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Newman’s University Today

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 09:25:00 -0400

Cardinal Dulles, a frequent contributor to First Things , presented this address to the Cardinal Newman Society on November 11, 2001, in Washington, D.C., upon receiving the John Henry Newman Award for distinguished service to Catholic higher education. Dulles shared much with Newman, who will be canonized this October by Pope Francis: Both men were prominent converts to the Catholic faith who became influential theologians, and both had the rare distinction of being named cardinal without ever being ordained a bishop. Dulles was created cardinal on Newman’s 200th birthday, February 21, 2001.

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The Eve of St. Agnes—Green Bay, 2008

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Saint Agnes Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was,
The coach for all his sweaters was acold;
The team limped weakly through the frozen grass,
And bundled were the fans, a woolly fold.
Numb were the passer’s fingers as his hold
Embraced the ball and flung a mighty pass.
It flew like cannon from a warship old,
Seemed taking flight for heaven, without a death,
To the alert receiver, while his prayer he saith.

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The Freedom of Theology

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Benedict XVI, before becoming supreme pastor of the Catholic Church, served for two decades as a theology professor and then, for more than two decades, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His career, together with his many theological writings and doctrinal pronouncements, illustrates ways of harmonizing and even combining the roles of theologian and prelate.

Nevertheless, questions continue to arise about the relationship of theologians and the ecclesiastical magisterium. How is the obligation of pastors to establish the doctrine of the Church to be reconciled with the freedom of theologians to follow what they understand to be the requirements of their own discipline?

The problem has been intensely discussed, especially since the Second Vatican Council and Paul VI’s controversial 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae . Theologians all over the world have developed a kind of class consciousness and show a new eagerness to protect their legitimate autonomy. Some resent what they regard as the authoritarianism of Rome and the bishops. As an example of this tendency, one might cite the “Cologne Declaration,” issued in January 1989 over the signatures of 163 German-speaking theologians. This was in large measure a protest against the undue extension of hierarchical control over theology, especially on the part of the pope, and an assertion of the autonomy of theology and the rights of personal conscience in the Church.

In the United States, many statements have been issued, both by bishops and by theologians, describing the doctrinal responsibilities of these two classes of teacher. Unless a harmony of views is achieved on this important question, the Church will be weakened, as it already has been to some extent, by internal division and polarization.

Most parties to the discussion appeal to Vatican II. The council said little about the role of theologians but a great deal about the teaching office of the hierarchy. “The order of bishops,” according to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “is the successor of the college of the apostles in teaching authority and pastoral rule.” Elsewhere in the Constitution on the Church, it is asserted that the judgments of the pope and of individual bishops, even when not infallible, are to be accepted with religious submission of mind. The living teaching office, said the Constitution on Divine Revelation, speaks with authority in the name of Jesus Christ. The bishops, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, establish the official doctrine of the Church, and as pastoral rulers they see to it that the faith is rightly taught in the churches under their care.

Even when all this is recognized, an important task still remains for theologians. The Church needs them because its members are human beings—that is to say, animals who ask questions. When something is proposed as a matter of Christian faith, reflective believers ask, quite legitimately: What exactly is the revealed datum? Where and how is it attested? How can things be as faith says they are? What logically follows from the truths of faith? People who try to answer these and similar questions in a methodical way are called theologians.

The functional distinction between the hierarchical magisterium and the theologians has been gradually clarified over the course of the centuries. In the early Church, most of the great theologians were bishops: Irenaeus, Cyprian, Athanasius, the two Cyrils, Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Leo, and Gregory the Great. They engaged in what we may call episcopal theology. Theologians who were not bishops, such as Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Ephrem, and Prosper of Aquitaine, wrote without any apparent consciousness of belonging to a class distinct from the bishops.

In the Middle Ages, the distinction of functions became clearer, especially as university theology came into its own. Only a few of the medieval theologians were bishops, and relatively few of the bishops were theologians. The theologians of the time immersed themselves in highly technical questions about the processions in the blessed Trinity, the nature of the afterlife, the causality of the sacraments, and predestination. They debated such questions with the tools of Aristotelian logic and metaphysics.

As theology took on its distinctive identity, the hierarchical magisterium underwent further development. It became less pastoral and more judicial. The popes and bishops in the Middle Ages were under great pressure to endorse the theological positions of one school and to condemn rival schools. Yielding somewhat to this pressure, the magisterium became embroiled in speculative questions of little concern to the average worshipper.

Since the sixteenth century, the magisterium has taken on a clearer functional identity. It has increasingly sought to stand above purely theological disputes while keeping these disputes from becoming divisive. The Council of Trent was careful not to commit itself to any of the reigning theological systems, whether Thomist, Scotist, or Augustinian, but to pronounce only on matters of Catholic faith. In the following century, when the theological schools gave different interpretations to Trent’s teaching on grace, the Roman magisterium declared that each should be free to hold its own theoretical positions provided it did not accuse the other schools of heresy. The magisterium did not abandon its judicial role, but it sometimes chose to exercise that role in a permissive rather than a restrictive way. While upholding the doctrinal tradition, the magisterium also protected the freedom of theologians to speculate within the limits of that tradition.

In the nineteenth century, the term magisterium took on a more precise meaning. Where previously it had meant simply the office or function of teaching (and thus applied as much to theology professors as to bishops), the term came to mean the public teaching authority of the Church. Magisterium became a collective noun meaning the class of people who are institutionally empowered to put the Church as such on record as standing for this or that position. The theologians, by contrast, came to be regarded as private persons in the Church. Unlike popes and bishops, they could not speak for the Church as an institution or oblige anyone to accept their views. As a result of this clarification, the term magisterium was used almost exclusively for the hierarchical authorities. It is rarely taken in our day to mean the teaching function of theologians.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a further clarification of the terminology occurred. Until that time, the teaching power of the hierarchy was not clearly distinguished from its power of jurisdiction or government. Thanks to the labors of theologians such as Yves Congar, that distinction has been clarified and even canonized, so to speak, in the documents of Vatican II. Even when the teachers are the same persons as the rulers, the magisterial role is different from the power to govern. To teach is not simply to command or to forbid a course of action. Teaching is addressed to the intellect and calls for internal assent. Commands are addressed to the will and call for external obedience.

This clarification has had some practical effects. The popes and bishops no longer confine themselves, as they generally did in the Middle Ages, to passing judgment on positions held by theologians. They are increasingly disposed to originate or develop doctrine on their own initiative, especially doctrine that is closely connected with the worship and pastoral government of the community. This kind of teaching is illustrated by the dogmatic definitions of Pius IX and Pius XII and their doctrinal encyclicals. The proliferation of binding decrees could be seen as burdening the conscience of the faithful. Perhaps for that reason, Pope John XXIII instructed the Second Vatican Council to conduct its magisterium in a pastoral manner and refrain from issuing new doctrinal condemnations. While avoiding anathemas, the council nevertheless produced an abundance of pastoral teaching.

Some might question whether there is any need for a continuing magisterium. After all, the revelation by which Christians live was completed long ago, and it has, in substance, been committed to writing in the canonical Scriptures. Scripture alone, however, has not proved to be a sufficient rule of faith. From the early centuries, it has been supplemented by creeds and doctrinal declarations. Popes and councils were called on to decide doctrinal questions that arose as the faith became rooted in Hellenistic soil and interacted with the culture and philosophy of the ancient world. For the same reason, a living magisterium continues to be needed in every century. The message of Christ must be proclaimed in new situations. The ecclesiastical leadership must decide whether new hypotheses and formulations are acceptable in the light of Christian faith. On occasion, the Holy Spirit may enable popes and councils to speak with full assurance in the name of Christ and to settle some grave question definitively.

The objection can be made that it is the theologians’ role to study current questions and that the magisterium, if it speaks at all, must follow the guidance of theologians. The historic experience of the Church, in my estimation, shows that theologians are often unable to resolve their own differences, still less to establish doctrine for the Church. They are, by training and temperament, suited to gather data, to ask questions, and to speculate, rather than to make doctrinal decisions for the Church. Some theologians regard doctrinal decisions as an unwelcome intrusion on their own freedom of inquiry. As scholars, theologians dwell in a somewhat rarified atmosphere, concocting new theories and interminably debating them. For all these reasons, the Church needs a living voice other than that of theologians to preserve continuity with the apostolic faith and to maintain communion throughout the Church. We may be grateful, then, that Christ has equipped the Church with a body of pastoral teachers, competent to decide what is to be preached and to set the limits of theological debate.

For fruitful relations between themselves and theologians, it is desirable for popes and bishops to be theologically educated. According to the present Code of Canon Law, every bishop ought to have a licentiate or doctorate in biblical studies, theology, or canon law, or at least be truly skilled in these disciplines. But the same canon requires that bishops be outstanding in strength of faith, moral probity, piety, zeal for souls, wisdom, prudence, and other human virtues and gifts needed for their office. Professional theologians do not necessarily make the best bishops. If they are raised to the episcopal office, they must learn to separate their theological positions, which are personal and private, from the doctrine of the Church, which it is their responsibility to promote. For good reasons, therefore, the Church generally selects its bishops from priests experienced in preaching, counseling, and active ministry who have, in addition, shown a capacity to delegate and to govern.

In their magisterial role, residential bishops have a primary responsibility to judge what should be preached and taught in their particular church at a particular time. Even popes and councils, speaking to and for the universal Church, do not escape the conditions of their own age and culture. The bulk of official teaching is correlated with particular historical contingencies but is not for that reason less authoritative. The magisterium has a pastoral mandate to direct the Church’s response to new challenges and opportunities. Prudential decisions of the magisterium, responding pastorally to particular crises, may lose their binding force under changed conditions, though the principles they embody may be permanently valid.

