Msgr. Bernard Tissier de Mallerais: Faith Imperiled by Reason - Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutics

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CHAPTER III - Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Itinerary

Joseph Ratzinger’s philosophical itinerary is then an impasse, because it abandons the road of the philosophy of being. Will the theological itinerary of the same Ratzinger leave that impasse? Will it find a way which leads to the first Being, to his infinite perfections, to his supernatural mysteries?

To answer this question, it is first necessary to situate the professor of Tübingen in the context of German theology, dependent on the celebrated school of theology in the university of that very city.


1. Living Tradition, continuous Revelation, according to the school of Tübingen

According to the founder of the Catholic school of Tübingen, Johann Sebastian von Drey (1777-1853), historical development is explained by a vital spiritual principle:

What encloses the various historical epochs into a united whole or what sets them in opposition to each other is a certain spirit which, at determined times, concludes historical development with a unity filled with life: this is the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

[This spirit is constructive:] acting by going out of itself, it draws everything around itself like the center of a circle, which reduces opposition and reorganizes in accordance with itself whatever is conformed to it.[62]

The affinity of this thought to Dilthey’s is striking, but for Drey, the Zeitgeist is nothing besides the spirit of Christ. The theologian’s faith transfigures the philosopher’s naturalism.

In his Apologetik (1838), Drey explains how evolution is necessary to Chrstianity, insofar as it is a historical phenomenon and insofar as it is Revelation. Here is how Geiselmann summarizes Drey:

Christian Revelation is life, originally divine life—a life which, without interruption, increases from its original core towards its plenitude within the universal Church. As uninterrupted divine life, Revelation is not a completed gift, deposited, so to speak, in the cradle of the church and transmitted by human hands. It is this very Revelation, which, like all life, moves and continues of itself.[63]

Its movement is auto-movement, thanks to that portion of spiritual force which has dwelt in it since its origin, to know God’s essential force and also his action, which, without failing, continues to act and to lead his creation towards its perfection.[64]


2. Revelation, living Tradition and evolution of dogma

This idea of Revelation, which ‘no longer appeared simply as the transmission of truths addressed to the intellect, but as the historical action of God, in which Truth unveils itself little by little,’[65] would have been the thesis concerning Saint Bonaventure presented by Joseph Ratzinger in 1956 for his State authorization as a university professor. The author pretended that the Seraphic Doctor had seen in Revelation, not an ensemble of truths, but an act (which is not exclusive), and that ‘the concept of “Revelation” always implies the subject who receives it’[66]: the Church thus forms a part of the concept of Revelation, that is to say, a part of Revelation itself. Similarly, the candidate for authorization maintained that ‘to Scripture belongs the subject who understands it [the Church]—Scripture with which we have already given the essential meaning of Tradition.’[67]. And Joseph Ratzinger tells just how his thesis-director, professor Michael Schmaus, ‘did not at all see in these theses a faithful reconstruction of Bonaventure’s thought [...] but a dangerous modernism, well on the way to turning the concept of Revelation into a subjective notion.’[68]

Well, this idea of Revelation as a divine intervention in history, which also was not closed by the death of the last of the Apostles, but which continues in the Church which is its receptive subject, had been rejected meanwhile, after Drey and before Loisy, by the Roman magisterium: Revelation is not any divine intervention, but only a pronunciation from God, ‘locutio Dei,’[69] not to the whole Church, but to ‘the holy men of God’ (1 P 1, 21), the prophets and Apostles’; the truth which it contains ‘was complete with the Apostles’[70]; it is not perfectible,[71] but is a ‘divine deposit’ confided to the magisterium of the Church ‘so that it might guard it as sacred and set it out faithfully.’[72]

The ‘Revelation transmitted by the Apostles, or the deposit of the faith’[73] does at all times experience progress, not indeed in its content, of which the Apostles possessed the plenitude as well as the plenitude of understanding[74], but in its explanation, by a ‘more ample interpretation’[75] or a clearer ‘distinction,’[76] that is to say, by a passage from implicit to explicit[77] of that same deposit of faith closed at the death of the last of the Apostles.

