give some body and reference to my suggestion.
a) Re: Your point on the psychology of atheism: two can play this game. If they say that God is a psychological projection, one can counter to show that atheism itself is a like projection. I.e., those without fathers do not believe in God, and those with fathers do.
b) The obvious difficulty with such argumentation is its reductionism. That is, on the level of the epistemology of abstraction, both arguments grind the human person down to the level of a monadic "nothing-butism" powered by dyadic stimulus-response mechanisms and we are out of the realm where God is to be known as experienced whichever way you go. But as you said, it does help to have a good father. You gave short shrift to both arguments, but you thought that your own research and argumentation had apologetic value.
c) However, as I suggested to you last night, if we were to take your argument (which I believe is the same as Karl Stern in his "Flight From Woman") and reconsider it in the light of the theology of communio (communio personarum), it takes on new meaning and an absolute validity. Let me explore it.
1. From a theological perspective, since man has been made in the image of God, his knowledge of God derives from the direct experience of himself precisely as image. The loss of the act of imaging has produced the loss of the experience and hence the consciousness of God.
2. Since God has revealed himself to be a communio of Persons such that the meaning of person is to be in relation, then the imaging of those Persons demands that the human person, to be person, must be in relation. That is to say: God the Father is Person as Father only insofar as He is engendering the Son. He is not Father and then engenders the Son. His Personhood consists in the very act of engendering. Esse est agere. Person and mission are identical. To be = to be for. If the Father were not the engendering of the Son, he would not be Father but only God. See Ratzinger's "Introduction to Christianity," p. 131-132.
The same holds for the Son vis a vis the Father. His is the obeying and glorifying of the Father. And it is in His image that we were created. Hence, the very meaning of "I" in God and in the image is to be loved as the reception of another "I" and to make the gift of my "I." In fact, "I" means to be gift.
This cannot be experienced through external sensation of cosmic reality. It is not a given on that level of experience. But it is available through another kind of experience which is moral in which the "I" is precisely gift. It is in this empirical experience - not through external sensation - but, like Newman - of moral life that I experience my "I," and in so experiencing it, I experience the "I" as image of God. Nay, more: I experience God. I know God. Atheism is vanquished by a direct experience.
3. Hence, the reception of self gift from a father is not just helpful adjunct to God talk. It turns out to be the very experience in which I become "I" as image of God and (perhaps unconceptually, but not unconsciously) enter into a direct experience of - not just God as a "Substance" - but of God as Father. I.e., as Person. That is to say, I come to know God as the Person of the Father, and that knowledge is experiential.
Quotes from JP II: "At the end of the second millennium, we need, perhaps more than ever, the words of the Risen Christ: `Be not afraid!'... Peoples and nations of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His hands the destiny of this passing world; Someone who holds the keys to death and the netherworld a (cf. Rev. 1, 18); Someone who is the Alpha and the Omega of human history (cf. Rev. 22, 13) ...And this Someone is Love (cf. 1 Jn. 4, 8, 16) - Love that became man, Love crucified and risen, Love unceasingly present among men. It is Eucharistic Love. It is the infinite source of communion. He alone can give the ultimate assurance when He says `Be not afraid!'" ("Crossing the Threshold of Hope," Knopf [1994] 221-222).
The key hermeneutic of this quote is from Ratzinger who comments precisely on this text (Communio {magazine} Spring 1995, pp. 109-110): “This knowledge of God, in which God is no longer merely thought, but is also experienced, ripens in that dialogue with God which we call prayer. ‘Prayer is a search for God, but it is also a revelation of God, says the pope (25): to pray is not just to talk, but also to listen. The pope puts it like this: ‘The “Thou” is more important because our prayer begins with God” (16). This act of leaving the circle of our own words and our own desires, this drawing back of the I, this self-abandonment to the mysterious presence which awaits us – this more than anything constitutes prayer. The pope thus also responds to the question of Oriental forms of prayer, which he examines at full length elsewhere in the book (84ff.). Christian prayer has a mystical dimension, but it dos not end with the disappearance of the I; rather , it ignites the flame of love, which goes beyond the boundaries of the I and at the same time radically renews it in the encounter with the other Christian prayer therefore signifies entering together into the universality of God; not an exit from being into nothingness, but a new ingress into the world, this time from the liberating perspective of God… God in Karol Wojtyla is not only thought but also experienced. The pope expressly opposes the limitation of the concept of experience which occurred in Empiricism; he points out that the form of experience elaborated in the natural sciences is not the only kind, but that there are also other forms which are no less real and important: moral experience, human experience, religious experience (p. 34). But this experience is, of course, also reflected upon and verified in its rational content..."
There is much more to be said on this. But the point is that God can and must be directly experienced as Person now at the cusp of the new millennium. That is the only escape from the radical atheism resulting from the exacerbated individualism in which we are mired. It will not be done exclusively by rational argument, although that also has its part to play, but it is not the principal part. The principal part is the direct experience of the self as being loved and loving, and for that, your argument for the loving presence of the father is an indispensable condition. Hence, I would expand the argument and then insert it into this higher epistemology that accrues from this other level of experience (moral) of being a person in a communion of persons.
See also Ratzinger's notion of the engendering of the "I" by the indispensable love another in "Principles of Catholic Theology," (Ignatius) pp. 79-81 and Pieper's "Creative Affirmation" in "An Anthology" (Ignatius) pp. 30-31.
Sincerely,
Rev. Robert A. Connor
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
THE Ongoing Theme of Benedict XVI: To Experience THE FATHER By Becoming Father: Suffering 2007
ONLY GOD KNOWS GOD
One must Become the Son to "Know" the Father Experientially
Matthew 11, 27: "No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal him
Ratzinger Commentary on John Paul II's "Crossing the Threshold of Hope:" “This knowledge of God, in which God is no longer merely thought, but is also experienced, ripens in that dialogue with God which we call prayer" [Communio, Spring 1995 (109-110)].
And Christ is prayer: "According to the testimonyof Holy Scripoture, the center of the life and person of Jesus is his constant communication with the Father:" Thesis 1: "Behold the Pierced One" Ignatius (1986) 15.
We have lost, not the abstract thought, but the living experience of God. Benedict XVI paraphrased Gregory the Great saying: “(people today) have never had an experience of God; they have never acquired a ‘taste’ for God; they have never experienced how delightful it is to be ‘touched’ by God! They lack this ‘contact’ – and with it, the ‘taste for God.’” [1] He went on: “when man is entirely caught up in his own world, with material things, with what he can do, with all that is feasible and brings him success, with all that he can produce or understand by himself, then his capacity to perceive God weakens, the organ sensitive to God deteriorates, it becomes unable to perceive and sense, it no longer perceives the Divine, because the corresponding inner organ has withered, it has stopped developing.”[2]
Benedict is talking about the interior “I” not being exercised. He goes on: “When he overuses all the other organs, the [sensible] empirical ones, it can happen that it is precisely the sense of God that suffers, that this organ dies, and man, as St. Gregory says, no longer perceives God’s gaze, to be looked at by him, the fact that his precious gaze touches me!”[3]
Challenge the Adolescent (of all ages) to the Absolute!
Richard Rohr points to this state of affairs as persistent adolescence, particularly in the male. His thesis is that boys at present do not become men because they undergo no initiation process mentored by true fathers. This process of initiation begins from below and from within, not from above and from without. Benedict XVI said “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 to turned in on himself, hears it echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.”[4]
And it is to this ontologically yearning inside every young person that someone must challenge. Ratzinger goes on: “The anamnesis [not forgetting] instilled in our being needs, one might say, assistance from without so that it can become aware of itself. But this ‘from without’ is not something set in opposition to anamnesis but ordered to it. It has maieutic function, imposes nothing foreign, but brings to fruition what is proper to anamnesis, namely, its interior openness to the truth.” This tendency within the human person needs to be spoken to and answered by the revelation of itself. Every person, especially the young, has this driving imperative for the infinite and absolute. They are “pilgrims of the absolute,” and this absolute must be answered. If not, if they are presented only with what they can see, touch, smell, hear and taste; they are disillusioned and compensate with the pseudo-absolute of “big crowds, loud music, marching armies, totally unrealistic fantasies, fame (or infamy!), money, and popularity. Anything loud, large or socially admired becomes the substitute for the cosmic and the transcendent that they are really ongoing for. Someone needs to tell them that, even if they only half-believe it.”[5] Richard Rohr expatiates: “If there is no contact with greatness, there is an almost cosmic disappointment inside of us, a deep sadness, a capacity for cynical dismissal and sullen coldness, exactly as we see in so many of our young today. The visionary gleam is lost. It is as if they are saying, ‘There are no great people or great patterns. I will not believe in anything. I will not be disappointed again.’ It is called postmodernism, and it is the general assumption of our jaded and uninitiated society.”[6] Importantly, Rohr then sounds the caveat: “But do note that it is not the presence of pain or suffering that destroys the brain; rather it is the lack of larger-than-life people around usPrimal cultures seemed to now that if young people missed being exposed to a greater meaning and greater people during key periods of their lives, especially the last clear opportunity at ages fourteen to seventeen, the result would be disastrous both for the young person and for the society.”[7]
Mentoring must come from outside, from men (for boys) who are truly fathers and who can pass on the inner experience of suffering initiation to become men. This is the foundation of all catechesis and the teaching authority of the Church and Pope. Hence, Ratzinger’s defense of John Henry Newman’s toast first to conscience, and then to the pope. Ultimately, it is God the Redeemer speaking to God the Creator of the imaging person.