Although the functions of the magisterium and of the theologians are distinct, each group requires and profits from the work of the other. Theologians depend on the magisterium because the creeds and dogmas of the Church are constitutive for their own enterprise. Theology is a reflection on the faith of the Church as set forth in the canonical Scriptures and in the official statements of the Church’s belief. If the magisterium were not trustworthy, the foundations of theology, including even the canon of Scripture, would crumble. The more abundantly theology draws on the teaching of the magisterium, the richer, generally speaking, will it be. To ignore or dismiss magisterial teaching is to neglect resources that are at hand. It is possible, of course, to disagree with the magisterium on some point or other or to wish to nuance its declarations, but the first instinct of the theologian should be to accept and build on what is officially taught in the Church. It is a great benefit for theology to have a magisterium that is committed and qualified to safeguard the apostolic faith.

Just as theology depends on magisterial teaching for its data and security, so conversely the hierarchical magisterium depends on theology. Pope Paul VI acknowledged this in an address of 1966:

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Who Can Be Saved?

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Nothing is more striking in the New Testament than the confidence with which it proclaims the saving power of belief in Christ. Almost every page confronts us with a decision of eternal consequence: Will we follow Christ or the rulers of this world? The gospel is, according to Paul, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” (Rom. 1:16). The apostles and their associates are convinced that in Jesus they have encountered the Lord of Life and that he has brought them into the way that leads to everlasting blessedness. By personal faith in him and by baptism in his name, Christians have passed from darkness to light, from error to truth, and from sin to holiness.

Paul is the outstanding herald of salvation through faith. To the Romans he writes, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). Faith, for him, is inseparable from baptism, the sacrament of faith. By baptism, the Christian is immersed in the death of Christ so as to be raised with him to newness of life (Rom. 6:3-4).

The Book of Acts shows the apostles preaching faith in Christ as the way to salvation. Those who believe the testimony of Peter on the first Pentecost ask him what they must do to be saved. He replies that they must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and thereby save themselves from the present crooked generation (Acts 2:37-40). When Peter and John are asked by the Jewish religious authorities by what authority they are preaching and performing miracles, they reply that they are acting in the name of Jesus Christ and that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Paul and his associates bring the gospel first of all to the Jews because it is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. When the Jews in large numbers reject the message, Paul and Barnabas announce that they are turning to the Gentiles in order to bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 13:46-47).

A few chapters later in Acts, we see Paul and Silas in prison at Philippi. When their jailer asks them, “What must I do to be saved?” they reply, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” The jailer and his family at once accept baptism and rejoice in their newfound faith (Acts 16:30-34).

The same doctrine of salvation permeates the other books of the New Testament. Mark’s gospel ends with this missionary charge: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15-16).

John in his gospel speaks no less clearly. Jesus at one point declares that those who hear his word and believe in him do not remain in darkness, whereas those who reject him will be judged on the last day (John 12:44-50). At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the Twelve, “This is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). John concludes the body of his gospel with the statement that he has written his account “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

From these and many other texts, I draw the conclusion that, according to the primary Christian documents, salvation comes through personal faith in Jesus Christ, followed and signified by sacramental baptism.

The New Testament is almost silent about the eternal fate of those to whom the gospel has not been preached. It seems apparent that those who became believers did not think they had been on the road to salvation before they heard the gospel. In his sermon at Athens, Paul says that in times past God overlooked the ignorance of the pagans, but he does not say that these pagans were saved. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul says that the Gentiles have come to a knowledge of God by reasoning from the created world, but that they are guilty because by their wickedness they have suppressed the truth and fallen into idolatry. In the second chapter of Romans, Paul indicates that Gentiles who are obedient to the biddings of conscience can be excused for their unbelief, but he indicates that they fall into many sins. He concludes that “all have sinned and fall short” of true righteousness (Rom. 3:23). For justification, Paul asserts, both Jews and Gentiles must rely on faith in Jesus Christ, who expiated the sins of the world on the cross.

Animated by vibrant faith in Christ the Savior, the Christian Church was able to conquer the Roman Empire. The converts were convinced that in embracing Christianity they were escaping from the darkness of sin and superstition and entering into the realm of salvation. For them, Christianity was the true religion, the faith that saves. It would not have occurred to them that any other faith could save them.

Christian theologians, however, soon had to face the question whether anyone could be saved without Christian faith. They did not give a wholly negative answer. They agreed that the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, because they looked forward in faith and hope to the Savior, could be saved by adhering in advance to him who was to come.

The apologists of the second and third centuries made similar concessions with regard to certain Greek philosophers. The prologue to John’s gospel taught that the eternal Word enlightens all men who come into the world. Justin Martyr speculated that philosophers such as Socrates and Heraclitus had lived according to the Word of God, the Logos who was to become incarnate in Christ, and they could therefore be reckoned as being in some way Christians. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen held that the Wisdom of God gave graces to people of every generation, both Greeks and barbarians.

The saving grace of which these theologians were speaking, however, was given only to pagans who lived before the time of Christ. It was given by the Word of God who was to become incarnate in Jesus Christ. There was no doctrine that pagans could be saved since the promulgation of the gospel without embracing the Christian faith.

Origen and Cyprian, in the third century, formulated the maxim that has come down to us in the words Extra ecclesiam nulla salus— “Outside the Church, no salvation.” They spoke these words with heretics and schismatics primarily in view, but they do not appear to have been any more optimistic about the prospects of salvation for pagans. Assuming that the gospel had been promulgated everywhere, writers of the high patristic age considered that, in the Christian era, Christians alone could be saved. In the East, this view is represented by Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom. The view attributed to Origen that hell would in the end be evacuated and that all the damned would eventually be saved was condemned in the sixth century.

In the West, following Ambrose and others, Augustine taught that, because faith comes by hearing, those who had never heard the gospel would be denied salvation. They would be eternally punished for original sin as well as for any personal sins they had committed. Augustine’s disciple Fulgentius of Ruspe exhorted his readers to “firmly hold and by no means doubt that not only all pagans, but also all Jews, and all heretics and schismatics who are outside the Catholic Church, will go to the eternal fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels.”

The views of Augustine and Fulgentius remained dominant in the Christian West throughout the Middle Ages. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) reaffirmed the formula “Outside the Church, no salvation,” as did Pope Boniface VIII in 1302. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Council of Florence (1442) repeated the formulation of Fulgentius to the effect that no pagan, Jew, schismatic, or heretic could be saved.

On one point the medieval theologians diverged from rigid Augustinianism. On the basis of certain passages in the New Testament, they held that God seriously wills that all may be saved. They could cite the statement of Peter before the household of Cornelius: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). The First Letter to Timothy, moreover, declares that God “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). These assurances made for a certain tension in Catholic teaching on salvation. If faith in Christ was necessary for salvation, how could salvation be within reach of those who had no opportunity to learn about Christ?

Thomas Aquinas, in dealing with this problem, took his departure from the axiom that there was no salvation outside the Church. To be inside the Church, he held, it was not enough to have faith in the existence of God and in divine providence, which would have sufficed before the coming of Christ. God now required explicit faith in the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. In two of his early works ( De Veritate and Commentary on Romans ), he discusses the hypothetical case of a man brought up in the wilderness, where the gospel was totally unknown. If this man lived an upright life with the help of the graces given him, Thomas reasoned, God would make it possible for him to become a Christian believer, either through an inner illumination or by sending a missionary to him. Thomas referred to the biblical example of the centurion Cornelius, who received the visitation of an angel before being evangelized and baptized by Peter (Acts 10). In his Summa Theologiae , however, Thomas omits any reference to miraculous instruction; he goes back to the Augustinian theory that those who had never heard the gospel would be eternally punished for original sin as well as their personal sins.

A major theological development occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The voyages of discovery had by this time disclosed that there were large populations in North and South America, Africa, and Asia who had lived since the time of Christ and had never had access to the preaching of the gospel. The missionaries found no sign that even the most upright among these peoples had learned the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation by interior inspirations or angelic visitations.

Luther, Calvin, and the Jansenists professed the strict Augustinian doctrine that God did not will to save everyone, but the majority of Catholic theologians rejected the idea that God had consigned all these unevangelized persons to hell without giving them any possibility of salvation. A series of theologians proposed more hopeful theories that they took to be compatible with Scripture and Catholic tradition.

The Dominican Melchior Cano argued that these populations were in a situation no different from that of the pre-Christian pagans praised by Justin and others. They could be justified in this life (but not saved in the life to come) by implicit faith in the Christian mysteries. Another Dominican, Domingo de Soto, went further, holding that, for the unevangelized, implicit faith in Christ would be sufficient for salvation itself. Their contemporary, Albert Pighius, held that for these unevangelized persons the only faith required would be that mentioned in Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” They could therefore be saved by general revelation and grace even though no missionary came to evangelize them.

The Jesuit Francisco Suarez, following these pioneers, argued for the sufficiency of implicit faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation, together with an implicit desire for baptism on the part of the unevangelized. Juan de Lugo agreed, but he added that such persons could not be saved if they had committed serious sins, unless they obtained forgiveness by an act of perfect contrition.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Jesuits of the Gregorian University followed in the tradition of Suarez and de Lugo, with certain modifications. Pope Pius IX incorporated some of their ideas in two important statements in 1854 and 1863. In the first, he said that, while no one can be saved outside the Church, God would not punish people for their ignorance of the true faith if their ignorance was invincible. In the second statement, Pius went further. He declared that persons invincibly ignorant of the Christian religion who observed the natural law and were ready to obey God would be able to attain eternal life, thanks to the workings of divine grace within them. In the same letter, the pope reaffirmed that no one could be saved outside the Catholic Church. He did not explain in what sense such persons were, or would come to be, in the Church. He could have meant that they would receive the further grace needed to join the Church, but nothing in his language suggests this. More probably he thought that such persons would be joined to the Church by implicit desire, as some theologians were teaching by his time.