Certainly, God continues to intervene in human history: the conversion of the emperor Constantine, the evangelization of America, the pontificate of Pope Saint Pius X were as milestones among so many others in God’s providential action, but they do not have the value of divine Revelation. Here a very important distinction must be made: a progressive Revelation from God is undeniable in the Old Testament and even in the New until the death of Saint John. After that, public Revelation ended. Neither God nor anyone else could add anything whatsoever to it, as Saint John said in the Apocalypse:

For I testify to everyone that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book. [Apoc. 22, 18-19]

Without doubt, as Saint Thomas says, ‘in each epoch, the Church never lacks men filled with the spirit of prophecy, not indeed to draw out a new doctrine of faith, but for the direction of human acts.’[78] These are the subjects and instruments of private revelations. If, therefore, anyone supposes that public Revelation is continued in the Church by the prophetic charism of its members or of the hierarchy, he falls into error. Here as elsewhere, Saint Thomas is a sure guide. Speaking of the Old Testament, he teaches that there has effectively been an increase in the articles of faith, not as regards their substance, but as regards their explanation:

As regards the substance of articles of faith, there has been no increase in these articles according to the succession of time, because all the later ones are believed to have been already contained in the faith of the early Fathers albeit implicitly. But as regards their explanation, the number of articles as increased: because certain among them have been explicitly understand by the successors, which were not explicitly understood by the first. Thus, the Lord said to Moses in Exodus: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob and my name of Adonai I did not tell them.’ And the Apostle says: ‘the mystery of Christ...in other generations was not known...as it is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets’ (Ep. 3, 4-5)[79]

There is no parallel but only analogy between the time of Revelation and the time of the Church, between progressive Revelation, on the one hand, and progressive development of Christian dogma, on the other. Thus Saint Bonaventure must be interpreted. Until Christ and the Apostles, Revelation itself was developed while passing from implicit to explicit; after the Apostles, Revelation being terminated, its understanding, its application and its proposal by the Church are developed while passing from implicit to explcit. We could summarize this in Latin: Ante Christum, creverunt articula fi dei quia magis ac magis explicite a Deo revelata sunt; post Christum vero et apostolos, creverunt quidem articula fi dei quia magis ac magis explicite tradita sunt ab Ecclesia.[80]


3. Tradition, a living interpretation of the Bible

The historicism in Joseph Ratzinger’s concept of Tradition presupposes his subjectivism. The mystery of God is not an object; it is a person, an I who speaks to a Thou. The I who speaks is only perceived by a Thou who listens. This relation is inscribed in the notion of Tradition. Tradition, consequently, is nothing besides the living interpretation of Scripture:

There can be no pure sola scriptura (‘by Scripture alone’). To Scripture belongs the subject who understands it—Scripture by which is already given to us the essential meaning of Tradition.[81]

This requires explanation. For idealist thought, the crude thing is unknown; it is the object (that is to say, the thought thing) which is known. For Kant, the subject forms a part of the object, imposing on it his a priori categories, his own coloring. For Husserl, the thought object is simply the correlative for the thinking subject, independent of the thing. Joseph Ratzinger would find an application of this idealism in Scripture and Tradition: crude Scripture is unintelligible; it must be ‘understood’ by the Church as subject, which is its correlative, and which interprets it in its own manner; in this sense, ‘there can never be Scripture alone,’ in rebuttal of what Luther pretended with his ‘sola scriptura.’

In fact, Joseph Ratzinger is here inspired by Martin Buber,[82] for whom the essence of the Decalogue is a summons: the summons of the human Thou by the divine I: ‘Thou shalt not have strange gods before me...’ (Ex. 20, 3). Interpretation of the Bible relives the experience of this summons. In this sense, there is no sola scriptura since there is always the summons, today in the Church.