Karol Wojtyla’s “Radiation of Fatherhood” and “Reflections on Fatherhood”
The challenge to the absolute is the challenge to make the full gift of self in order to find the real self. It is the passage trough the desert and the dark night of St. John of the Cross, precisely with suffering. John Paul II had presented this challenge in its true anthropological form to the young male image of God the Father in the form of becoming a father. Semantically, it became flesh as “Reflections on Fatherhood,” a kind of exegesis of his “Radiation of Fatherhood.” It reads:
“For many years now I have lived like a man exiled from my deeper personality yet condemned to probe it.
“During those years I have toiled unceasingly to reach it, always thinking with horror that it was becoming lost, blurred among the mass processes of history.
“Not for nothing am I called Adam. In this name one can meet every man; at the same time in this name everything that man contributes can be made ordinary. That is what I thought through all those years; I thought that my footsteps should be wiped out, butat I had to obliterate myself so that ti could identify with the average man, whose history is written from without by mobilized crowd. What else does the name ADAM mean?
“Do you want to substitute for it something from within? But what? Should one not recoil from it with terror?
[The answer: Loneliness]
“Although I am like the man who can be placed apart and then made a common denominator for al men, I still remain lonely.
“Nobody calls this loneliness a sin, but I know what to make of it. And I know who Adam is, he who stopped once on the frontier between the promise of fatherhood and his own loneliness. Who cut him off from men? Who made him lonely in the midst of them all? After all, he became lonely of his own free will in order to graft that loneliness onto others. Who will not call that a fault?
[The temptation to be like God as transcendent autonomy and therefore, alone]
“He is lonely. I asked myself, What will bring me nearer to Him than loneliness? What will make me more like Him, that is to say, more independent of everything?”
* * * * * * * *
Let me here insert in linear prose the insight of Louis Evely on the initiation of adolescent into man precisely as father – with pain:
“Do you know what it is to be a Father?
“To be a Father is precisely to suffer; to become a father is to become vulnerable. As long as one is young, one is hard, selfish, protected. No doubt, one has terrible blues, emotions, melancholies, but one holds one’s own pretty well, one withdraws easily, one suffers only for oneself. Our compassion for others is gratuitous, generous, superfluous.
“But when one becomes a father, or a mother, one suddenly sees oneself as vulnerable, in the most sensitive part of one’s being; one is completely powerless to defend oneself, one is no longer free, one is tied up. To become a father is to experience an infinite dependency on an infinitely small, frail, being, dependent on us and therefore omnipotent over our heart. Oh, we really depend on people who depend on us! The strong person who loves a weak person has put his happiness at his mercy. He depends on him henceforth. He is without any defense against him. To love a person is inevitably to depend on him, to give him power over us. God loved us freely; God have us power over him. God wanted to have need of us. The passion is the revelation of our terrible power over God. He surrendered himself to us, we had him at our disposal, we did with him what we wanted. On a plaque in Normandy one can read this cruel sentence: ‘It is always the one who loves the least who is the strongest.’ It is always he who is least in love who gets his way with the other, who keeps a cool head and stays in control of the situation. God, in regard to us, will always be the weakest, for he loves. God can be denied, forgotten; he cannot deny us, forget us. We can be without God. God cannot be without men.[8] We can stop being sons; he cannot stop being a Father. ‘Man in revolt against God is like the bird in the storm which dashes itself against the cliff. But God, in his mercy, became flesh so that the violence of the impact might be endured by him and not by us.’ Thus, God will always be the weakest against us for he loves us. We are of Jacob’s race, we are the true Israel, he who fought against the angel all night and who deserved his name: ‘mighty against God.’”[9]
One Father’s Relation to his Wounded Daughter
“I have always senses that the physical somehow manifests the deeper spiritual bond we share. She is my daughter. She is a part of me. I know before anyone else, even her mother, what she wants or needs. I know when she is too cold. I know when she is hungry. I know when she will wake. Even when she has been in one of her deepest sleeps, I can sense if she will wake when I walk past. She knows I am there, and she calls me when she needs me.
“In the wee hours, when she has lain stiff in the nurse’s arms since midnight and even Liz cannot put her to sleep, I will take her in my lap, hold her hand in mine, wrap the blanket around her and she will soften slowly, then bat her eyelids heavily, and within moments drift off into a deep sleep. She was waiting for me to come to her, but had no way of telling the nurse or Liz other than by stiffening out.
“When I return after work, she is often in her chair. I drop my bad and kiss her on the cheek and say, ‘Lift your hand to greet me.’ Her body stiffens slightly, she tenses her face and groans, and then her hand comes up in what appears to be almost a voluntary motion. I know it is probably not voluntary though she does this for no one else. She hears me at least.
“Our newborn son is obviously his mother’s; they are connected. I love him. I love to hold him, carry him in my arms, change him on the table while he stares at the mobile above his head and laughs. But he is definitely his mother’s child. Elie is mine. I think God made that bond so strong, so seemingly telepathic, because He knew Elie would need it. She was given no way to communicate by normal means, so she had to have someone who could understand her through extra-ordinary means.
“I wonder sometimes if this almost telepathic bond can be developed or if it is innate. I tend to think it is the latter, but it grows as we nurture our love for the child. Most often only mother and child have it, perhaps strengthened through the power of breast feeding and nature. But Elie and I have it. We are linked, and the link is like an imperceptible spiritual nerve that connect us. It was always there, but as love grows and becomes more complex, so grows the complexity of the connection and the messages it can carry. At some point, speech becomes unnecessary, and understanding travels back and forth directly….
“There is another aspect of beauty which is more difficult to describe and yet no less important than the physical. That is the beauty born of suffering – a piquant, lovely, fragile form of beauty. Elie wears it at the corners of her eyes and the swollen skin around her joints. This beauty is not always attractive, but it is always compelling. Like the nearly hidden scar that graces her hairline from her widow’s peak to her earlobe, it becomes an outward sign of her willingness to endure adversity. There is a great beauty hidden in steadfastness.
“Elie’s suffering and endurance have given her a rare aura in this world. She is a child who can hardly communicate, who depends on others to know and meet her needs, who has little to look forward to with joy but the moments of comfort provided by her parents and nurses. I ask myself often what if she is only physically disabled but her mind still functions? What if she has dreams and hopes? What if she is trying to communicate but cannot? As a par tent, it is terrible to imagine these things because they may be true and we would never know it. Yet for her, trapped inside a strong but non-functional body, to endure takes heroism and love. The love comes from us, but the heroism is all hers. And there is beauty in that as well.
“I bathed Elie myself tonight. I held her head between two hands and let her body float in the soothing water. She slept until the water cooled, then woke and smacked her lips together softly. If I shut my eyes it was almost like waves lapping at the shore. As I lifted her from the bath, she pulled her legs up and curled into foetal position, her arms across her chest and clenched. I set her on the warmed towels and began to rub her scalp to dry it. She crunched up her face when the towel touched her lips. I drew it away… I dried around her waist… under her arms, her feet, her hands, in her ears. She suffered through everything, making hardly a sound. As I lifted her from the bathmat and cradles her naked into my chest, she sighted. A soft intake of breath then… a relaxation. Relief, love, comfort. It all comes out in that barely audible sigh. She does this often for me. It remains one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever known.”[10]
And Then – Imaging the Father. The Gift: “Go Beautiful! Go To God! Go!”
“Elizabeth Nyanga Gilges died on March 11, 2004 on my lap, cradled between Liz and me.
“She died quietly, peacefully. As she breathed her last few breaths, Liz said a Hail Mary and creid out, “Jesus come!’ I whispered in her small ear, ‘Elie, Go, beautiful. Go to God. Go.’ She took a half breath, shuddered once almost imperceptibly as if her body held very lightly now to her soul, took another half breath, and then she breathed no more.
“We bathed her, combed out her hair, dressed her in a blue Easter dress that Liz’s brother had bought for her, and placed her in the coffin which we as a family had make.
“It was built of ash, painted white with a black inlaid cross on the cover. The inside was lined with white satin. The children each placed tow hand prints in bright colors on the side of the coffin and wrote underneath in black marker, ‘I love you, Elie,’ and their name.
“In the morning, Liz’s mother and her sister bought a tiara made of yellow and blue flowers and we placed it on her forehead before the wake. Never have I seen anything more beautiful than her face in the dim twilight of her room.
“Requiem in Pace. Is Elie resting in peace? I guess I hope not. I hope that for the first time, a little girl who was never able to walk finally has the use of her legs and is running through fields filled with the yellow and blue flowers that adorned her pale brow as she lay in her coffin.