In 1943, Pius XII did take this further step. In his encyclical on the Mystical Body, Mystici Corporis, he distinguished between two ways of belonging to the Church: in actual fact ( in re ) or by desire ( in voto ). Those who belonged in voto , however, were not really members. They were ordered to the Church by the dynamism of grace itself, which related them to the Church in such a way that they were in some sense in it. The two kinds of relationship, however, were not equally conducive to salvation. Those adhering to the Church by desire could not have a sure hope of salvation because they lacked many spiritual gifts and helps available only to those visibly incorporated in the true Church.

Mystici Corporis represents a forward step in its doctrine of adherence to the Church through implicit desire. From an ecumenical point of view, that encyclical is deficient, since it does not distinguish between the status of non-Christians and non-Catholic Christians. The next important document came from the Holy Office in its letter to Cardinal Cushing of Boston in 1949. The letter pointed out—in opposition to Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., and his associates at St. Benedict Center—that, although the Catholic Church was a necessary means for salvation, one could belong to it not only by actual membership but by also desire, even an unconscious desire. If that desire was accompanied by faith and perfect charity, it could lead to eternal salvation.

Neither the encyclical Mystici Corporis nor the letter of the Holy Office specified the nature of the faith required for in voto status. Did the authors mean that the virtue of faith or the inclination to believe would suffice, or did they require actual faith in God and divine providence, or actual faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation?

The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and its Decree on Ecumenism, made some significant departures from the teaching of Pius XII. It avoided the term member and said nothing of an unconscious desire for incorporation in the Church. It taught that the Catholic Church was the all-embracing organ of salvation and was equipped with the fullness of means of salvation. Other Christian churches and communities possessed certain elements of sanctification and truth that were, however, derived from the one Church of Christ that subsists in the Catholic Church today. For this reason, God could use them as instruments of salvation. God had, however, made the Catholic Church necessary for salvation, and all who were aware of this had a serious obligation to enter the Church in order to be saved. God uses the Catholic Church not only for the redemption of her own members but also as an instrument for the redemption of all. Her witness and prayers, together with the eucharistic sacrifice, have an efficacy that goes out to the whole world.

In several important texts, Vatican II took up the question of the salvation of non-Christians. Although they were related to the Church in various ways, they were not incorporated in her. God’s universal salvific will, it taught, means that he gives non-Christians, including even atheists, sufficient help to be saved. Whoever sincerely seeks God and, with his grace, follows the dictates of conscience is on the path to salvation. The Holy Spirit, in a manner known only to God, makes it possible for each and every person to be associated with the Paschal mystery. “God, in ways known to himself, can lead those inculpably ignorant of the gospel to that faith without which it is impossible to please him.” The council did not indicate whether it is necessary for salvation to come to explicit Christian faith before death, but the texts give the impression that implicit faith may suffice.

Vatican II left open the question whether non-Christian religions contain revelation and are means that can lead their adherents to salvation. It did say, however, that other religions contain elements of truth and goodness, that they reflect rays of the truth that enlightens all men, and that they can serve as preparations for the gospel. Christian missionary activity serves to heal, ennoble, and perfect the seeds of truth and goodness that God has sown among non-Christian peoples, to the glory of God and the spiritual benefit of those evangelized.

While repeatedly insisting that Christ is the one mediator of salvation, Vatican II shows forth a generally hopeful view of the prospects of non-Christians for salvation. Its hopefulness, however, is not unqualified: “Rather often, men, deceived by the evil one, have become caught up in futile reasoning and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Or, some there are who, living and dying in a world without God, are subject to utter hopelessness.” The missionary activity of the Church is urgent for bringing such persons to salvation.

After the council, Paul VI (in his pastoral exhortation “Evangelization in the Modern World”) and John Paul II (in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio ) interpreted the teaching of Vatican II in relation to certain problems and theological trends arising since the council. Both popes were on guard against political and liberation theology, which would seem to equate salvation with formation of a just society on earth and against certain styles of religious pluralism, which would attribute independent salvific value to non-Christian religions. In 2000, toward the end of John Paul’s pontificate, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Dominus Iesus , which emphatically taught that all grace and salvation must come through Jesus Christ, the one mediator.

Wisely, in my opinion, the popes and councils have avoided talk about implicit faith, a term that is vague and ambiguous. They do speak of persons who are sincerely seeking for the truth and of others who have found it in Christ. They make it clear that sufficient grace is offered to all and that God will not turn away those who do everything within their power to find God and live according to his law. We may count on him to lead such persons to the faith needed for salvation.

One of the most interesting developments in post-conciliar theology has been Karl Rahner’s idea of “anonymous Christians.” He taught that God offers his grace to everyone and reveals himself in the interior offer of grace. Grace, moreover, is always mediated through Christ and tends to bring its recipients into union with him. Those who accept and live by the grace offered to them, even though they have never heard of Christ and the gospel, may be called anonymous Christians.

Although Rahner denied that his theory undermined the importance of missionary activity, it was widely understood as depriving missions of their salvific importance. Some readers of his works understood him as teaching that the unevangelized could possess the whole of Christianity except the name. Saving faith, thus understood, would be a subjective attitude without any specifiable content. In that case, the message of the gospel would have little to do with salvation.

The history of the doctrine of salvation through faith has gone through a number of stages since the High Middle Ages. Using the New Testament as their basic text, the Church Fathers regarded faith in Christ and baptism as essential for salvation. On the basis of his study of the New Testament and Augustine, Thomas Aquinas held that explicit belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation was necessary for everyone who lived since the time of Christ, but he granted that in earlier times it was sufficient to believe explicitly in the existence and providence of God.

In the sixteenth century, theologians speculated that the unevangelized were in the same condition as pre-Christians and were not held to believe explicitly in Christ until the gospel was credibly preached to them. Pius IX and the Second Vatican Council taught that all who followed their conscience, with the help of the grace given to them, would be led to that faith that was necessary for them to be saved. During and after the council, Karl Rahner maintained that saving faith could be had without any definite belief in Christ or even in God.

We seem to have come full circle from the teaching of Paul and the New Testament that belief in the message of Christ is the source of salvation. Reflecting on this development, one can see certain gains and certain losses. The New Testament and the theology of the first millennium give little hope for the salvation of those who, since the time of Christ, have had no chance of hearing the gospel. If God has a serious salvific will for all, this lacuna needed to be filled, as it has been by theological speculation and church teaching since the sixteenth century. Modern theology, preoccupied with the salvation of non-Christians, has tended to neglect the importance of explicit belief in Christ, so strongly emphasized in the first centuries. It should not be impossible, however, to reconcile the two perspectives.

Scripture itself assures us that God has never left himself without a witness to any nation (Acts 14:17). His testimonies are marks of his saving dispensations toward all. The inner testimony of every human conscience bears witness to God as lawgiver, judge, and vindicator. In ancient times, the Jewish Scriptures drew on literature that came from Babylon, Egypt, and Greece. The Book of Wisdom and Paul’s Letter to the Romans speak of God manifesting his power and divinity through his works in nature. The religions generally promote prayer and sacrifice as ways of winning God’s favor. The traditions of all peoples contain elements of truth imbedded in their cultures, myths, and religious practices. These sound elements derive from God, who speaks to all his children through inward testimony and outward signs.

The universal evidences of the divine, under the leading of grace, can give rise to a rudimentary faith that leans forward in hope and expectation to further manifestations of God’s merciful love and of his guidance for our lives. By welcoming the signs already given and placing their hope in God’s redeeming love, persons who have not heard the tidings of the gospel may nevertheless be on the road to salvation. If they are faithful to the grace given them, they may have good hope of receiving the truth and blessedness for which they yearn.

The search, however, is no substitute for finding. To be blessed in this life, one must find the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, which is worth buying at the cost of everything one possesses. To Christians has been revealed the mystery hidden from past ages, which the patriarchs and prophets longed to know. By entering through baptism into the mystery of the cross and the Resurrection, Christians undergo a radical transformation that sets them unequivocally on the road to salvation. Only after conversion to explicit faith can one join the community that is nourished by the Word of God and the sacraments. These gifts of God, prayerfully received, enable the faithful to grow into ever greater union with Christ.

In Christ’s Church, therefore, we have many aids to salvation and sanctification that are not available elsewhere. Cardinal Newman expressed the situation admirably in one of his early sermons:

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Saving Ecumenism from Itself

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The Oberlin conference on The Nature of the Unity We Seek, which met fifty years ago, in September 1957, marked an important stage in the ecumenical movement. For the first time, the churches in North America in large numbers committed themselves to the quest for Christian unity. The composition of the conference was diverse, including delegates from several Orthodox churches and the Protestant Episcopal Church, as well as Lutherans, Reformed, Methodists, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, Adventists, and others.

The delegates heard thoughtful addresses by a brilliant array of theologians from North America, Europe, and Asia, including a sermon by the secretary-general of the World Council of Churches, Willem A. Visser ‘t Hooft. After some days of discussion, the delegates came up with a “Message to the Churches,” which recommended steps toward a greater visible manifestation of the unity of the Church.

Although I had to leave the United States in June 1957 for a three-year sojourn in Europe, I can recall the interest that the scheduled Oberlin Conference aroused in the Catholic Church even before I left. My own professor and mentor in ecumenism, Fr. Gustave Weigel, S.J., took part in the conference as one of the two Catholic observers. The other was my good friend the Paulist editor of Catholic World , John B. Sheerin.