The truth is that it is the Church who gives an authentic interpretation for the Bible. But this is not because she is ‘the understanding subject,’ but because she is its judge: ‘It belongs to her to judge concerning the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture.”[83] And to sustain this judgment, the Church has another source of faith: Tradition, that is to say, the truths of faith and morals received by the Apostles from the very mouth of Christ or from the holy Ghost, which have been transmitted from them to us without alteration, as though from hand to hand.[84] The witnesses for Tradition are the holy Fathers, the liturgy, the dispersed and unanimous magisterium of the bishops and the magisterium of councils and popes. All these voices succeed each other, but Tradition in essence is immutable.

It is because it is immutable that it can be a rule for the faith, because elastic rules are no rules at all. It is therefore insofar as it is immutable that Tradition is a rule of interpretation for the Bible; there is no actual reading of the Bible, different from yesterday’s, which can suffer Scripture to undergo a ‘process of reinterpretation and of amplification,’ as Benedict XVI pretends.[85]

Immutable in itself, Tradition progresses in becoming more explicit. Here is a truth which Vatican Council II, in its constitution Dei Verbum concerning Divine Revelation, has obscured by alleging an historical progress for Tradition in ‘its perception’ and in ‘its understanding’ of the things revealed by God, and an ‘incessant tendency of the Church towards the plenitude of divine truth’—things absolutely impossible, as I have shown. I cite:

This Tradition, which comes from the Apostles, progresses in the Church, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost: in fact, the collection of things as well as the words transmitted increases, whether by the contemplation and study of believers who meditate upon them in their heart (see Luke, 2, 19 and 51), or by deep understanding of spiritual things which they experience, or by the predication of those who, with Episcopal succession, receive a certain charism of truth. Thus, the Church, while the centuries pass, tends constantly towards the plenitude of divine truth, until the words of God are accomplished in her. [Dei Verbum, # 8]

I have already let you understand how doctrinal progress in becoming explicit is inversely proportional to progress in depth of understanding, which does not exist absolutely since, as Saint Thomas says:

The Apostles were most fully instructed in the mysteries: just as they received before anyone else in time, so they received more abundantly than anyone else. Such is the interpretation of the gloss on this passage of the Epistle to the Romans (8, 23): ‘It is we ourselves who have the first-fruits of the Spirit.’ [...] Those who were closer to Christ, whether before him, like John the Baptist, or after him, like the Apostles, knew more fully the mysteries of the faith.[86]

Who in the Church could surpass the Apostles in understanding of the faith? It is inevitable that this in-depth understanding should decrease among their successors, despite being teachers of the faith provided with the charism of truth, excluding the several lights who are the doctors of the Church. This sane realism has given place, in the Council, to the illusion of necessary progress towards a pretended plenitude, which did not belong to the Apostles.


4. The doctrine of faith as experience of God

It is not only the idea of Tradition, but also that of Revelation, which Joseph Ratzinger revises either in light of his idealism or in light of his personalism.

Thus, concerning Revelation, considered as somehow actual, Josepheph Ratzinger is of the opinion that ‘the concept of “Revelation” always implies the subject who receives it.”[87] The author supposes wrongly that the receiving subject is the believer, or the Church, and not only the Apostles; he falls into a Protestant error.