“That night Elie died, we tried to explain to our children again what death meant. They all listened solemnly. When we were done with our explanation, there were a few moments of quiet, then four year-old Hannah asked us: ‘Mom, can Elie do a cartwheel now?’”4
[1] Benedict XVI, Holy Mass with the Members of the Bishops’ Conference of Switzerland, November 7, 2006.
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” Proceedings of The Tenth Bishops’ Workshop, Dallas, Texas (1991) 20-21.
[5] Richard Rohr, “Adam’s Return,” Crossroad (2004) 20.
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid
[8] This is not a statement of pantheistic emanationism but the “erotic” dimension of God’s Love that is both Agape and eros. See Benedict XVI’s “Deus Charitas Est:” “The one God in whom Israel believes… loves with a personal love. His love, moreover, is an elective love: … God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape…. Hosea above all shows us that this agape dimension of God’s love for man goes far beyond the aspect of gratuity. Israel has committed ‘adultery’ and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: ‘How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I had you over, O Israel!... My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst’ (Hos. 11, 8-9);” (Deus Charitas Est #9-10).
[9] Louis Evely, Ibid 126-128
[10] Gilges, “Manuscript” 45-46.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Attracting Record Numbers 2007
MEXICO CITY, DEC. 11, 2007 (Zenit.org).-
Leaders at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which houses St. Juan Diego's tilma with the image of the Virgin, say that by Wednesday, some 7 million pilgrims will have visited the church in the last four days.
Wednesday is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the day that brings the most pilgrims to the site, located in Mexico's mountain capital. But the four-day span between Dec. 8 -- feast of the Immaculate Conception -- and Dec. 12 traditionally brings overflowing crowds.
This Dec. 12 commemorates the 476th anniversary of the last of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego. Juan Diego was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
Each year between 18 - 20 million pilgrims visit the basilica, making it Christianity's most visited sanctuary and one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. There are days on which the basilica is visited by up to 120,000 people.
The caretakers at the basilica expect that all attendance records will be broken this year with the arrival of 7 million visitors in only four days -- 2 million pilgrims are expected Wednesday.
Leaders at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which houses St. Juan Diego's tilma with the image of the Virgin, say that by Wednesday, some 7 million pilgrims will have visited the church in the last four days.
Wednesday is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the day that brings the most pilgrims to the site, located in Mexico's mountain capital. But the four-day span between Dec. 8 -- feast of the Immaculate Conception -- and Dec. 12 traditionally brings overflowing crowds.
This Dec. 12 commemorates the 476th anniversary of the last of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego. Juan Diego was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
Each year between 18 - 20 million pilgrims visit the basilica, making it Christianity's most visited sanctuary and one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. There are days on which the basilica is visited by up to 120,000 people.
The caretakers at the basilica expect that all attendance records will be broken this year with the arrival of 7 million visitors in only four days -- 2 million pilgrims are expected Wednesday.
Monday, December 03, 2007
The Prelate of Opus Dei as "Father"
The Founder of Opus Dei once remarked: “Opus Dei is a little bit of the Church.”[1]
The Church was designated as “The People of God” in the Second Vatican Council.[2] However, then – Cardinal Ratzinger noted that in the post-Conciliar years, the term “people of God” become the symbol of a politicized, non-hierarchical church. In the Synod of 1985, the term “Communio” had been inserted to better represent the vertical as well as horizontal reality of the Church, but this also suffered the same fate: a reduction to the purely horizontal. The Cardinal remarked:“At that time [1969] everything centered on the “people of God,” a concept which was thought to be a genuine innovation of the Second Vatican Council and was quickly contrasted with a hierarchical understanding of the Church. More and more, “people of God” was understood in the sense of popular sovereignty, as a right to a common, democratic determination over everything that the Church is and over everything that she should do. God was taken to be the creator and sovereign of the people because the phrase contained the words “of God,” but even with this awareness he was left out. He was amalgamated with the notion of a people who create and form themselves. (3) The word communio, which no one used to notice, was now surprisingly fashionable—if only as a foil. According to this interpretation, Vatican II had abandoned the hierarchical ecclesiology of Vatican I and replaced it with an ecclesiology of communio. Thereby, communio was apparently understood in much the same way the “people of God” had been understood, i.e., as an essentially horizontal notion. On the one hand, this notion supposedly expresses the egalitarian moment of equality under the universal decree of everyone. On the other hand, it also emphasizes as one of its most fundamental ideas an ecclesiology based entirely on the local Church. The Church appears as a network of groups, which as such precede the whole and achieve harmony with one another by building a consensus.”[3]
The Hebrew word “qahal” was given to the liturgical assembly of the people back from captivity in the ruins of the Temple. Louis Boyer says: “At the first qahal when the covenant was made on Sinai, the people had responded with unanimous acceptance of the ten sentences of the basic Torah, and then the first sacrifices of the covenant were offered…. At the third great qahal, of the Scribe Ezra [which was the foundation of the Synagogue of later Judaism], it is the whole priestly Torah of the scribes which is read, the Pentateuch complete in its definitive form in exile.”[4] The qahal is the gathering of the Jews to hear the Word of God with their response that is the "berakah" (communio). As the Word of God is God Himself I AM speaking, it calls for the total response of each Jew as “I.” The God of Revelation is not a part of the whole of reality as its supreme manifestation. Rather the Revealing Creator is the Whole apart from Creation itself. Hence, the response demands the whole of the “I” of the believer. As a result, the action of faith-response known as the "berakah" was the call to the Jew to make a total gift of himself. So total was the response that the Jews formed a unique people, each of whom was self-gift. Bouyer wrote:“Throughout the entire life of the pious Jew the piety of Judaism extends the ramifications of these berakoth, which are found in detail in the tractates with this title in the Mishnah and Toseftah. From the time he awakens, through each of his actions of the day, to the moment of his retirement and falling asleep, they consecrate the totality of his acts. And at the same time they consecrate the world in restoring it in praise to the Word which created it in the beginning, for each and every one of them are but so many acts of `acknowledgement’ of this Word as being the beginning and the end of all things… And it is thus that all of Israel believes it is accomplishing the promise of the book of Exodus: they will be made an entirely priestly people, a kingdom of priests, of consecrators of the entire universe to the one divine will revealed in the Torah.”[5]
This qahal of the Jews as a people is not the Greek “assembly of the people.” Ratzinger explains that with the Greeks only the men, not women and children, were protagonists in the assemblies. In the Jewish qahal, “even women and children, who in Greece could not be active agents of political events, belonged…”[6] The distinctive note here is that the grouping of the people came about by the response (berakah) of the whole person, man, woman and child, to the Word of God. This universality points to the radical equality of being subjects/selves: "I's." The distinctive note of the oneness of the Jews as a people, as opposed to the gentile grouping was the ontological response to a “thirdness” that gives them a constitutively relational bond, instead of an accidental one as in pagan (non-believing) political grouping. That third, in Opus Dei, is the Prelate as "Father."
The Qahal and Opus Dei
The Qahal was translated into the Greek “ecclesia” which means “assembly of the people” but, I repeat, not in the Greek sense of a juridical and political entity where only the male land owners were the active agents as citizen: “even women and children, who in Greece could not be active agents of political events, belonged to the qahal.” [1]
St. Josemaria Escriva described Opus Dei as “a little bit of the Church.” The “little bit” meant that there is a radical equality of the christifideles (Baptism and Confirmation) and the ministers (Order). “Opus Dei as a social reality in the Church is organic and undivided. Its lay faithful (men and women) and the priests who act as its clergy complement each other in exemplary adherence to the basic aboriginal relationship obtaining in the Chruch between christifideles – called to live out the requirements and implications of their baptism – and sacred ministers, whop bring in, besides, the ‘ministerial’ consequences of the sacrament of Order.”[2] This “radical equality” does not conceal the irreducible diversity of the way the laity and the ministers share in and exercise the one priesthood of Christ (cf. Lumen Gentium #10: “Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordered one to another”).
The Prelate of Opus Dei:
It is impossible to make the gift of self to form the Qahal of the Church as a communio without being affirmed by love. The mission of the Prelate of Opus Dei is to be the engendering “Father” who loves each of his sons more than their blood parents because, as he once said, he sees the Blood of Christ coursing through their veins. As Rodriguez remarked: “what is decisive is neither his ‘jurisdiction’ nor their obedience. Rather, what truly defines Opus Dei’s prelate is his ‘fatherhood,’ his role as a pastor who is a father to all the prelature’s faithful. That is why in Opus Dei he is usually called “Father.’ The prelate’s role in the life of Opus Dei deeply configures the prelature.”[3]And this, the pastor’s role, “precisely owing to the Church’s sacramental structure, had to be radically that of a father, who would be a kind of ‘loving sign’ of the love God the Father has for us in t he Son.”[4] Opus Dei is a sacramental phenomenon of Baptism and Orders that make us each “other Christs,” and therefore, there must be the aid of grace (that is the affirmation of divine Love making it possible to make the self-gift) and the human love of the “Father” who empowers us to make that gift with human fullness.