At the time, H.P. Van Dusen judged that the Oberlin Conference “cast virtually no light on the theme which the gathering was summoned to examine,” which remains theologically defensible. But, in my estimation, the conference achieved all that could reasonably have been expected of it. Large multilateral conferences of this type, gathering for the first time, cannot be expected to come up with profound new consensus statements. The delegates were effectively exposed to the complexities of the problem in the areas of faith, liturgy, and the Christian life. They became conscious of the length of the road ahead but at the same time were eager to bring their respective churches, with God’s help, as far as they could along that road.

The ecumenical movement, which had been going on for a generation in Europe, was formally launched in the United States. Oberlin stands near the beginning of a half century of thriving ecumenical activity. The impetus toward unity was strengthened, four years later, by the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches at New Delhi and then, in 1963, by the Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order at Montreal. The full and official entry of the Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement came with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

In those early days, Catholic ecumenists, like their Orthodox colleagues, were conscious that their participation in the ecumenical movement was in some ways problematic because of the claims of their own Church to possess all the means of salvation entrusted by the Lord to his Church. The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in its Toronto statement of 1950 indicated that such claims to exclusivity were not an obstacle to membership in the World Council of Churches, provided that the churches in question were at least able to recognize “vestiges” or “elements” of the true Church in communities other than their own.

Without concealing or minimizing the specific claims of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council found ways of showing how that Church could and should pursue ecumenism. Four important insights, all expressed by Vatican II, undergirded the commitment of Catholics to this new apostolate.

First of all, the scandal of Christian division posed difficulties for the Catholic Church’s own missionary work. It was a stumbling block that impeded what the council called “the most holy cause of proclaiming the gospel to every creature.” Non-Christians often reacted to missionary efforts with the feeling that, before asking them to convert, the missionaries ought to agree among themselves about what Christianity is. Why should the past quarrels among European or American Christians, some asked, be visited upon young churches from other parts of the world? Did it make any sense for an African, for example, to join the Swedish Lutheran Church or to become a Southern Baptist?

In the second place, the Catholic Church recognized that the divisions among Christians impoverished her catholicity. She lacked the natural and cultural endowments that other Christians could have contributed if they were united with her. Catholicity required that all the riches of the nations should be gathered into the one Church and harvested for the glory of God.

Third, the fullness of Christianity in Catholicism did not imply that all other churches were devoid of truth and grace. For all their differences, they shared considerable commonalities in faith, worship, and ministerial order. The council taught, in fact, that non-Catholic churches and communions were “by no means deprived of significance and importance for the mystery of salvation” because the Holy Spirit could use them as instruments of grace. Vatican II, therefore, represents a sharp turn away from the purely negative evaluation of non-Catholic Christianity that was characteristic of the previous three centuries.

And fourth, the Catholic Church, insofar as she was made up of human members and administered by them, was always in need of purification and reform. Through ecumenical contacts, other Christian communities could help her to correct what was amiss, to supply what was lacking, and to update what was obsolete.

Regarding the ecclesial status of non-Catholic Christians, Pius XII had taught as late as 1943 that they could not be true members of the Church because the Body of Christ was identical with the Catholic Church. Such Christians could not belong to the body except by virtue of some implicit desire, which would give them a relation that fell short of true incorporation. From a different point of view, Vatican II taught that every valid baptism incorporates the recipient into the crucified and glorified Christ, and that all baptized Christians were to some extent in communion with the Catholic Church. Their status, therefore, was quite different from that of non-Christians, although these, too, could be related by desire or orientation to the People of God.

Relying on the new ecclesiology of communion, Catholic ecumenists now perceived their task as a movement from lesser to greater degrees of communion. All who believed in Christ and were baptized in his name already possessed a certain imperfect communion, which could be recognized, celebrated, and deepened. The ecumenical movement aspired to the full restoration of the impaired communion among separated churches and communities. Paul VI felt authorized to declare that the communion between the Catholic and Orthodox churches was “almost complete.”

Following the example set by John XXIII, the next few popes cultivated cordial relationships with prominent leaders of other churches. Paul VI enjoyed relations of deep affection and respect with Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople and Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury. John Paul II continued this tradition and in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995) reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to ecumenism as a permanent priority. Benedict XVI in his inaugural homily as pope, on April 24, 2005, renewed this commitment. His meetings with Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and with Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury have been major landmarks in his pontificate.

The principal instrument of ecumenism over the past half century has been a series of theological conversations between separated churches. Proceeding on the basis of what they held in common, the partners tried to show that their shared patrimony contained the seeds of much closer agreement than had yet been recognized. Rereading their confessional documents in light of Scripture and early creeds as shared authorities, they produced remarkable convergence statements on traditionally divisive subjects such as justification, Mariology, Scripture and tradition, the Eucharist, and the ordained ministry. The achievements of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), the Groupe des Dombes, and the World Commission on Faith and Order in its Lima paper on baptism, Eucharist, and ministry deserve our admiration. I personally stand by the ecumenical statements that I have signed, including those of the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue and of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

And yet, valuable though it was, the convergence method was not without limitations. Each new round of dialogue raised expectations for the future. The next dialogue, at the price of failure, was under pressure to come up with new agreements. The process would at some point reach a stage at which it had delivered about as much as it could. It would eventually run up against hard differences that resisted elimination by this method of convergence.

When the dialogues attempted to go beyond convergence and achieve full reconciliation on divisive issues, they sometimes overreached themselves. Although not all would agree, I think the much vaunted Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith, signed in 1999, exaggerated the agreements. After stating quite correctly that the Lutheran and Catholic dialogues of previous decades had come to a basic consensus on the doctrine of justification by grace through faith, the Joint Declaration goes on to assert, more dubiously, that the remaining disagreements could now be written off as “differences of language, theological elaboration, and emphasis,” and therefore as not warranting condemnation from either side. It even described these differences as “acceptable.”

In my judgment, some of the unresolved differences are more correctly classified as matters of doctrine. Is the justified person always and inevitably a sinner worthy of condemnation in the sight of God? Are human beings able, with the help of grace, to dispose themselves to receive sanctifying grace? Can they merit an increase of grace and heavenly glory with the help of the grace they already have? Do sinners, after receiving forgiveness, still have an obligation to make satisfaction for their misdeeds? On questions such as these, Lutherans and Catholics seem to give incompatible answers. Nothing in the Joint Declaration persuades me that such differences are mere matters of theological speculation or linguistic formulation.

Bilateral conversations have been particularly useful for churches with a firm and ample doctrinal tradition, such as the Orthodox, the Lutheran, the Anglican, and the Catholic. They have dispelled past prejudices, identified real but unsuspected agreements, and enabled the parties to say more together than they previously deemed possible. But to the extent that churches rely on different normative sources or different exegetical methods, the dialogues have been less fruitful.

Many of the twentieth-century dialogues have opted to take Scripture, interpreted by the historical-critical method, as their primary norm. This method has worked reasonably well for mainline Protestant churches and for the Catholic Church since Vatican II. But many Christians do not rely on the critical approach to Scripture as normative. Catholics themselves, without rejecting the historical-critical method, profess many doctrines that enjoy little support from Scripture, interpreted in this manner. They draw on allegorical or spiritual exegesis, authenticated by the sense of the faithful and long-standing theological tradition. As a consequence, certain Catholic doctrines, such as papal primacy, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and purgatory, have been banished to the sidelines. Unable to cope with doctrines such as these, the dialogues have treated them as an ecumenical embarrassment.

Dialogues conducted according to the dominant methods of the past century have tended to be reductive, and many doctrinally conservative Christians, strongly wedded to their beliefs, have abstained from ecumenical involvements for fear of doctrinal compromise. Indeed, since the 1980s, some of the churches heavily committed to ecumenical dialogue have shown anxiety about maintaining their own identity. Some observers speak of a reconfessionalization in the ecumenical landscape.

The negative criticisms of the Joint Declaration from both the Protestant and the Catholic sides are illustrative of this new tendency. Without wanting a return to the polemics of the past, some critics fear that a vague spirit of civility is being allowed to replace the theological candor and rigor of earlier centuries.

This reaction against immoderate irenicism may be found in some recent official teaching of the Catholic Church. A new concern for orthodoxy, as Walter Kasper has noted, lies behind the “Letter on Some Aspects of the Church Considered as Communio ” issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1992. The same is true of the declaration Dominus Iesus issued by the same congregation in 2000 and of the “Note on the Expression ‘Sister Churches’” issued at the same time.

Dominus Iesus , in particular, goes further in the direction of Catholic exclusivity than does Vatican II, as the council has generally been understood. Reacting against ecclesial relativism, it vigorously denies that the Church exists today in a fragmented form, in which no one body could claim identity with the Church of Christ. This declaration contains no suggestion that the Body of Christ is broader than the Catholic Church or that one may be incorporated in the former without being a member of the latter. Instead it asserts that in holding that the Church of Christ “subsists” in the Roman Catholic communion, the council intended to say that the Church of Christ, his Body and Bride, is identical with the Catholic Church, outside of which there are only elements or fragments of the true Church.

The teaching of Dominus Iesus is repeated in substance in the “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church” made public by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on July 10, 2007. One minor difference is that where Dominus Iesus had asserted that the Church of Christ is “present and operative” in all churches that have preserved the apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, the Responses state that the same may be true of ecclesial communities that have not preserved these structural elements.

Some would regard the recent trend toward reconfessionalization as a defeat for ecumenism. This judgment would be true if it meant a retreat of the confessions into their own shells and a refusal to encounter others. But reconfessionalization need not mean what Cardinal Kasper calls “an apprehensive, self-absorbed, defensive attitude.” It may be an opening to a new kind of dialogue, in which the partners are eager to express their own distinctive heritage so that they may be able to share it with others.