Concerning theology, Joseph Ratzinger judges that ‘pure objectivity does not exist,’ no more in theology than in physics. Just as in physics ‘the observer himself forms a part of the experience, and ‘in his response there is always some part of the question posed and of the questioner,’ so in theology ‘whoever engages in the experience receives an answer which not only reflects God but also our own question; it teaches us something concerning God by refraction through our own being.’[88]

Concerning the faith itself, Joseph Ratzinger assures us that pure objectivity is not even possible:

When someone pretends to provide an objective response, free from all passion, a response, in fact, which surpasses the prejudices of pious persons, a purely scientific piece of information [about God], let us declare that he deceives himself. This kind of objectivity is outside the capacities of man. He cannot question and exist as a mere observer. As such, he would never learn anything. To perceive the reality ‘God,’ he must equally engage in the experience of God, the experience that we call faith. Only the one who engages in it can learn; only by participating in the experience is it possible to pose a question truly and to receive a response.[89]

I object that, if to have faith an ‘experience of God’ is necessary, very few Christians have faith. Faith, adherence of the intellect to the divine mystery is a thing requisite for salvation; but the life of faith, ex fide, as Saint Paul said, is a normal, desirable thing, but not equally necessary; and in any case, the experience of God is not requisite for it.

But above all, if one defines faith as ‘experience of God,’ one repeats the modernist heresy, which consecrates every religion as true, since all pretend to have some authentic experience of the divine.[90]

Finally, concerning the magisterium of the Church, Joseph Ratzinger has as well a dialectic vision or, let us say, one conversational with its decisions, which must be, according to him, answers to the believers questions or the result of his experimentation with God:

Dogmatic formulae themselves—for example, one nature in three Persons—include this refraction through the human; they reflect in our example man at the end of antiquity who inquired and experimented with the philosophical categories from the end of antiquity, these categories determining the point of view from which he poses his questions.[91]

Let me first say just one word about the Kantian substratum for this problem.

Just as the physicist, Kant said, even before Claude Bernard, selects phenomena and submits them to the experience which he has rationally conceived, so as to obtain from them an answer which confirms the a priori of his theory, so the philosopher must question phenomena—objects of spontaneous experience—while applying to them the a priori categories of his understanding—making thought objects of them—so as to verify their pertinence for these ends.

Just as easily could all science of necessity be a reflection, not only of such things as appear to us (phenomena), but even of the spirit which imposes on them its modes by which they are represented to itself.[92]

One could in fact allow that the long and difficult adaptation of the concepts of dogma so as to proclaim them adequately is a kind of experimentation practiced by the Church. But by doing so, it is neither God nor his mystery that are thus challenged, but rather human concepts. It is not reason—ancient or medieval—which ‘experiments with God,’ but rather divine faith which ‘experiments with reason.’This being established, the fundamental problem remains: does our intellect reach the being of things, yes or no? Is truth objective? Is there a philosophy of the real? Are the concepts chosen and polished by the faith concepts of a particular, historical philosophy: Platonist, Aristotelian, Thomist, Kantian, personalist? Or rather are they more simply the concepts of the most elementary philosophy of being, that of common sense?

I mean by common sense the spontaneous exercise of the intellect, which reaches the being of the things of natural reality so as to find in them certain causes and certain principles. For example, reason spontaneously affirms that, besides the coming into being of a reality, there is in that reality something which abides (principle of substance). Or again: every agent acts for an end (principle of finality).

To the proposed question, I have already sketched above the answer, but it must be demonstrated.


Common sense, philosophy of being and dogmatic formulae

To limit ourselves to the dogma of the Divine Trinity, the principle mystery is the reconciliation of the divine unity with the real distinction of the Three Divine Persons. Let us examine the concepts which express better and better the mysterious antinomy.

The confession of faith in its primitive simplicity is this: ‘I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.’ This expresses the mystery clearly but still imperfectly. The heresies of the first three centuries dismissed the true meaning of this formula, either by denying the real distinction of the Three (Sabellius), or by denying the divinity of the Son (Arius), or that of the Holy Ghost (Macedonius), or by professing in opposition three gods (tritheism). This last error was condemned in 262 by a letter of Pope Dionysius. [93]

The Council of Nicea (325) clarified the dogma against the Arians, not only under a negative form by anathema, but in a positive manner, by expanding the apostolic symbol with the development of the idea of filiation and generation: ‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the Father’s substance [...], begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.’[94] Here appears the notion of ‘substance,’ which remains in the domain of common sense, but also the judgment of ‘consubstantial’ (homoousios), which already surpasses what expression the common sense can give to the shared divinity of the Father and Son.