And so, the mutual relation of the common priesthood of the faithful to the ministerial priesthood and vice versa is the work of the radiation of fatherhood of the Prelate. As “a little bit of the Church,” Opus Dei is “hierarchical.” This means that the Prelate and his presbyterate have a sacramental union – hierarchical - to Christ as Good Shepherd, Who makes the ultimate self-gift by giving His Life for His sheep.“The hierarchical nature of Opus Dei, established in the Apostolic Constitution whereby I erected the Prelature, gives scope for pastoral considerations that are rich in practical applications….“The organic convergence of priests and laity is one of the privileged areas which will give life and pastoral solidity to that “new energy,” whereby we all feel invigorated after the Great Jubilee. In this context I wish to draw attention to the importance of that `spirituality of communion’ emphasized in the Apostolic Letter.”[13]
The mission of the Prelate is to bring about this “organic convergence.” Pedro Rodriguez says:
“Opus Dei is a prelature because it has a prelate directing it, possessed of sacra potestas. And, of course, because it has clergy and laity – its faithful people. But a gathering of priests and lay people does not produce the `organic unity’ of a `personal prelature’ unless it has a head, who brings unity that grouping and makes it the compages apostolica identified and regulated by John Paul II in Ut sit. In other words, that `little bit’ of the Church of which St. Josemaria Escriva spoke is a personal prelature because the Church supreme authority has entrusted its pastoral care… to a prelate. Within Opus Dei we find the constitutional dimension of the communio hierarchica. Because we find a prelate who belongs to the Church’s hierarchy and is the hierarchical head of the prelature.“His jurisdiction extends to all members of the prelature, priests as well as lay people, but it is circumscribed by the specific aim and the apostolic mission that the Church has recognized and approved for Opus Dei….
“What truly defines Opus Dei’s prelate is his `fatherhood,’ his role as a pastor who is a father to all the prelature’s faithful. That is why in Opus Dei he is usually called `Father.’ The prelate’s role in the life of Opus Dei deeply configures the prelature…."[14]
The Church was designated as “The People of God” in the Second Vatican Council.[2] However, then – Cardinal Ratzinger noted that in the post-Conciliar years, the term “people of God” become the symbol of a politicized, non-hierarchical church. In the Synod of 1985, the term “Communio” had been inserted to better represent the vertical as well as horizontal reality of the Church, but this also suffered the same fate: a reduction to the purely horizontal. The Cardinal remarked:“At that time [1969] everything centered on the “people of God,” a concept which was thought to be a genuine innovation of the Second Vatican Council and was quickly contrasted with a hierarchical understanding of the Church. More and more, “people of God” was understood in the sense of popular sovereignty, as a right to a common, democratic determination over everything that the Church is and over everything that she should do. God was taken to be the creator and sovereign of the people because the phrase contained the words “of God,” but even with this awareness he was left out. He was amalgamated with the notion of a people who create and form themselves. (3) The word communio, which no one used to notice, was now surprisingly fashionable—if only as a foil. According to this interpretation, Vatican II had abandoned the hierarchical ecclesiology of Vatican I and replaced it with an ecclesiology of communio. Thereby, communio was apparently understood in much the same way the “people of God” had been understood, i.e., as an essentially horizontal notion. On the one hand, this notion supposedly expresses the egalitarian moment of equality under the universal decree of everyone. On the other hand, it also emphasizes as one of its most fundamental ideas an ecclesiology based entirely on the local Church. The Church appears as a network of groups, which as such precede the whole and achieve harmony with one another by building a consensus.”[3]
Theological Background to the Notion of “Church”“Qahal”
The Hebrew word “qahal” was given to the liturgical assembly of the people back from captivity in the ruins of the Temple. Louis Boyer says: “At the first qahal when the covenant was made on Sinai, the people had responded with unanimous acceptance of the ten sentences of the basic Torah, and then the first sacrifices of the covenant were offered…. At the third great qahal, of the Scribe Ezra [which was the foundation of the Synagogue of later Judaism], it is the whole priestly Torah of the scribes which is read, the Pentateuch complete in its definitive form in exile.”[4] The qahal is the gathering of the Jews to hear the Word of God with their response that is the "berakah" (communio). As the Word of God is God Himself I AM speaking, it calls for the total response of each Jew as “I.” The God of Revelation is not a part of the whole of reality as its supreme manifestation. Rather the Revealing Creator is the Whole apart from Creation itself. Hence, the response demands the whole of the “I” of the believer. As a result, the action of faith-response known as the "berakah" was the call to the Jew to make a total gift of himself. So total was the response that the Jews formed a unique people, each of whom was self-gift. Bouyer wrote:“Throughout the entire life of the pious Jew the piety of Judaism extends the ramifications of these berakoth, which are found in detail in the tractates with this title in the Mishnah and Toseftah. From the time he awakens, through each of his actions of the day, to the moment of his retirement and falling asleep, they consecrate the totality of his acts. And at the same time they consecrate the world in restoring it in praise to the Word which created it in the beginning, for each and every one of them are but so many acts of `acknowledgement’ of this Word as being the beginning and the end of all things… And it is thus that all of Israel believes it is accomplishing the promise of the book of Exodus: they will be made an entirely priestly people, a kingdom of priests, of consecrators of the entire universe to the one divine will revealed in the Torah.”[5]
This qahal of the Jews as a people is not the Greek “assembly of the people.” Ratzinger explains that with the Greeks only the men, not women and children, were protagonists in the assemblies. In the Jewish qahal, “even women and children, who in Greece could not be active agents of political events, belonged…”[6] The distinctive note here is that the grouping of the people came about by the response (berakah) of the whole person, man, woman and child, to the Word of God. This universality points to the radical equality of being subjects/selves: "I's." The distinctive note of the oneness of the Jews as a people, as opposed to the gentile grouping was the ontological response to a “thirdness” that gives them a constitutively relational bond, instead of an accidental one as in pagan (non-believing) political grouping. That third, in Opus Dei, is the Prelate as "Father."
The Qahal and Opus Dei
The Qahal was translated into the Greek “ecclesia” which means “assembly of the people” but, I repeat, not in the Greek sense of a juridical and political entity where only the male land owners were the active agents as citizen: “even women and children, who in Greece could not be active agents of political events, belonged to the qahal.” [1]
St. Josemaria Escriva described Opus Dei as “a little bit of the Church.” The “little bit” meant that there is a radical equality of the christifideles (Baptism and Confirmation) and the ministers (Order). “Opus Dei as a social reality in the Church is organic and undivided. Its lay faithful (men and women) and the priests who act as its clergy complement each other in exemplary adherence to the basic aboriginal relationship obtaining in the Chruch between christifideles – called to live out the requirements and implications of their baptism – and sacred ministers, whop bring in, besides, the ‘ministerial’ consequences of the sacrament of Order.”[2] This “radical equality” does not conceal the irreducible diversity of the way the laity and the ministers share in and exercise the one priesthood of Christ (cf. Lumen Gentium #10: “Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordered one to another”).
The Prelate of Opus Dei:
It is impossible to make the gift of self to form the Qahal of the Church as a communio without being affirmed by love. The mission of the Prelate of Opus Dei is to be the engendering “Father” who loves each of his sons more than their blood parents because, as he once said, he sees the Blood of Christ coursing through their veins. As Rodriguez remarked: “what is decisive is neither his ‘jurisdiction’ nor their obedience. Rather, what truly defines Opus Dei’s prelate is his ‘fatherhood,’ his role as a pastor who is a father to all the prelature’s faithful. That is why in Opus Dei he is usually called “Father.’ The prelate’s role in the life of Opus Dei deeply configures the prelature.”[3]And this, the pastor’s role, “precisely owing to the Church’s sacramental structure, had to be radically that of a father, who would be a kind of ‘loving sign’ of the love God the Father has for us in t he Son.”[4] Opus Dei is a sacramental phenomenon of Baptism and Orders that make us each “other Christs,” and therefore, there must be the aid of grace (that is the affirmation of divine Love making it possible to make the self-gift) and the human love of the “Father” who empowers us to make that gift with human fullness.
And so, the mutual relation of the common priesthood of the faithful to the ministerial priesthood and vice versa is the work of the radiation of fatherhood of the Prelate. As “a little bit of the Church,” Opus Dei is “hierarchical.” This means that the Prelate and his presbyterate have a sacramental union – hierarchical - to Christ as Good Shepherd, Who makes the ultimate self-gift by giving His Life for His sheep.“The hierarchical nature of Opus Dei, established in the Apostolic Constitution whereby I erected the Prelature, gives scope for pastoral considerations that are rich in practical applications….“The organic convergence of priests and laity is one of the privileged areas which will give life and pastoral solidity to that “new energy,” whereby we all feel invigorated after the Great Jubilee. In this context I wish to draw attention to the importance of that `spirituality of communion’ emphasized in the Apostolic Letter.”[13]
The mission of the Prelate is to bring about this “organic convergence.” Pedro Rodriguez says:
“Opus Dei is a prelature because it has a prelate directing it, possessed of sacra potestas. And, of course, because it has clergy and laity – its faithful people. But a gathering of priests and lay people does not produce the `organic unity’ of a `personal prelature’ unless it has a head, who brings unity that grouping and makes it the compages apostolica identified and regulated by John Paul II in Ut sit. In other words, that `little bit’ of the Church of which St. Josemaria Escriva spoke is a personal prelature because the Church supreme authority has entrusted its pastoral care… to a prelate. Within Opus Dei we find the constitutional dimension of the communio hierarchica. Because we find a prelate who belongs to the Church’s hierarchy and is the hierarchical head of the prelature.“His jurisdiction extends to all members of the prelature, priests as well as lay people, but it is circumscribed by the specific aim and the apostolic mission that the Church has recognized and approved for Opus Dei….