John Paul II consistently opposed styles of ecumenism that seemed to aim at settling for a least common denominator. In an address to the Roman Curia on June 28, 1980, he laid down the principle that “the unity of Christians cannot be sought in a ‘compromise’ between the various theological positions, but only in a common meeting in the most ample and mature fullness of Christian truth.” In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint he proposed a better alternative. After stating that “the unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed truth in its entirety,” he went on to say that dialogue is not merely an exchange of ideas but also, in some way, “an exchange of gifts.” Later, in the same encyclical, he wrote: “Communion is made fruitful by the exchange of gifts between the churches insofar as they complement each other.” In these words he called for a new chapter in the history of ecumenism.

For some years now, I have felt that the method of convergence, which seeks to harmonize the doctrines of each ecclesial tradition on the basis of shared sources and methods, has nearly exhausted its potential. It has served well in the past and may still be useful, especially among groups that have hitherto been isolated from the conversation. But to surmount the remaining barriers we need a different method, one that invites a deeper conversion on the part of the churches themselves. I have therefore been urging an ecumenism of mutual enrichment by means of testimony. This proposal corresponds closely, I believe, with John Paul II’s idea of seeking the fullness of truth by means of an “exchange of gifts.”

There are not many examples of the kind of ecumenical encounter I am envisaging, but one comes to my mind. In January 2006, the theology department at Durham University hosted at Ushaw College, a neighboring Catholic seminary, an international conference of Catholics in conversation with Orthodox, Anglicans, and Methodists. Conducting an experiment in what the conference called “receptive ecumenism,” the speakers were asked to discuss what they could find in their own traditions that might be acceptable to the Catholic Church without detriment to its identity. The Catholic participants, including Cardinal Kasper, were asked to evaluate the suggestions and judge their practical feasibility. The discussion, I am told, was informal and did not lead to any set of agreed conclusions.

Unlike some recent models of dialogue, ecumenism of this style leaves the participants free to draw on their own normative sources and does not constrain them to bracket or minimize what is specific to themselves. Far from being embarrassed by their own distinctive doctrines and practices, each partner should feel privileged to be able to contribute something positive that the others still lack.

This does not mean, of course, that the churches should be uncritical of themselves or others. Where they express, or hear others expressing, singular beliefs, they should carefully examine the grounds for such views. But that is different from abdicating or suppressing their special convictions as a matter of principle.

With this mentality, Catholics would want to hear from the churches of the Reformation the reasons they have for speaking as they do of Christ alone, Scripture alone, grace alone, and faith alone, while Catholics tend to speak of Christ and the Church, Scripture and tradition, grace and cooperation, faith and works. We would want to learn from them how to make better use of the laity as sharers in the priesthood of the whole People of God. We would want to hear from evangelicals about their experience of conversion and from Pentecostals about perceiving the free action of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The Orthodox would have much to tell about liturgical piety, holy tradition, sacred images, and synodical styles of polity. We would not want any of these distinctive endowments of other ecclesial families to be muted or shunted aside for the sake of having shared premises or an agreed method.

Conversely, Catholics would not hesitate to go into the dialogue with the full panoply of beliefs, sustained by our own methods of certifying the truth of revelation. We are not ashamed of our reliance on tradition, the liturgy, the sense of the faithful, and our confidence in the judgment of the Magisterium.

One of the doctrines most distinctive to the Catholic Church is surely the primacy of the pope as the successor of Peter—a primacy that the First Vatican Council set forth in clear, uncompromising language. Because Catholics cherish this doctrine, we should not be content to keep it to ourselves. The successor of Peter, we believe, is intended by Christ to be the visible head of all Christians. Without accepting his ministry, Christians will never attain the kind of universal concord that God wills the Church to have as a sign and sacrament of unity. They will inevitably fall into conflict with one another regarding doctrine, discipline, and ways of worship. No church can simply institute for itself an office that has authority to pronounce finally on disputed doctrines. If it exists at all, this office must have been instituted by Christ and must enjoy the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The Petrine office is a precious gift that the Lord has given us not only for our own consolation but as something to be held in trust for the entire oikoumene .

John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint expressed a desire to work with leaders and theologians of other churches in seeking ways for the Petrine office to be exercised such that it could be beneficial to them as well as to Catholics. These other churches and communities will have to consider the ways in which they could receive the primatial ministry of the bishop of Rome. A dialogue on this subject is already underway. For some communities, perhaps, the papacy will be the final piece by which to complete the jigsaw puzzle of Christian unity.

Each party will engage in ecumenical dialogue with its own presuppositions and convictions. As a Roman Catholic, I would make use of the methods by which my church derives its distinctive doctrines. I would also expect that any reunion to which Catholics can be a party would have to include as part of the settlement the Catholic dogmas, perhaps reinterpreted in ways that we do not now foresee. Other churches and ecclesial communities will have their own expectations. But all must be open to possible conversion. We must rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us, as Vatican II recommended, “without obstructing the ways of divine Providence and without prejudging the future inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”

How then can Christian unity be envisaged? That is the question asked at Oberlin five decades ago. The first condition, I believe, is that the various Christian communities be ready to speak and listen to one another. Some will perhaps receive the grace to accept what they hear credibly attested as an insight from other communities. The witnesses and their hearers need not insist on rigorous proof, because very little of our faith can be demonstrated by deductive methods. Testimony operates by a different logic. We speak of what has been graciously manifested to us and what we have found to be of value for our relationship with God. If others accept what we proclaim, it is because our words evoke an echo in them and carry the hallmark of truth.

The process of growth through mutual attestation will probably never reach its final consummation within historical time, but it can bring palpable results. It can lead the churches to emerge progressively from their present isolation into something more like a harmonious chorus. Enriched by the gifts of others, they can hope to raise their voices together in a single hymn to the glory of the triune God. The result to be sought is unity in diversity.

True progress in ecumenism requires obedience to the Holy Spirit. Vatican II rightly identified spiritual ecumenism as the soul of the ecumenical movement. It defined spiritual ecumenism as a change of heart and holiness of life, together with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians. We must pray to God to overcome our deafness and open our ears to what the Spirit is saying to the churches, including our own. No mutual rapprochement can be of any value unless it is also a closer approach to Christ the Lord of the Church. We must ask for the grace to say only what the Spirit bids us say and to hear all that he is telling us through the other.

Then we may hope that, by accommodating what other communities are trying to tell us, we may be enriched with new and precious gifts. By accepting the full riches of Christ we lose nothing except our errors and defects. What we gain is the greatest gift of all: a deeper share in the truth of Christ, who said of himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

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God and Evolution

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

During the second half of the nineteenth century, it became common to speak of a war between science and religion. But over the course of the twentieth century, that hostility gradually subsided. Following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate established a commission to review and correct the condemnation of Galileo at his trial of 1633. In 1983 he held a conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences , at which he remarked that the experience of the Galileo case had led the Church “to a more mature attitude and a more accurate grasp of the authority proper to her,” enabling her better to distinguish between “essentials of the faith” and the “scientific systems of a given age.”

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Love, the Pope, and C.S. Lewis

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 encyclical, Deus Caritas Est , has two clearly distinct parts. In the first it deals with the nature of love and of charity, the highest form of love; in the second it treats the charitable activity of the Church. Most of the commentaries have focused on the second part, which raises interesting questions about the relation of Church and state, charity and justice. But the first part also merits careful study, for the encyclical is not primarily concerned with ethical problems but rather with communicating a philosophical worldview in which the Church’s ethical teaching concerning love, marriage, and sexuality is intelligible.

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The Orthodox Imperative

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The word orthodox derives from the Greek word orthodoxía , which standard dictionaries translate as “right opinion.” Aristotle used the verb orthodoxein with the meaning “to have a right opinion.” The Greek-speaking Church Fathers continued to use orthódoxos in relation to faith with the meaning “having right belief.”

During the patristic age, orthodoxy gradually took on a further connotation: conformity with the traditional and universal teaching of the Church. This development rested on the conviction that the Church is, as Paul puts it, the “pillar and bulwark of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). From the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian, Catholic Christians were confident that the Church’s teaching stood in continuity with that of the apostles, who had received it immediately from Christ and the Holy Spirit. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History frequently uses orthodoxy in contrast to heresy . Similarly, Augustine writes in On True Religion : “Religion is to be sought . . . only among those who are called Catholic or orthodox Christians, that is, guardians of truth and followers of right.”

The importance of orthodoxy in the first sense is self-evident: Everyone by nature wants to know; the human mind craves truth. Particularly desirable is the truth of revelation, which comes from God and leads to saving union with him. Religious beliefs are right or wrong to the extent that they agree or disagree with the word of God.

The value of orthodoxy in its second sense—conformity with Church teaching—should also be clear. As Cardinal Newman observed, we cannot imagine that God would bestow a revelation without making provision for its preservation. The scriptures tell us that he entrusted it to the Church as its custodian and herald. By remaining with the apostolic leadership to the end of time (Matt. 28:20), he protected the Church from succumbing to error. To authenticate her doctrine, the Church needs to have a body of accredited teachers, and the faithful must accept the teaching of their appointed leaders.

Jesus said of himself, “I came to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37), and before leaving this world he assured his disciples that he would send from the Father “the Spirit of truth,” who would be with them forever (John 14:16), guiding them into all truth (John 16:13). As the Father had sent him, he sent the apostles into the world as his representatives (John 20:21). They would be the bearers of his message to such a degree that to hear them would be to hear him (Luke 10:16). Jesus is quoted as saying that those who refuse to hear the Church should be treated as Gentiles and tax collectors, that is to say, as nonbelievers (Matt. 18:17). The Christian message therefore transmits itself through authorized witnesses, who are commissioned to speak in the name of the Lord.

St. Paul, who received the grace of apostleship after the ascension of Jesus, was able to tell the Thessalonians, “We also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess. 2:13). For Paul, his oral teaching and his written letters stand on the same level of authority: “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15). Since the gospel first came to certain chosen witnesses by way of revelation, it must be accepted on their testimony.