Later, the first Council of Constantinople (381) clarified the divinity of the Holy Ghost. Finally, the second Council of Constantinople (553) clarified in its turn ‘that it is necessary to adore one deity in three subsistences or persons.’[95] This was an anathema, but it positively determined what must be believed. Besides the abstract terms of nature and substance (‘mian physin ètoi ousian: a single nature or substance’), the formula utilized the concrete terms of subsistence and person (‘en trisin hypostasesin ègoun prosôpois: in three subsistences or persons’), the first of which, ‘subsistence’ (or hypostasis), was already a developed philosophical notion, since it had been precisely distinguished from ‘substance’ (or ousia).

To continue, the eleventh private council of Toledo (675) distinguished the divine persons from each other by naming them in relation to each other: ‘In the relative names of the Persons, the Father is linked to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Ghost comes from the two others. And although, according to these relations, three Persons are affirmed, yet one still believes in only one nature or substance.’[96] From then on it has been believed that there are in God three real relations which characterize and number the persons.

At the council of Lyon (1274) was defined, by the Filioque, the procession of the Holy Spirit from both Father and Son (Dz 463). In 1441, the Council of Florence, in its decree for the Jacobites, gave the final expression of dogmatic progress concerning the Trinity: There is a distinction of persons by their relations of origin; their unity is total ‘wherever there is no opposition of relation’[97]; the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son as from a single principle; and the persons are present in each other (circuminsession) (Dz 703-704). It is evident that the notions of ‘relative nomenclature,’ of ‘opposition of relation,’ of principle without principle,’ ‘principle from principle’ and ‘unique principle’ surpass the level of common sense and denote a philosophy, and a well-developed philosophy, but a philosophy which cannot be specifically named.

Even later, the Church, by the voice of Pius IX, condemned in 1857 the explanation of the Trinity made by Anton Günther (1783-1863). The person being ‘consciousness of myself,’ said the later, the two divine processions of the word and of love must be reinterpreted as being three intellectual processions: consciousness of the thinking self, consciousness of the thought self and the correlation between the two. This is Husserl before the fact. Pius IX declared this explanation to be ‘an aberrance from the Catholic faith and from the true explanation of unity in the divine substance’ (Dz 1655). Pius IX’s act contained an implicit approbation of the definition of person made by Boethius (470-525): ‘a person is an individual substance of a rational nature,’ a definition which surpasses common sense and which is coherent with the philosophy of being, though opposite to personalist philosophy, which confuses metaphysical personality and psychological personality.

I will conclude with Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange:

– The dogmatic formulae developed by the Church contain concepts which surpass common sense.

– These formulae and concepts belong to the philosophy of being, which maintains that the intellect knows, not primarily its own act, but first being.

– These concepts are all the same accessible to the common sense, insofar as it is the philosophy of being in its rudimentary state.

– This amounts to saying that the concepts of dogmatic formulae belong to the philosophy of being, which is the scientific instance of common sense.

– It follows from this, and is verified by facts, that idealist philosophies, which reject the philosophy of being, do away with the common sense and become inept for explaining dogma.

– Finally, the philosophy of being, suitable for proclaiming dogma, is not a ‘particular philosophy,’ nor a system, but rather the philosophy of all time, the philosophia perennis, to cite Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), the philosophy inherited from Plato and Aristotle.

Here is a beautiful witness offered to this philosophy of being by Henri Bergson (1859-*1941), who, without being a Thomist, was not for all that ignorant of the great Greeks or of Saint Thomas:

Of the immense edifice constructed by them, a solid framework still remains, and this framework draws the grand outlines of a metaphysics which is, we believe, the natural metaphysics of the human intellect.[98]

– The final reason for the suitability of the philosophy of being for developing dogma is their pre-established harmony, as was shown by Newman.