“What truly defines Opus Dei’s prelate is his `fatherhood,’ his role as a pastor who is a father to all the prelature’s faithful. That is why in Opus Dei he is usually called `Father.’ The prelate’s role in the life of Opus Dei deeply configures the prelature…."[14]
Summary-Conclusion: the mission of the Prelate as Father is to engender sons and daughters as laity and ministers so that that they replicate the aboriginal relation that obtained in the Church from the beginning. By his love, direction and formation, the Father must stimulate the self-giving of each faithful of the Prelature to exercise the priestly soul and lay mentality. That is, to mediate (priestly soul) between the self and God for the others by the free gift of self (lay mentality of self-determination) on the occasion of secular work. In this way, Opus Dei is “a little bit of the Church” with the apostolic mission of communicating this “aboriginal” spirit through the Church and civil society.
[1] J. Ratzinger “Called to Communion,” Ignatius (1996) 30-31
[2] Pedro Rodriguez, “The Place of Opus Dei in the Church,” Opus Dei in the Church (1993) 38.
[3] Ibid 56.
[4] Ibid 58.
[1] J. Ratzinger “Called to Communion,” Ignatius (1996) 30-31
[2] Pedro Rodriguez, “The Place of Opus Dei in the Church,” Opus Dei in the Church (1993) 38.
[3] Ibid 56.
[4] Ibid 58.
Advent 2007
The meaning of “Parousia:”“ `Advent,’ does not, for example, mean `expectation,’ as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word parousia which means `presence’ or, more accurately, `arrival,’ i.e., the beginning of a presence. In antiquity the word was a technical term for the presence of a king or ruler and also of the god being worshipped, who bestows his Parousia on his devotees for a time. `Advent,’ then, means a presence begun, the presence being that of God. “Advent reminds us, therefore, of two things: first, that God’s presence in the world has already begun, that he is present though in a hidden manner; second, that his presence has only begun and is not yet full and complete, that it is in a state of development, of becoming and progressing toward its full form. His presence has already begun, and we, the faithful, are the ones through whom he wishes to be present in the world.”[1]
The Trial of Faith: John’s and Ours
John had sent messengers with the question “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” He had intuited before birth and audibly at the baptism that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the beloved Son of the Father. He had preached “words of burning power … and painted in fiery colors the great day of the Lord. He had portrayed the Messiah as the judge with the winnowing fan in his hand that would separate the chaff from the grain and throw the chaff once and for all into eternal fire. He had portrayed him as one who would cast out this adulterous generation and, if need by, raise up children of Abraham from the very stones to replace the faithless people who called themselves the children of Abraham. Above all, amid the fearful ambivalence of this world where we are constantly waiting and hoping in darkness, John had expected and proclaimed a clear message: that the day would finally come when the hopeless darkness would be dispelled in which human beings wander to and fro and know not where t hey are going. The ambiguity would disappear, and men would no longer have to grope their way in the endless mist abut would know for certain that this and no other is God’s unequivocal claim on them, that this and no other is their situation in relation to God.”
John was to point out Jesus as the Son of God: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn. 1, 29). And this is the key for Ratzinger and for us: “God’s presence had begun… but what a difference from what John had imagined! No fire fell from heaven to consume sinners and bear definitive witness ot he just; in fact, nothing changed at all in the present world. Jesus went about preacing and doing good in the land, but the ambiguity remained. Human life continued to be a dark mystery to which people had to entrust themselves with faith and hope amid the world’s darkness.”[1]
In a sermon preached between December 13-15 of 1964, Ratzinger remarked: “I believe the real temptation for someone who is a Christian, as we experience it today, does not just consist in the theoretical question of whether God exists; or even the question of whether he is three or one; or even the question of whether Christ is God and man in one person. What really torments us today, what bothers us much more is the inefficacy of Christianity: after two thousand years of Christian history, we can see nothing that might be a new reality in the world; rather, we find it sunk in the same old horrors, the same despair, and the same hopes as ever. And in our own lives, too, we inevitably experience time and again how Christian reality is powerless against all the other forces that influence us and make demands on us. And if, after all our labor and efforts to live on the basis of what is Christian, we draw up the final balance sheet, then often enough the feeling comes over us that the reality has been taken away from us, dissolved, and all that remains in the end is just an appeal to the feeble light of our goodwill. And then in moments of discouragement like that, when we look back on the path we have traveled, the question forces its way into our minds: What is all this array of dogma and worship antichurch, if at the end of it all we are still thrown back onto our own poor resources? That in turn brings us back again, in the end, to the question about the gospel of the Lord: What did he actually proclaim and bring among men? We will recall that, according to Saint Mark’s account, Christ’s message can be summed up in one saying: `The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel’ (Mk. 1, 15).”[2]Ratzinger then explains that theology, to render some account of the discrepancy between expectation and fulfillment, “in the course of time turned the kingdom of God into a kingdom of heaven that is beyond this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which again comes to pass beyond this life, after death.”
“But,” says Ratzinger, “theology did not thereby provide an answer. For what is sublime in this message is precisely that the Lord was talking not just about another life, not just about men’s souls, but was addressing the body, the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society; that he promised the kingdom of God to the man who lives bodily with other men in this history. As marvelous as the knowledge is that has been opened up for us by biblical scholarship in our century (that is, that Christ was not just looking forward to another life, but was talking about real people), it can also disappoint and unsettle us when we look at real history, which is in truth no kingdom of God.”
This is a most profound piece of writing. If we try to translate it, we could say that theology has been working with a metaphysic that is an abstraction, and consequently faith has been habitually delivered in disembodied abstractions that are the gilded ornamentation of dogma but having nothing to do with the daily picayune detailed life that is the fare of every day. So, what we are left with is the experience of sensible reality that is the contingent history of a Jesus of Nazareth but without any experience of the absolute reality of the divinity of the Person Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God. Hence, Ratzinger the theologian-philosopher moved, from the epistemological horizon of person as substance that is “in-itself” with accidents like intellect and will, to the horizon that is experience of the person in the moral act of total self gift that is faith (as described in Vatican II’s “Dei Verbum” #5). Faith, Hope and Charity are different facets of the one reality of the person transcending self on the way to Jesus Christ. Evidence of this is to be found in Benedict’s encyclicals on Love and Hope. It might be said that Vatican II and the Magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are employing a purified anthropology of the Enlightenment that reached its zenith in Hegel as synthesizer of Kantian autonomy/freedom and Herder’s expressionism. A perusal of Charles Taylor’s work on Hegel would be most enlightening as to the usefulness of this anthropology as a lived Christology for the achievement of holiness and secularity in ordinary life.
In order to bring about this experience of the “I,” the key is the understanding of faith as conversion of the whole self which involves self-mastery, self-possession and self-gift. In the light of this, consider the gospel account of a second conversion for St. John the Baptist which Ratzinger offered as the prime account for Advent. The point to be made is that Jesus of Nazareth is present as the Christ, but He is invisible to the eye. One must go through a conversion to see Him – even John.
John, having been cast in prison by Herod, sent messengers to Christ to ask Him: “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Lk. 7, 19).
This is a most profound piece of writing. If we try to translate it, we could say that theology has been working with a metaphysic that is an abstraction, and consequently faith has been habitually delivered in disembodied abstractions that are the gilded ornamentation of dogma but having nothing to do with the daily picayune detailed life that is the fare of every day. So, what we are left with is the experience of sensible reality that is the contingent history of a Jesus of Nazareth but without any experience of the absolute reality of the divinity of the Person Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God. Hence, Ratzinger the theologian-philosopher moved, from the epistemological horizon of person as substance that is “in-itself” with accidents like intellect and will, to the horizon that is experience of the person in the moral act of total self gift that is faith (as described in Vatican II’s “Dei Verbum” #5). Faith, Hope and Charity are different facets of the one reality of the person transcending self on the way to Jesus Christ. Evidence of this is to be found in Benedict’s encyclicals on Love and Hope. It might be said that Vatican II and the Magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are employing a purified anthropology of the Enlightenment that reached its zenith in Hegel as synthesizer of Kantian autonomy/freedom and Herder’s expressionism. A perusal of Charles Taylor’s work on Hegel would be most enlightening as to the usefulness of this anthropology as a lived Christology for the achievement of holiness and secularity in ordinary life.