In the New Testament, we see Paul passing on the doctrines of the Eucharist and of the Resurrection that he has received from the earliest Christian community (1 Cor. 11:23 and 15:3). He expects the members of the community, instructed in the apostolic faith, to “be united in the same mind and the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10), and to avoid schisms. The Book of Acts shows the apostles reporting on their experiences and settling their differences at meetings such as the Council of Jerusalem.

The preservation of orthodoxy has always required vigorous oversight. Paul warned the elders of Ephesus against perverse teachers, whom he compared to ravenous wolves (Acts 20:29–30). Writing to the Galatians, he anathematized those who would teach “a different gospel” than the one he had proclaimed (Gal. 1:6–18). In his pastoral letters, Paul instructs Titus to appoint in each town of Crete elders who could teach with authority, confuting those who contradict the faith (Titus 1:5,9). He admonishes Timothy in Ephesus: “Guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit” (2 Tim. 1:13–14). He exhorts Timothy to protect the flock against godless heretics, who have “swerved from the truth” (2 Tim. 2:18).

Concern for orthodoxy is not peculiar to Paul. Peter in his second letter predicts that false teachers will arise and “secretly bring in destructive heresies” (2 Pet. 2:1). The Second Letter of John admonishes the community to abide in the holy doctrine of Christ and not even to greet those who fail to adhere to it (2 John 9–11). The Book of Revelation warns against the false teaching of the Nicolaitans, which was infecting some of the Christians at Pergamon (Rev. 2:15).

By the close of the first century, the bishops of the apostolic Church, ordained in the apostolic succession, were recognized as the custodians of the faith. In the second century, Irenaeus and Tertullian speak of the “canon of truth” or the “rule of faith.” It comes down from the apostles and is decisive for settling disputes about the contents of revelation. The summary rule of faith communicated to neophytes, as recorded by Irenaeus and Tertullian, is very similar to the baptismal creeds of the next few centuries.

The history of early Christianity could be described with little exaggeration as a constant struggle against heresy. Bishops met in council after council to protect the true faith from being overridden by human opinions and speculations. The councils hammered out the great doctrines of the Trinity and Christology in opposition to the heresies of the time. Theology was born and grew in this context. Irenaeus in his Adversus Haereses produced the first great work of systematic theology. St. John Damascene in his The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith brings the patristic age to a majestic close.

Christians of later centuries owe an immense debt of gratitude to the vigilance of the Fathers and their heroic labors to preserve doctrinal purity in the Church. Purity of doctrine is the condition sine qua non of right worship and of fruitful ministry.

The question of orthodoxy always comes to the fore in times of crisis, when the integrity of faith is being threatened. One such period in the West was the sixteenth century, when Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and others drew up lengthy confessions to defend their respective flocks against the errors they attributed to rival groups. Councils such as those of Trent, in the sixteenth century, and Vatican I, in the nineteenth, were convoked to condemn errors prevalent in their day.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the Catholic Church had become less defensive. The Second Vatican Council, convened at a moment of relative tranquility, saw no need to issue new condemnations. The Council Fathers presumed that the vast majority of Catholics were orthodox in their beliefs and did not need to be admonished by new censures. Instead of concentrating on the denunciation of error, as most other councils had done, Vatican II sought to present Catholic teaching in a serene and appealing light and to address new questions in a constructive manner. But the respite was only temporary. Before the Council came to a close, many Catholics were misinterpreting it as an invitation to question nearly every doctrine of the Church. Thus the struggle for orthodoxy had to be resumed.

In the past, Christians have held orthodoxy in high esteem, even while sometimes disagreeing about what doctrines are true and sound. But the case is quite different today. The idea of orthodoxy has become suspect, and many consider that it is bound up with an authoritarian and fundamentalist mentality unsuited to the modern age.

So, for example, in the school of thought exemplified by the Protestant systematician Paul Tillich, revelation does not convey information or ordinary knowledge. It is a mystical encounter that cannot be expressed in propositions. “Ordinary language,” he writes, “is not a medium of revelation.” For Tillich, there is no such thing as revealed information, nor are there any revealed doctrines. Religious statements have truth value only to the extent that they are expressive of, and conducive to, an ecstatic experience of the divine. To believe in propositional truths as matters of faith would, for Tillich, be a form of idolatry. We could almost say that, in his estimation, orthodoxy is a heresy. No dogma or creed can be accepted as a revealed truth.

As an argument in favor of his own position, Tillich claims that it precludes any possibility of a collision between science and faith or between history and faith. For him, apparently, it would make no difference for faith if historians could establish that Jesus never existed or never rose from the dead. The doctrine of the Resurrection, he would say, does not describe a factual or historical event. For the faithful, it can mean only the victory of Christ over the ultimate consequence of the existential estrangement to which he subjected himself.

We may agree with this school that revelation is not in the first instance propositional. It comes predominantly through historical events, interpreted in the light of faith. Still, these events are facts that can be described in words. The scriptures and the creeds testify to certain essential facts: that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, rose from the dead, and sent the Holy Spirit upon the community of believers. These and other events, committed to language, belong to the Christian creeds and are inseparable from Christian faith.

A non-propositional understanding of revelation contradicts the tenor of Holy Scripture and the earliest confessions of faith, which describe particular historical events of crucial importance for faith. “If Christ has not been raised,” writes Paul, “then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).

Later creeds incorporate articles of faith expressing truths of a more theoretical kind, such as the dogmas that there are three divine persons and that the second person became incarnate. These doctrines are not mere metaphors. They must be held and confessed according to their proper meaning. Their significance, no doubt, is most fully brought home in situations of prayer and worship, but such a richer understanding presupposes that the doctrines are factually true. It is unacceptable to say that revelation does not contain any factual information. Anyone who denies that the events of salvation history truly occurred would be contradicting the faith.

A second line of objection, very widespread in our time, may be called relativism. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of “the dictatorship of relativism” in a homily delivered on the day he entered the conclave in April 2005. Relativism takes two forms: historical and cultural.

Historical relativism was one of the driving forces behind the Modernist movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. Alfred Loisy, one of the leaders of that movement, held that propositions are always conditioned by the circumstances in which they are uttered. When first uttered, he granted, they were true because they corresponded to the religious consciousness of the time. But at the price of becoming false, they must submit to revision. The creeds and dogmatic definitions, Loisy contended, must be continually updated and transformed to keep pace with human progress and to meet the emergent needs of thought and knowledge.

Loisy and his associates were quite properly condemned by Church authorities, but their position contained a grain of truth. The dogmatic formulations of the Church, we may concede, bear the signature of the age in which they are composed.

To communicate the revealed truth, the Church uses the concepts and language that are available in the culture. She has no other conceptual and linguistic tools for making herself understood. Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council therefore recognized that doctrine, while remaining certain and unchangeable in itself, “has to be explored and presented in a way that is demanded by our times. One thing is the deposit of faith, which consists of the truths contained in sacred doctrine; another thing is the manner of presentation, always however with the same meaning and signification.” In adding this last phrase, the pope made it clear that he was not accepting the idea that truth changes with the times.

The reinterpretation of dogma is a delicate business, fraught with perils of diminishing or adulterating the deposit of faith. But as John Henry Newman demonstrated in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine , new articulations of the faith, while replacing older ones, never deny what was previously held but build on it while advancing in clarity and completeness. Doctrines that reverse and contradict the earlier teachings from which they sprang could not be anything but corruptions. One mark of true development, for Newman, is its tendency to conserve past teaching.

The other form of relativism, cultural relativism, claims that what we perceive as truth is inevitably a function of our own culture. Thus, for example, the Protestant philosopher of religion Ernst Troeltsch, before his death in 1923, came to the conclusion that although God’s revelation in Christ was final and unconditional for Westerners, it was possible for people in other cultures to experience the divine in altogether different ways, which were valid for them. Each religion can therefore have its own system of dogmas, reflecting the adherents’ own religious experience. The Christian dogmas, valid though they be for Christians, are not for export to other cultural spheres.

To relativism in both its forms we must reply that any dogmatic assertion—for example, the doctrine that God is tripersonal or that the Second Person of the Trinity became man for the sake of our redemption—is objectively either true or false. It cannot be true for the people of one culture and false for those of another. Truth by its nature is universal and permanent. If a statement is true at any time and place, it must be true always and everywhere. This principle of universalism holds for all truth, whether scientific, historical, metaphysical, or religious.

Cultural factors can, of course, color people’s perception of the truth or prevent them from recognizing what others can see. Some might be incapable of recognizing that the earth is round, but such difficulties do not affect the truth of the statement. So likewise, some might be wedded to an idea of God that would exclude the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But cultural limitations are not insuperable, and they do not affect the truth of the doctrine that they cloak. Every culture can enrich and purify itself by learning to appreciate the truths and values carried in other cultures.

A third line of objection against dogma comes from the philosophical liberalism associated with such thinkers as Matthew Arnold, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred North Whitehead. They object to dogmatism because it treats as certain what is not really knowable. Many Americans, influenced by this school of thought, hold that religion is more a matter of the heart than of the head.

This objection rests on the agnostic view that truth and certitude about transcendent matters are unattainable—a view that must be vigorously challenged on philosophical and theological grounds. God is knowable to a limited extent by means of reason. Divine revelation, properly authenticated, can give sure knowledge of things beyond the limits of human inquiry. His word, conveyed by the testimony of the believing Church and impressed on the heart by grace, can impart convictions of unshakable firmness, as shown by the armies of martyrs and confessors who have been constant under persecution.

A fourth objection to orthodoxy is the notion that firm convictions lead to intolerance. History, it is said, demonstrates that believers have used the power of the state to force people to adhere to the established religion.