5. The power of assimilation, driving force of doctrinal progress, according to Newman

It was John Henry Newman (1801-1890) who first made a driving force for doctrinal development reside in the assimilation by Catholic doctrine of elements foreign to Revelation, that is to say, of philosophical principles. But, as an idealist, he saw in this assimilation a general sign of correct progress of ideas:

The facts and opinions which until now have been considered under other connections and were grouped around other centers are from now on gradually attracted by a new influence and submitted to a new sovereign. They are modified, reconsidered, set aside according to each case. A new element of order and of composition has entered among them; and its life is proved by a capacity for expansion, without introducing any disorder or dissolution.

The process of deduction, of conservation, of assimilation, of purification, of molding, a unitive process, is the essence of a fruitful development and is its third distinctive mark.[99]

And Newman gives an example, a unique example of such a fruitful assimilation: the assimilation by Catholic theology of the philosophical principle of instrumental causality. This assimilation, he says, results from an antecedent affinity between the revealed truth and the natural reality. That an idea becomes more willingly coalescent with some rather than with others does not indicate that it has been unduly influenced, that is to say, corrupted by them, but that there was an antecedent affinity between them. At the least, one must admit here that, when the Gospel speaks of a virtue going out of Our Lord (Luke, 6, 19) or of the cure that he effected with mud that his lips had moistened (John 9, 6), these facts offer examples, not of the perversion of Christianity, but of its affinity with notions exterior to it.[100]

This nice text allows us to evoke the fruitfulness of the assimilation by Christian doctrine of the principle of instrumental causality: one can think about the efficacy of grace in the sacred humanity of Jesus as instrument of his divinity, first in his passion, then in the Mass and in the sacraments, which Saint Thomas taught and which the Council of Trent utilized to define the action ex opere operato of the sacraments.[101]

One can also think, on the other hand, about the sterility to which Protestantism condemned itself by refusing this assimilation: the so-called Christ is the sole cause of grace without any instrument or mediation. Vatican Council II, likewise, was sterilized by refusing, in 1963, according to the counsel of the experts Rahner and Ratzinger, to proclaim the blessed Virgin ‘Mediatrix of all graces,’ because, they said, such a title ‘would result in unimaginable evils from the ecumenical point of view.’[102]

On the contrary, in Catholicism, the principle of instrumental causality has been the revealer of multiple faces of Christian dogma, which, without it, would have remained veiled in the depth of mystery and would have escaped the explicit knowledge of the faith.

Without doubt, assimilation, by dogma or by theology, of philosophical principles has no resemblance to the growth of living beings through nutrition, that is to say, by intussusception![103] Progress is made by a comparison of one proposition of faith (some one of Jesus’ miracles) with a judgment of reason (instrumental causality) which lends him its humble light, so as to draw from it a theological conclusion which will aid in clarifying dogma. In the progress of the science of the faith, the premise of reason is only an instrument for the premise of faith, an auxiliary of faith, for disengaging what exists in a virtual state, or even already in an actually implicit state—I will not go into the secret of this distinction. What must be understood is that the truth of reason cannot be included in the faith, but that it can be ‘assimilated’ by faith only as a tool for investigation and precision.

But what matters to us is the final rational for this pre-established harmony between dogma and philosophy. It is that, according to the philosophy of being, through our concepts the intellect reaches the being of things and, by analogy, can know something of the first Being, God. And we certify with admiration that what the philosophy of being says concerning the perfections of the first Being is in exact accordance with what Revelation unveils for us. On the other hand, what in God surpasses the capacity of every created intellect is supernaturally revealed to us, is expressed in human language and may be developed in the concepts of the philosophy of being. The suitability of this philosophy for proclaiming and causing dogma to progress is an indication of its truth. On the contrary, the unsuitability of idealist philosophies for doing this is the indication of their falsehood.