In order to bring about this experience of the “I,” the key is the understanding of faith as conversion of the whole self which involves self-mastery, self-possession and self-gift. In the light of this, consider the gospel account of a second conversion for St. John the Baptist which Ratzinger offered as the prime account for Advent. The point to be made is that Jesus of Nazareth is present as the Christ, but He is invisible to the eye. One must go through a conversion to see Him – even John.
John, having been cast in prison by Herod, sent messengers to Christ to ask Him: “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Lk. 7, 19).
The Kingdom of God is Present But Hidden
Christ answers John: “Go and tell John what it is that you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me!” (Lk. 7, 22-23)John Paul II commented: “Especially through His lifestyle and through His actions, Jesus revealed that love is present in the world in which we live – an effective love, a love that addresses itself to man and embraces everything that makes up his humanity. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty – in contact with the whole historical `human condition,’ which is various ways manifests man’s limitation and frailty, both physical and moral. It is precisely the mode and sphere in which love manifests itself that in biblical language is called `mercy.’ “Christ, then, reveals God who is Father, who is `love,’ as St. John will express it in his first letter; Christ reveals God as `rich in mercy,’ as we read in St. Paul. This truth is not just the subject of a teaching: it is a reality made present to us by Christ. Making the Father present as love and mercy is, in Christ’s own consciousness, the fundamental touchstone of His mission as the Messiah; this is confirmed by the words that He uttered first in the synagogue at Nazareth and later in the presence of His disciples and of John the Baptist’s messengers.”[6]
The import of the response is the following: “I am creative love invisibly present in the world: the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, the dead rise, the poor have the gospel preached to them. You experience this through the senses, but you do not recognize me as “Divine Love” (Agape). You will have to become Love yourself in order to re-cognize Me and my Face.” The epistemology is: Like is known by like. You must experience, and therefore, cognize Love in order to re-cognize Love outside of you.
In the 1964 homily, Ratzinger said: “Our century is making us learn anew the truth of Advent: that is, the truth that it has always been Advent and yet also still is Advent. That all mankind is one before God’s face. That all mankind stands in darkness, but, on the other hand, that all mankind is illuminated by God’s light. Yet if this is the way it is, that it has always been Advent and still is Advent, then this also means that there is no period of history of which God would be just the past, which already lies behind us and in which everything has already been done. On the contrary, for al of us God is the origin from which we come and yet still also the future toward which we are going….We cannot find God except in this exodus, in going out from the coziness of our present situation into what is hidden: the brightness of God that is coming. The image of Moses, who had to climb up the mountain and go into the cloud to find God, remains valid for all ages. God cannot be found – even in the Church – except by our climbing the mountain and entering in to the cloud of the incognito of God, who in this world is the hidden One.”[7]
The New Encyclical (Spe Salvi): God is Present, Experience Him.
The “Fullness of faith” is connected to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews, 10, 23). In a word, faith is hope because it is the same one person who believes by making the gift of self to the revealing Self of the Word. To make the gift of self is to activate the being of the self that creates joy because it is the fulfillment of who one is as image of the divine Person of the Son. Hope is the experience of joy in being who one really is.
Benedict is insisting in this new encyclical on the meaning of Advent. It is not simply awaiting the coming of Christ, but the encounter with Him now, but not yet fully. He writes: “Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives ius something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a ‘proof’ of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet.’ The fact that his future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.”[3]
The opposite of hope is acedia that is the deep laziness of turning back on self that is sin. Acedia is the cause of sadness and depression. It is to consign everything to the world of abstraction and avoid the experience of personal exertion that is the Cross of self-transcendence, especially in the little things of daily life.
[1] J. Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 71-72.
[2] Ibid, 75-76.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones - Memoirs 1927-1977,” Ignatius (1998) 108-109.
[4] Ibid. 109.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 24-25.
[6] John Paul II, “Dives in Misericordia,” #3.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means to Be a Christian,” Ignatius (1965-2005) 36.
[1] J. Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 74-75.
[2] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means to Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) 25-26.
[3] Benedict XVI, “Spe Salvi,” #7.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The Kingdom of God 2007
Overview
Benedict XVI: “Speaking of God, we are touching precisely on the subject which, in Jesus’ earthly preaching, was his main focus. The fundamental subject of this preaching is God’s realm, the ‘Kingdom of God.’ This does not mean something that will come to pass at one time or another in an indeterminate future. Nor does it mean that better the better world which we seek to created, step by step, with our own strength. In the term ‘Kingdom of God,’ the word ‘God’ is a subjective genitive. This means: God is not something added to the ‘Kingdom’ which one might even perhaps drop.
“God is the subject. Kingdom of God actually means: God reigns. He himself is present and crucial to human beings in the world. He is the subject, and wherever this subject is absent, nothing remains of Jesus’ message.
“Therefore, Jesus tells us: the Kingdom of God does not come in such a way that one may, so to speak, line the wayside to watch its arrival. ‘The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!’ (cf. Lk. 17, 20ff.).
“It develops wherever God’s will is done. It is present wherever there are people who are open to his arrival and so let God enter the world. Thus, Jesus is the Kingdom of God in person: the man in whom God is among us and through whom we can touch God, draw close to God. Wherever this happens, the world is saved.”[1]
The above statement contains the main overview of the mind of Benedict XVI on “The Kingdom of God.” The major insight consists in understanding that we are not talking about a Kingdom that is independent of the divine Person, and that we could drop off the divine Person and still have a Kingdom of peace, justice, plenty, a “better world through chemistry,” etc. that would be the Kingdom of heaven, but would not be the Kingdom of God. In Bavaria last year (September 2006), Benedict touched on the same theme and said: “God is the subject. Kingdom of God actually means: God reigns. He himself is present and crucial to human beings in the world. He is the subject, and wherever this subject is absent, nothing remains of Jesus’ message. Therefore, Jesus tells us: the Kingdom of God does not come in such a way that one may, so to speak, line the wayside to watch its arrival. ‘The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!’ (cf. Lk. 17, 20ff.).”
“God is the subject. Kingdom of God actually means: God reigns. He himself is present and crucial to human beings in the world. He is the subject, and wherever this subject is absent, nothing remains of Jesus’ message.
“Therefore, Jesus tells us: the Kingdom of God does not come in such a way that one may, so to speak, line the wayside to watch its arrival. ‘The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!’ (cf. Lk. 17, 20ff.).
“It develops wherever God’s will is done. It is present wherever there are people who are open to his arrival and so let God enter the world. Thus, Jesus is the Kingdom of God in person: the man in whom God is among us and through whom we can touch God, draw close to God. Wherever this happens, the world is saved.”[1]
The above statement contains the main overview of the mind of Benedict XVI on “The Kingdom of God.” The major insight consists in understanding that we are not talking about a Kingdom that is independent of the divine Person, and that we could drop off the divine Person and still have a Kingdom of peace, justice, plenty, a “better world through chemistry,” etc. that would be the Kingdom of heaven, but would not be the Kingdom of God. In Bavaria last year (September 2006), Benedict touched on the same theme and said: “God is the subject. Kingdom of God actually means: God reigns. He himself is present and crucial to human beings in the world. He is the subject, and wherever this subject is absent, nothing remains of Jesus’ message. Therefore, Jesus tells us: the Kingdom of God does not come in such a way that one may, so to speak, line the wayside to watch its arrival. ‘The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!’ (cf. Lk. 17, 20ff.).”
“The Kingdom” in Benedict’s “Jesus of Nazareth”
The specific points he develops in the chapter entitled “The Gospel of the Kingdom of God” in his “Jesus of Nazareth” are the following:
1) "The core content of the Gospel is this: The Kingdom of God is at hand. A milestone is set up in the flow of time, something new takes place…. The center of this announcement is the message that God’s Kingdom is at hand. A look at the statistics underscores this. The phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ occurs 122 times in the New Testament as whole; 99 of these passages are found in the three Synoptic Gospels, and 90 of these texts report words of Jesus.”[2]
2) The Father of the Church, Origen, developed the following crucial insights:
a) The Kingdom is a Person: “Jesus… the autobasileia…[is] the Kingdom in person. Jesus himself is the Kingdom; the Kingdom is not a thing, it is not geographical dominion like world kingdoms. It is a person; it is he…. (T)he term ‘Kingdom of God’ is itself a veiled Christology… Jesus leads men to realize the overwhelming fact that in it God himself is present among them, that he is God’s presence.”[3]
b) “(M)an’s interiority [is] the essential location of the Kingdom of God…. The basic idea is clear: The ‘Kingdom of God’ is not to be found on any map. It is not a kingdom after the fashion of worldly kingdoms; it is located in man’s inner being. It grows and radiates outward from that inner space.”[4]
c) “(T)he Kingdom of God and the Church are related in different ways and brought into more or less close proximity.” It could perhaps be offered that “Since the Church, in Christ, is in the nature of sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men – '[5] the Church is “nothing more than the space into which this new subject can move.'[6] Ratzinger is explaining the radical transformation of the baptized person into Christ Himself:
“Becoming and being a Christian depends on conversion…. But conversion according to Paul is something much more radical than a mere revision of a few opinions or attitudes. It is a death event. In other words, it is the replacement of the subject. The ‘I’ ceases to be independent and to be a subject existing in itself. It is torn from itself and inserted into a new subject. The ‘I’ does not perish, but in effect it must let itself fall completely in order to be received within a larger ‘I’ and together with it be conceived anew.”[7] This ontological recasting of the identity of the “I” as the exegesis of the “putting on Christ” is perhaps the boldest and most explicit affirmation of the meaning of the Kingdom of God being “here” and “now.” For Christ became present not only in Nazareth 2,000 years ago, and will be present again at the end of time, but He is present now in this time and place in that this person and that, have most literally “become Him” by the radical gift of themselves to death. This radical transformation takes place in the Church and because of the Church. But the Church is not the Kingdom but the sacrament and the space of this transformation. The person-become-Christ is the Kingdom as “another Christ.” [However, this does not mean that the human person has become a divine Person: See below at the end].