We may concede that the Church’s historical record is blemished. But Vatican II, in its Declaration on Religious Freedom, made it clear that the assent of faith must always be free and no earthly power should seek to coerce it. As John Paul II later put it: “The Church proposes; she imposes nothing. Far from being averse to human freedom, the Church hopes that authentic religious freedom will be granted to all peoples everywhere.”

Tolerance should not be an obstacle to evangelization. Without exercising any coercion, the Church can confidently bear witness to the message entrusted to her. In so doing, she helps to liberate people from error. In the words of Jesus, “The truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

A fifth objection to orthodoxy is prevalent in America today: individualism. Maturity is thought to exclude reliance on authority in religion. People are encouraged to be their own masters, believing what their own experience tells them. Conformity is considered to be dull; dissent, interesting. Heresy is even promoted by books with titles such as The Heretical Imperative (Peter Berger), which suggest we ought to prefer our private judgment to the tradition of the Church. It seems more honest and more courageous to speak for oneself rather than to take refuge in the faith of the Church.

In assessing this view, we should recall that the mind is not given to us for the purpose of self-assertion. As an organ of truth, it is intended to conform itself to what is real. Certain religious truths must be accepted on authority or else remain unknown. The decision to submit to authority in a given matter can be mature and responsible, especially because the authority of Christ and the Church in no way contradicts reason but perfects it.

The glorification of dissent, in a curious way, lends support to orthodoxy. When dissent becomes the rule, orthodoxy is another form of dissent. It sometimes takes more courage to uphold unpopular teachings of the Church than to join the chorus of dissenters. Thus, in his book Orthodoxy , G.K. Chesterton takes delight in showing how he discovered an exciting new heresy of his own: orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy, like most good things, can be carried to a fault. I do not mean that one’s doctrine can be too sound but only that one can be excessively preoccupied with keeping the rules.

One danger is formalism. People who are overly concerned with conforming to authority run the risk of losing interest in the contents of the faith. They speak as though it were enough to say: “I believe whatever the Church teaches, and I don’t care what it is,” or “Since the Church teaches that there are three persons in God, I believe it, but I would be just as glad if she told me that there are four or five divine persons.”

Revelation is neither a puzzle nor a body of useless information. It is given to enlighten our minds. Like good food, it is to be savored, digested, and assimilated. The guidance of authority enables us to see more, not less, than we could without it. By engaging in contemplation, prayer, and worship, Christians are enabled to grow in personal familiarity with the God of revelation and to express the content of faith in new and powerful language.

A second danger is superficiality. Because the faith is much richer than the propositions of dogma, orthodoxy does not give us the fullness of truth. A robust faith grounds itself not only in the word of the Church but more profoundly in the word and deeds of God, as attested by Scripture and apostolic tradition. The word of the Church is intended to guide us in interpreting the sources. It points ultimately to the one source: the person of the divine Word, who is in himself the fullness of revelation.

Pius XII instructed theologians to return constantly to the sources of Holy Scripture and apostolic tradition. These sources, he said, “contain so many rich treasures of truth, that they can really never be exhausted. Hence it is that theology through the study of its sacred sources remains ever fresh; on the other hand, speculation that neglects a deeper search into the deposit of faith, proves sterile, as we know from experience.”

A final danger of orthodoxy is dogmatism. In their excess of zeal, some want to settle every question by authority and point fingers of suspicion against anyone who raises questions and engages in speculation. Many questions in theology are still open; relatively few have been definitively settled. While we should not minimize the force of doctrinal pronouncements, we should not exaggerate them either. Not every statement that comes from the lips of the pope, a curial official, or a bishop is final and absolute.

Fortunately, none of these faults belongs to orthodoxy by nature. At its best, orthodoxy is warm, genial, and beneficent. Perhaps we could best define it as a loving adherence to the word of God in its fullness, with all its complexities, paradoxes, and mysteries. G.K. Chesterton taught his readers to see orthodoxy as a romance, full of surprises for those who explore it. Forbidding though it may be in its outward appearances, it gives rise to joy and fascination when experienced from within. Orthodoxy would have a brilliant future if it were represented with a more cheerful face.

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From Ratzinger to Benedict

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Like his predecessor John Paul II, Benedict XVI was present at all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Whereas Karol Wojtyla took part as a bishop, the young Joseph Ratzinger did so as a theological expert. During and after the council he taught successively at the universities of Bonn (1959-1963), Münster (1963-1966), Tübingen (1966-1969), and Regensburg, until he was appointed Archbishop of Munich in 1977. In 1981 he became prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post he held until the death of John Paul II in April 2005.

In his many publications Ratzinger continued to debate questions that arose during the council and in some cases expressed dissatisfaction with the council’s documents. In this respect he differs from Pope John Paul, who consistently praised the council and never (to my knowledge) criticized it. The material conveniently divides into three stages: his participation at the council, his early commentaries on the council’s documents, and his later reflections on the reception of the council. And then there are his changing reactions to the four great constitutions: on the liturgy ( Sacrosanctum Concilium ), on revelation ( Dei Verbum ), on the Church ( Lumen Gentium ), and on the Church in the modern world ( Gaudium et Spes ).

At the council, Ratzinger was much sought after as a rising theological star. He worked closely with senior Jesuits, including Karl Rahner, Alois Grillmeier, and Otto Semmelroth, all of whom kept in steady communication with the German bishops. The German Cardinals Josef Frings of Cologne and Julius Döpfner of Munich and Freising, strongly supported by theologian-bishops such as the future Cardinal Hermann Volk, exercised a powerful influence, generally opposing the schemas drawn up by the preparatory commission under the guidance of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and Father Sebastian Tromp, S.J.

Late in the first session Ratzinger was named a theological adviser to Cardinal Frings, a position he held until the end of the council. Many of his biographers suspect that he drafted Frings’ speech of November 8, 1963, vehemently attacking the procedures of the Holy Office. In combination with other events, this speech undoubtedly influenced Paul VI to restructure the Holy Office and give it a new name, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

During the first session, several official schemas were distributed by the preparatory commission with the expectation that the council fathers would accept them, at least in revised form. The German contingent were generally content with the proposed document on the liturgy, but reacted adversely to those on revelation and the Church and sought to replace them.

With regard to revelation, Ratzinger agreed that the preliminary schema was unacceptable and should be withdrawn. At the request of Cardinal Frings, he wrote an alternative text, which was then reworked with the help of Rahner. To the annoyance of Ottaviani, three thousand copies of this text were privately circulated among the council fathers and experts. Yves Congar, though generally sympathetic, called the Rahner-Ratzinger paper far too personal to have any chance of being adopted and criticized it for taking too little account of the good work in the preparatory schemas. Gerald Fogarty calls it a barely mitigated synthesis of Rahner’s systematic theology.

Notwithstanding the rejection of their schema, Rahner and Ratzinger had some input into the new text prepared by the mixed commission named by Pope John XXIII. Both were appointed as consulters to the subcommission revising the new text. Rahner strongly advocated his personal position on the relation between scripture and tradition. Ratzinger helped in responding to proposed amendments to the chapter dealing with tradition; he also had an opportunity to introduce modifications in the chapter dealing with the authority and interpretation of scripture.

On the Church, Ratzinger joined with the German bishops and his fellow experts in getting the idea of the Church as sacrament deeply inscribed into the constitution ” a concern to which Frings spoke on the council floor. Both Ratzinger and Rahner served on the subcommission that revised the formulations on collegiality in articles 22 and 23. Ratzinger was also appointed to a team for redrafting the schema on the Church’s missionary activity for the last session of the council. He worked closely with Congar in defining the theological foundation of missions, a theme on which the two easily found agreement. Congar in his diary characterizes Ratzinger as “reasonable, modest, disinterested, and very helpful.” He credits Ratzinger with coming up with the definition of missionary activity that was accepted and also with proposing the inclusion of a section on ecumenism in the document. Others credit him with devising a footnote that allowed Latin America to be included as a missionary region even though its people had been previously evangelized. At discussions of Gaudium et Spes in September 1965, Ratzinger voiced many of the criticisms that would later appear in his books and articles: The schema was too naturalistic and unhistorical, took insufficient notice of sin and its consequences, and was too optimistic about human progress.

All in all, we may say that Ratzinger belonged to the inner circle of theologians whose thinking prevailed at Vatican II. Still in his thirties, he as yet lacked the public standing of Congar, Rahner, and Gérard Philips. In the early sessions he collaborated very closely with Rahner and the German Jesuits in opposition to the Roman School, though he spoke with moderation. As the council progressed, Ratzinger became more independent. He made an original and important contribution to the document on missions and mounted a highly personal critique of the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, reflecting his preference for Augustine over Aquinas and his sensitivity to Lutheran concerns.

During the council and the first few years after its conclusion, Ratzinger wrote a number of commentaries on the conciliar documents. While making certain criticisms, they express his agreement with the general directions of Vatican II and his acceptance of the three objectives named by John XXIII: renewal of the Church, unity among Christians, and dialogue with the world of today. He welcomed the rejection of some of the preparatory schemas, chiefly because they were phrased in abstract scholastic terms and failed to speak pastorally to the modern world. He appreciated the council’s freedom from Roman domination and the openness and candor of its discussions.

As a member of the progressive wing at the council, Ratzinger taught at Tübingen with Hans Küng and joined the editorial board of the progressive review Concilium , edited from Holland. In 1969, after the academic uprisings at Tübingen, he moved to the more traditional faculty of Regensburg. Then in 1972 he became one of the founding editors of the review Communio , a more conservative counterpart of Concilium. His theological orientation seemed to be shifting.

In 1975 Ratzinger wrote an article, on the tenth anniversary of the close of Vatican II, in which he differed from the progressives who wanted to go beyond the council and from the conservatives who wanted to retreat behind the council. The only viable course, he contended, was to interpret Vatican II in strictest continuity with previous councils such as Trent and Vatican I, since all three councils are upheld by the same authority: that of the pope and the college of bishops in communion with him.