6. Far from pledging allegiance to our concepts, Revelation judges and uses them

If the philosophy of being can express and develop dogma, it is also, and this must be emphasized, because that dogma, or Revelation, has judged and purified its concepts, extracting them from particular philosophies or from what Benedict XVI calls ‘the dominant form of reason’ in an epoch. The whole endeavor of Saint Thomas was to purify Aristotle of his bad Arabic interpreters, to join to him elements of Platonism, and to correct him again by the light of Revelation, so as to make of him the instrument of choice for theology and dogma. Some excellent authors further clarify this conclusion. It is only once extracted from their philosophical system and modified by a maturation in depth, then sometimes at first condemned because of their as yet inadequate terminology (monarchy, person, consubstantial), then correctly understood, at last recognized and qualified as applicable—but only analogically—that these concepts could become bearers of the new substance of the Christian faith.[104]

It is by placing in the light of Revelation the notions developed by pagan philosophy that the Church has remained faithful to the Gospel and has made progress in the formulation of the faith.[105] [And she has resisted, I add, the attacks of that philosophy—still poorly developed.]

Far from pledging its allegiance to these concepts, the Church uses them in her service; she uses them as in every realm a superior uses an inferior, in the philosophic sense of the word, that is to say, by ordaining it to its end. Supernature uses nature. Before using these concepts and these terms in his service, Christ, through the Church, judges and approves them according to a wholly divine light, which does not have time for its measurement, but immutable eternity. These concepts, evidently inadequate, could always be made more precise; they will never become outdated.

Dogma thus defined cannot allow itself to be assimilated by human thought in a perpetual evolution; this evolution would only be a corruption. On the contrary it is [dogma] which wishes to assimilate to itself this human thought which only changes unceasingly because it dies everyday; it wishes to assimilate it to itself so as to communicate to it while here below something of the immutable life of God. The great believer is he whose intellect is basically more passive toward God, who vivifi es it.[106]

In light of our analysis of the role of the philosophy of being in the development of dogma, a role so well clarified by the three others whom I just cited, how defective and relativistic appears the idea that Benedict XVI has concerning the ‘encounter between faith and philosophy.’

When in the XIIIth century—he says—by the intermediation of Jewish and Arabic philosophers, Aristotelian thought entered into contact medieval Christianity, and faith and reason were at risk of entering an irreconcilable opposition, it was above all Saint Thomas Aquinas who played the role of mediator in the new encounter between faith and philosophy [with Aristotelian philosophy], thus setting the faith in a positive relation with the dominant form of reason in his age.[107]

According to Benedict XVI, the task determined by Vatican Council II, in accordance with the program sketched by John XXIII, was none other than today to set the faith in a positive relation with modern idealist philosophy, in order to suppress the deplorable antagonism between faith and modern reason, and to implement in sacred doctrine a new leap forward. Very well, let us see how Joseph Ratzinger himself, following this program which was also his own, has employed these ‘dominant’ philosophies of the 1950’s to reread several articles of the Creed and to expose the three great mysteries of the faith. Let us first watch the exegete comment on three articles from the Creed, two of which are evangelical facts.