d) The Kingdom is an Action: Since the Kingdom is a Person, and the Person of Christ is the action of self-gift to the Father, then the Kingdom is an “action.”[8] Benedict expatiates on that: “There is another important linguistic observation: The underlying Hebrew word malkut ‘is a nomen actionis (an action word) and means – as does the Greek word basileia (kingdom) – the regal function, the active lordship of the king’ (Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theolgie I, p. 67). What is meant is not an imminent or yet to be established ‘kingdom,’ but God’s actual sovereignty over the world, which is becoming an event in history in a new way.”[9] Benedict goes on: “We can put it even more simply: When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he is quite simply proclaiming God, and proclaiming him to be the living God, who is able to act concretely in the world and in history and is even now so acting. He is telling us: ‘God exists’ and ‘God is really God, which means that he holds in his hands the threads of the world… The new and totally specific thing about his message is that he is telling us: God is acting now – this is the hour when God is showing himself in history as its Lord, as the living God, in a way that goes beyond anything seen before. ‘Kingdom of God’ is therefore an inadequate translation. It would be better to speak of God’s being-Lord, of his lordship.”[10]
The large point is made here. God is here and now, but not yet. “God’s dominion over the world and over history, transcends the moment, indeed transcends and reaches beyond the whole of history. Its inner dynamism carries history beyond itself. And yet it is at the same time something belonging absolutely to the present. It is present in the liturgy, in Temple and synagogue, as an anticipation of the next world; it is present as a life-shaping power through the believer’s prayer and being: by bearing God’s yoke, the believer already receives a share in the world to come.”[11] This makes sense of such statements as ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mk. 1, 15), it ‘has already come upon you’ (Mt. 12, 28), it is ‘in the midst of you’ (Lk. 17, 21).
e) It is small like a seed and invisible like a seed buried in the ground. How could it be otherwise when, as we saw in b) above, the Kingdom is interior as person is interior to himself. The Kingdom will be wherever the person who has become “another Christ” is. So, indeed, “the Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk. 1, 15), it “has already come upon you” (Mt. 12, 28), is “in the midst of you” (Lk. 17, 21). “What these words express is a process of coming that has already begun and extends over the whole of history. It was these words that gave rise to the thesis of ‘imminent expectation’ and made this appear as Jesus’ specific characteristic.”[12] And, yet for the same reason that we are talking about a divine Person who transcends time and space, and yet continues to be now in time and space by the fact that another person, a human person, has become another Christ by the action that is His Person – self-gift as service-agape. Benedict concludes his chapter III with “Here… it is not simply in Jesus’ physical presence that the ‘Kingdom’ is located; rather, it is in his action, accomplished in the Holy Spirit. In this sense, it is in and through him that the Kingdom of God becomes present here and now, that it ‘is drawing near.’”[13]
The Great Danger: Jesus of Nazareth is Separated from Jesus, the Christ, Son of the living God.
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[14]
d) The Kingdom is an Action: Since the Kingdom is a Person, and the Person of Christ is the action of self-gift to the Father, then the Kingdom is an “action.”[8] Benedict expatiates on that: “There is another important linguistic observation: The underlying Hebrew word malkut ‘is a nomen actionis (an action word) and means – as does the Greek word basileia (kingdom) – the regal function, the active lordship of the king’ (Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theolgie I, p. 67). What is meant is not an imminent or yet to be established ‘kingdom,’ but God’s actual sovereignty over the world, which is becoming an event in history in a new way.”[9] Benedict goes on: “We can put it even more simply: When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he is quite simply proclaiming God, and proclaiming him to be the living God, who is able to act concretely in the world and in history and is even now so acting. He is telling us: ‘God exists’ and ‘God is really God, which means that he holds in his hands the threads of the world… The new and totally specific thing about his message is that he is telling us: God is acting now – this is the hour when God is showing himself in history as its Lord, as the living God, in a way that goes beyond anything seen before. ‘Kingdom of God’ is therefore an inadequate translation. It would be better to speak of God’s being-Lord, of his lordship.”[10]
The large point is made here. God is here and now, but not yet. “God’s dominion over the world and over history, transcends the moment, indeed transcends and reaches beyond the whole of history. Its inner dynamism carries history beyond itself. And yet it is at the same time something belonging absolutely to the present. It is present in the liturgy, in Temple and synagogue, as an anticipation of the next world; it is present as a life-shaping power through the believer’s prayer and being: by bearing God’s yoke, the believer already receives a share in the world to come.”[11] This makes sense of such statements as ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mk. 1, 15), it ‘has already come upon you’ (Mt. 12, 28), it is ‘in the midst of you’ (Lk. 17, 21).
e) It is small like a seed and invisible like a seed buried in the ground. How could it be otherwise when, as we saw in b) above, the Kingdom is interior as person is interior to himself. The Kingdom will be wherever the person who has become “another Christ” is. So, indeed, “the Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk. 1, 15), it “has already come upon you” (Mt. 12, 28), is “in the midst of you” (Lk. 17, 21). “What these words express is a process of coming that has already begun and extends over the whole of history. It was these words that gave rise to the thesis of ‘imminent expectation’ and made this appear as Jesus’ specific characteristic.”[12] And, yet for the same reason that we are talking about a divine Person who transcends time and space, and yet continues to be now in time and space by the fact that another person, a human person, has become another Christ by the action that is His Person – self-gift as service-agape. Benedict concludes his chapter III with “Here… it is not simply in Jesus’ physical presence that the ‘Kingdom’ is located; rather, it is in his action, accomplished in the Holy Spirit. In this sense, it is in and through him that the Kingdom of God becomes present here and now, that it ‘is drawing near.’”[13]
The Great Danger: Jesus of Nazareth is Separated from Jesus, the Christ, Son of the living God.
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[14]
“The figure of Jesus of Nazareth remains astonishingly current. Even outside of Christianity he appeals to people: Islam recognizes him as a prophet; in India many people have set up an image of Jesus in their house. The Christ of the Sermon on the Mount, who moved Gandhi so deeply, has become for many non-Christians there a messenger of God’s goodness, in whom the light of eternity shines into the world….
“Yet concurrent with this manifold presence of the figure of Jesus, it is disturbing to note that, within Christianity itself, Christology has been losing its meaning. It started with the effort to rediscover the man Jesus behind the gilded background of dogma, to return to the simplicity of the Gospels… Today in broad circles, even among believers, an image has prevailed of a Jesus who demands nothing, never scolds, who accepts everyone and everything, who no longer does anything but affirm us…
“The presence of the figure of Jesus itself is becoming diminished – also with regard to the non-Christian contemporaries who surround us; the figure is transformed from the ‘Lord’ (a word that is avoided) into a man who is nothing more than the advocate of all men.”[15]
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And he said to him, ‘All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Begone, Satan! For it is written ‘The Lord thy God shalt thou worship and him only shalt thou serve.’ Then the devil left him; and behold, angels came and ministered to him” (Mt. 4, 8-11).