Footnotes

[62] Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Die katholische Tübinger Schule, Freiburg, Herder, 1964, p. 22.
[63] Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Die katholische Tübinger Schule, p. 36.
[64] Drey, Apologetik, I, p. 377-378; Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Die katholische Tübinger Schule, p. 36.
[65] J Ratzinger, My Life, Memories, 1927-1977, p. 82
[66] Ibid., p. 87.
[67] Ibid., p. 88.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Pius IX, 1846, Dz 1637.
[70]St. Pius X, decree Lamentabili, 1907, Dz 2021
[71] Pius IX, Dz 1636; Vatican I, Dz 1800.
[72] Vatican I, Dz 1836.
[73] Dz 1836.
[74] Saint Thomas, II-II, q. 1, a. 7, obj. 4 and reply 4.
[75] ‘Interpretatione latiori,’ ‘Letter of the bishops after the council of Chalcedon,’ 458, in Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum published by W. de Gruyter, 1936, 2, 5, 47. (Cited in Michael Fiedrowicz, Theologie der Kirchenväter, Herder, 2007, p. 355, note 97.
[76] Saint Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium, 434, RJ 2174.
[77] Saint Thomas, I, q. 36, a. 2, reply 2.
[78] II-II, q. 174, a. 6, reply 3
[79] II-II, q. 1, a. 7.
[80] Before Christ, the articles of faith increased because they were revealed more and more explicitly by God; after Christ and the Apostles, the articles of faith increased because they were transmitted more and more explicitly by the Church.
[81] J. Ratzinger, My Life, Memories, 1927-1977, p. 88.
[82] See: Martin Buber, Moses, Oxford, East and West Library, 1946.
[83] The Council of Trent, session IV, Dz 786.
[84] Ibid., Dz 783.
[85] Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Paris, Flammarion, 2007, foreword, p. 15.
[86] ‘Apostoli plenissime fuerunt instructi de mysteriis: acceperunt enim, sicut tempore prius, ita et ceteris abundantius, ut dicit Glossa, super illud, Rm 8, 23, “nos ipsi primitias spiritus habentes.” […] Illi qui fuerunt propinquiores Christo vel ante sicut Joannes, vel post sicut Apostoli, plenius mysteria fi dei cognoverunt.’ (II-II, q. 1, a. 7, obj. 4 and reply 4)
[87] Joseph Ratzinger, My Life, Memories, 1927-1977, p. 87.
[88] J. Ratzinger, The Christian Faith of Yesterday and Today, p. 111.
[89] Ibid., p. 110.
[90] See Pascendi, # 16, Dz 2082.
[91] J. Ratzinger, The Christian Faith of Yesterday and Today, p. 111.
[92] See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, preface to the second edition, III, 10-14.
[93] Dz 48, DS 112.
[94] “Jesum Christum, Filium Dei, natum ex Patre unigenitum, hoc est de substantia Patris[,,,] genitum no factum, consubstantialem Patri’ (Dz 54).
[95] ‘Unam deitatem in tribus subsistentiis sive personis adorandam’ (Dz 213).
[96] ‘In relativis vero personarum nominibus, Pater ad Filium, Filius ad Patrem, Sanctus Spiritus ab utroque referetur; quae cum relative tres personae dicantur, una tamen nature vel substantia creditur’ (Dz 278).
[97] ‘Ubi non obviate relationis oppositio’ (Dz 703).
[98] Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 352, cited by Garrigou-Lagrange, Common Sense, Paris, 1922, 7th edition, p. 92.
[99] John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878, reprinted by the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, 2006, p. 185-186.
[100] John Henry Newman, An Essay, p. 187.
[101] Council of Trent, session VII, canon 8, Dz 851.
[102] Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine flows into the Tiber, Paris, Cèdre, 1974, p. 90. See also Father Victor Alain Berto, letter of November 30, 1963, to Father B., published in Le Sel de la terre 43 (winter 2002-2003), p. 29.
[103] Translator’s note: by this word, the Bishop could be referring either to the medical disorder in which one part of the intestine is invaginated (sheathed) in another, or to the process of blood vessel growth by the splitting of one into two. However, neither of these meanings makes much sense in context, so perhaps he had the etymological meaning in mind: intus-suscipere – to receive within oneself, which could be understood as ‘to digest.’
[104] Michael Fiedrowicz, Theologie der Kirchenväter, Herder, 2007, p. 340.
[105] André Clement, The Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas, NEL, 1983, p. 42.
[106] Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., Common Sense and Dogmatic Formulae, Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1922, p. 358-359.
[107] Benedict XVI, Speech to the Curia from December 22, 2005, ORLF December 27, 2005.