Dangerous Replacements for the Kingdom of God
1) Christendom: “The Christian emperors after Constantine immediately tried to make the faith a political factor that would be conducive to the unity of the empire. The kingdom of Christ was not expected to assume the form of a political kingdom with its splendor. The impotence of the faith, the earthly powerlessness of Jesus Christ, was now supposedly compensated for by political and military might. In every century, in many forms, this temptation to secure the faith with power has arisen again and again, and over and over the faith has come close to being suffocated in the embrace of power. The battle for the freedom of the Church, the battle over the fact that Jesus’ kingdom cannot be identical to any political construct, must be fought in every century. For the price to be paid for fusing faith and political power, in the final analysis, always consists of placing faith at the service of power and bending it to political standards.”[17]
2) The Revolutionary [Marxism]: “Pilate has the people choose between Jesus and Barabbas. One of the two will be set free. But who was Barabbas? Usually we think only of the formulation found in the Gospel of John: ‘Now Barabbas was a robber’ (Jn. 18, 40). But the Greek word for ‘robber’ had acquired a specific meaning in the political situation in Palestine at that time. It was the equivalent of ‘freedom fighter’ or ‘member of the resistance.’ Barabbas had taken part in an insurrection and furthermore – in this connection – had been accused of murder (Lk. 23, 19, 25). When Matthew says that Barabbas was ‘a notorious prisoner’ (Mt. 27, 16), it shows that he was one of the prominent members of the resistance movement probably the one who actually instigated that uprising. In other words: Barabbas was a messianic figure. The choice, Jesus or Barabbas, is not coincidental: two messianic figures, tow forms of messianic belief stand in opposition. This becomes even more evident wh4en we reflect that ‘Bar-Abbas’ means ‘Son of the Father.’ It is a typically messianic appellation, the cultic name of a prominent leader of the messianic movement. The last great messianic war of the Jews had been waged in the year 132 B.C. by Bar-Kokhba – ‘Son of the Star.’ The construction of t he name is the same; the same intention is announced. From Origen we learn yet another interesting detail: In many manuscripts of the Gospels, well into the third century, the man in question is called ‘Jesus Barabbas’ – Jesus, Son of the Father. He appears as a kind of doppelganger [double] for Jesus, who of course understood the same claim in a completely different manner. The choice, then, is between a Messiah who wages battle, who promises freedom and an earthly kingdom of one’s own, and this mysterious Jesus, who proclaims that losing oneself is the way to life. Is it any wonder that the crowds prefer Barabbas?”[18]
3) The Worship of Well-Being and Rational Planning: “If we had to choose today, would Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, the Son of the Father, have a chance? Do we know Jesus at all? Do we understand him? Do we not have to make an effort, today as always, to become acquainted with him all over again? The tempter is not so crude as to recommend to us directly that we should worship the devil. He only suggests that we should decide on what is reasonable, choose the advantages of a planned and thoroughly organized world, in which God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes. Soloviev ascribes to the Antichrist a book entitled The Manifest Way to Peace and Welfare in the World, which becomes, so to speak, the new Bible and has the worship of well-being and of rational planning as its actual subject.”[19]
Oprah Winfrey and the “New Age” Kingdom
I copy below remarks by a Warren Smith on a daily series that will be aired by Oprah Winfrey during 2008. It is entitled “A Course in Miracles.” Having no intention to foster a “plot” mentality, but alarmed by the depth and proximity to Catholic teaching, I offer his presentation and assessment of the content:
“Oprah Winfrey will be letting out all the stops on her XM Satellite Radio program this coming year. Beginning January 1, 2008, “Oprah & Friends” will offer a year-long course on the New Age teachings of A Course in Miracles.1 A lesson a day throughout the year will completely cover the 365 lessons from the Course in Miracles “Workbook.” For example, Lesson #29 asks you to go through your day affirming that “God is in everything I see.”2 Lesson #61 tells each person to repeat the affirmation “I am the light of the world.”3 Lesson #70 teaches the student to say and believe “My salvation comes from me.”4 By the end of the year, “Oprah & Friends” listeners will have completed all of the lessons laid out in the Course in Miracles Workbook. Those who finish the Course will have a wholly redefined spiritual mindset—a New Age worldview that includes the belief that there is no sin, no evil, no devil, and that God is “in” everyone and everything. A Course in Miracles teaches its students to rethink everything they believe about God and life. The Course Workbook bluntly states: “This is a course in mind training”5 and is dedicated to “thought reversal.”6Teaching A Course in Miracles will be Oprah’s longtime friend and special XM Satellite Radio reporter Marianne Williamson—who also happens to be one of today’s premier New Age leaders. She and Conversations with God author Neale Donald Walsch co-founded the American Renaissance Alliance in 1997, that later became the Global Renaissance Alliance of New Age leaders, that changed its name again in 2005 to the Peace Alliance. This Peace Alliance seeks to usher in an era of global peace founded on the principles of a New Age/New Spirituality that they are now referring to as a “civil rights movement for the soul.”7 They all agree that the principles of this New Age/New Spirituality are clearly articulated in A Course in Miracles—which is fast becoming the New Age Bible. So what is A Course in Miracles and what does it teach?A Course in Miracles is allegedly “new revelation” from “Jesus” to help humanity work through these troubled times. This “Jesus”—who bears no doctrinal resemblance to the Bible’s Jesus Christ—began delivering his channeled teachings in 1965 to a Columbia University Professor of Medical Psychology by the name of Helen Schucman. One day Schucman heard an “inner voice” stating, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.”8 For seven years she diligently took spiritual dictation from this inner voice that described himself as “Jesus.” A Course in Miracles was quietly published in 1975 by the Foundation for Inner Peace. For many years “the Course” was an underground cult classic for New Age seekers who studied “the Course” individually, with friends, or in small study groups.As a former New Age follower and devoted student of A Course in Miracles, I eventually discovered that the Course in Miracles was—in reality—the truth of the Bible turned upside down. Not having a true understanding of the Bible at the time of my involvement, I was led to believe that A Course in Miracles was “a gift form God” to help everyone understand the “real” meaning of the Bible and to help bring peace to the world. Little did I know that the New Age “Christ” and the New Age teachings of A Course in Miracles were everything the real Jesus Christ warned us to watch out for. In Matthew 24 Jesus warned about false teachers, false teachings and the false “Christs” who would pretend to be Him. When I left the New Age “Christ” to follow the Bible’s Jesus Christ, I had come to understand that the “Jesus” of A Course in Miracles was a false “Christ,” and that his Course in Miracles was dangerously deceptive. Here are some quotes from the “Jesus” of A Course in Miracles:
“There is no sin. . . “9
A “slain Christ has no meaning.”10
“The journey to the cross should be the last ‘useless journey.’”11
“Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’”12
“The Name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. . . . It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray.”13
“God is in everything I see.”14
“The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.”15
“The oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power.”16
“The Atonement is the final lesson he [man] need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.”17
From what we have seen above, it will be important to make clear that:
1) Although we are “other Christs” empowered to share in His configuration as self-gift to the Father, principally through the action of prayer (not without the Cross), we are not God. We are ontologically limited created beings who experience the relative autonomy of freedom to do good by the gift of selves to God and others, or we can sin by turning back on self concomitantly rejecting God and others.
2) Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of man, is the historically real individual Jesus of Nazareth. To say that “The Name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. . . . It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray,” is pure vacuous lucubration.
Benedict XVI confronted this mental attitude in the foreword of “Jesus of Nazareth:” “the historical-critical method – specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith – is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work. For it is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolizing suprahistorical truths, abut is based on history, history that took place here on this earth. The factum historicum (historical fact) is not an interchangeable symbolic cipher for biblical faith, but the foundation on which it stands: Et incarnatus est - when we say these words, we acknowledge God’s actual entry into real history.
“If we push this history aside, Christian faith as such disappears and is recast as some other religion. So if history, if facticity in this sense, is an essential dimension of Christian faith, then faith must expose itself to the historical method – indeed, faith itself demands this…
“(Therefore), (t)he historical-critical method – let me repeat – is an indispensable tool, given the structure of Christian faith.”[20] [But we must also go back and remember that the historical-critical method is insufficient of itself to reach through sensible phenomena to the person, and less to the very Person of the Son of God, without the deployment of the observer as self-gift and the experience of that "I" - gift transferred to the underlying reality of the Person.]
[1] Benedict XVI, Bavaria, September 14, 2006.
[2] Benedict XVI, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Doubleday (2007) 47.
[3] Ibid 49.
[4] Ibid 50.
[5] Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium” 1.
[6] J. Ratzinger, “The Church and the Theologian,” Origins May 8, 1986, Vol. 15: NO. 47, 765.
[7] Ibid . 764.
[8] The solution to the modern dilemma: the Jesus of history, or the Christ of faith, is activating faith as self-gift and experiencing Jesus as the Revelation of the divine Self-gift. Perhaps Ratzinger’s clearest statement of this theological epistemology whereby we recognize Jesus as the Christ, and the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth is the following: “For what faith really states is precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish officie and person; with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. The two are no longer divisible. Here there is no private area [“being-as-substance”] reserved for an ‘I’ which remains in the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can be ‘off duty;’ here there is no ‘I’ separate from the work; the ‘I’ is the work and the work is the ‘I;’” Introduction to Christianity Ignatius (1990) 149.
[9] Benedict XVI, “Jesus of Nazareth,” op. cit. 55.
[10] Ibid. 55-56.
[11] Ibid. 56.
[12] Ibid. 57-58.
[13] Ibid. 60.
[14] H. Richard Neibuhr in Kenneth L. Woodward’s “Is this the Jesus you had imagined,” International Herald Tribune, Thursday, February 26, 2004, 6.
[15] J. Ratzinger, “On the Way to Jesus Christ,” Ignatius (2004) 8.
[16] See Ratzinger’s “Looking at Christ” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, Ignatius (2004) 79-106.
[17] Ibid 96.
[18] Ibid 97.
[19] Ibid 98.
[20] Ratzinger-Benedict XVI, “Jesus of Nazareth” Doubleday (2007) Foreword xv-xvi.
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