Two years later Ratzinger became an archbishop and a cardinal, and then in 1981 cardinal prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. In an interview published in 1985 he denied that Vatican II was responsible for causing the confusion of the post-conciliar period. The damage, he said, was due to the unleashing of polemical and centrifugal forces within the Church and the prevalence, outside the Church, of a liberal-radical ideology that was individualistic, rationalistic, and hedonistic. He renewed his call for fidelity to the actual teaching of the council without reservations that would truncate its teaching or elaborations that would deform it.

The misinterpretations, according to Ratzinger, must be overcome before an authentic reception can begin. Traditionalists and progressives, he said, fell into the same error: They failed to see that Vatican II stood in fundamental continuity with the past. In rejecting some of the early drafts, the council fathers were not repudiating their doctrine, which was solidly traditional, but only their style, which they found too scholastic and insufficiently pastoral. Particularly harmful was the tendency of progressives to contrast the letter of the council’s texts with the spirit. The spirit is to be found in the letter itself.

Some consider that the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, composed in the final phase, should be seen as the climax of the council, for which the other constitutions are preparatory. Ratzinger takes the opposite view. The pastoral constitution is subordinate to the two dogmatic constitutions ” those on revelation and the Church ” which orient the interpreter toward the source and center of the Christian life. The constitution on the liturgy, though not strictly dogmatic, was the most successful of the four constitutions; the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes was a tentative effort to apply Catholic doctrine to the current relation of the Church to the world.

The first document debated in the session of 1962 was on liturgy. In his early commentaries Ratzinger praises it highly. He applauds its efforts to overcome the isolation of the priest celebrant and to foster active participation by the congregation. He agrees with the constitution on the need to attach greater importance to the word of God in Scripture and in proclamation. He is pleased by the constitution’s provision for Holy Communion to be distributed under both species and its encouragement of regional adaptations regulated by episcopal conferences, including the use of the vernacular. “The wall of Latinity,” he wrote, “had to be breached if the liturgy were again to function either as proclamation or as invitation to prayer.” He also approved of the council’s call to recover the simplicity of the early liturgies and remove superfluous medieval accretions.

In subsequent writings as a cardinal, Ratzinger seeks to dispel current misinterpretations. The council fathers, he insists, had no intention of initiating a liturgical revolution. They intended to introduce a moderate use of the vernacular alongside of the Latin, but had no thought of eliminating Latin, which remains the official language of the Roman rite. In calling for active participation, the council did not mean incessant commotion of speaking, singing, reading, and shaking hands; prayerful silence could be an especially deep manner of personal participation. He particularly regrets the disappearance of traditional sacred music, contrary to the intention of the council. Nor did the council wish to initiate a period of feverish liturgical experimentation and creativity. It strictly forbade both priests and laity to change the rubrics on their own authority.

Ratzinger in several places laments the abruptness with which the Missal of Paul VI was imposed after the council, with its summary suppression of the so-called Tridentine Mass. This action contributed to the impression, all too widespread, that the council was a breach rather than a new stage in a continuous process of development. For his part, Ratzinger seems to have nothing against the celebration of Mass according to the missal that was in use before the council.

In his earliest comments on the constitution on divine revelation, the young Ratzinger spoke positively. The first sentence appealed to him because it placed the Church in a posture of reverently listening to the Word of God. He also welcomed the council’s effort to overcome the neurotic anti-Modernism of the neoscholastics and to adopt the language of scripture and contemporary usage. He was pleased with the council’s recognition of the process by which scripture grows out of the religious history of God’s people.

In his chapters on Dei Verbum for the “Vorgrimler Commentary,” Ratzinger again praises the preface as opening the Church upward to the Word of God and for emphasizing the value of proclamation. While continuing to note the success of the first chapter in emphasizing revelation through history, he faults its survey of Old Testament history for excessive optimism and for overlooking the prevalence of sin. Some attention to the Lutheran theme of law and gospel, he remarks, would have enriched the text. The theology of faith in the constitution, in his estimation, is consonant with, yet richer than, that of Vatican I. Ratzinger’s discussion of tradition in chapter 2 shows a keen appreciation of the difficulties raised by Protestant commentators. He interprets this chapter as giving a certain priority to scripture over tradition and praises it for subordinating the Church’s teaching office to the Word of God. But he faults it for failing to recognize scripture as a norm for identifying unauthentic traditions that distort the gospel.

The elder Ratzinger speaks from a different perspective, more confessionally Catholic. While still regarding the constitution on divine revelation as one of the outstanding texts of the council, he holds that it has yet to be truly received. In the prevalent interpretations he finds two principal defects. In the first place, it is misread as though it taught that all revelation is contained in scripture. Ratzinger now makes the point that revelation, as a living reality, is incapable of being enclosed in a text. Tradition is “that part of revelation that goes above and beyond scripture and cannot be comprehended within a code of formulas.”

The neglect of living tradition, according to the cardinal prefect, was one of the most serious errors of post-conciliar exegesis. The other was the reduction of exegesis to the historical-critical method. In an article about contemporary biblical interpretation, he comments on the seeming impasse between exegetes and dogmatic theologians. Offering a way out of the dilemma, the council teaches that historical-critical method is only the first stage of exegesis. It helps to illuminate the text on the human and historical level, but to find the word of God the exegete must go further, drawing on the Bible as a whole, on tradition, and on the whole system of Catholic dogma. “I am personally persuaded,” he writes, “that a careful reading of the whole text of Dei Verbum can provide the essential elements of a synthesis between historical method and theological hermeneutics.” But unfortunately the post-conciliar reception has practically discarded the theological part of the council’s statement as a concession to the past, thus allowing Catholic exegesis to become almost undistinguishable from Protestant.

In combination with the virtual monopoly of historical-critical exegesis, the neglect of tradition leads many Christians to think that nothing can be taught in the Church that does not pass the scrutiny of historical-critical method. In practice this meant that the shifting hypotheses of exegetes became the highest doctrinal authority in the Church.

Over the years Ratzinger has had a great deal to say about the dogmatic constitution on the Church. In his earliest observations he contends that it did well to subordinate the image of Mystical Body to that of People of God. The Mystical Body paradigm, much in favor under Pius XII, makes it all but impossible to give any ecclesial status to non-Catholics and leads to a false identification of the Church with Christ her Lord. The image of People of God, he contends, is more biblical; it gives scope for recognizing the sins of the Church, and it indicates that the Church is still on pilgrimage under the sign of hope. For similar reasons he supports the theme of Church as sacrament. As a sign and instrument, the Church is oriented to a goal that lies beyond herself.

In his early commentaries Ratzinger shows special interest in episcopal collegiality. The apostles, he believes, constituted a stable group under Peter as their head, as do the bishops of later generations under the primacy of Peter’s successor. Collegiality, in his view, favors horizontal communication among bishops. Behind collegiality lies the vision of the Church as made up of relatively autonomous communities under their respective bishops. The rediscovery of the local church makes it clear that multiplicity belongs to the structure of the Church. According to the New Testament, Ratzinger observes, the Church is a communion of local churches, mutually joined together through the Body and the Word of the Lord, especially when gathered at the Eucharist. Bishops, as heads of particular churches, must collaborate with one another in a ministry that is essentially communal. Not all initiative has to rest with the pope alone; he may simply accept what the body of bishops or some portion of it decrees.

Ratzinger was less upset than some of his fellow theologians by the “Prefatory Note of Explanation” appended to the third chapter of Lumen Gentium to clarify the doctrine of collegiality. This note supplied a number of necessary elucidations, even while tipping the scales somewhat in favor of papal primacy. Its importance should not be exaggerated, because it is neither a conciliar document nor one signed by the pope. Although the pope evidently approved of it, it was signed only by the secretary general of the council.

Ratzinger at this stage of his career contended that the synod of bishops established by Paul VI in September 1965 is in some respects collegial. The majority of the members are elected by the bishops, and it is called a synod, a term evoking the structures of the ancient Church. The synod, he said, is “a permanent council in miniature.” He likewise characterizes episcopal conferences as quasi-synodal intermediate agencies between individual bishops and the pope, possessing legislative powers in their own right. Writing for Concilium in 1965, he called the conferences partial realizations of collegiality and asserted that they have a genuinely theological basis.

At Vatican II there was a division of opinion about whether or not to treat Mariology in a separate document. With the general body of German theologians, Ratzinger supported the inclusion of Mary in the constitution on the Church, as finally took place. Unlike Bishop Wojtyla, he was wary of Marian maximalism and apparently averse to new titles such as “Mother of the Church.” Moved partly by ecumenical considerations, he applauded the restraint of the council in its references to Mary as Mediatrix and Co-Redemptrix.

Ratzinger in these early commentaries praised the constitution on the Church for its ecumenical sensitivity. It overcomes the impression that non-Catholic Christians are connected to the Church only by some kind of implicit desire, as Pius XII had seemed to teach. Read in conjunction with the decree on ecumenism, Lumen Gentium gives positive ecclesial status to Protestant and Orthodox communities. For Ratzinger, the Church is Catholic, but it is possible for particular churches or ecclesial communities to exist irregularly outside her borders. Some, such as the Eastern Orthodox communities, deserve to be called churches in the theological sense of the word.

Throughout his later career Ratzinger has continued to write extensively on the issues raised by Vatican II’s constitution on the Church. He frequently returns to the theme of the Church as People of God, which had been a topic in his doctoral dissertation. In calling the Church by that title, he now says, the council was not using the term “people” in a sociological sense. From an empirical point of view, Christians are not a people, as may be shown from any sociological analysis. But the non-people of Christians can become the people of God through inclusion in Christ, by sacramental incorporation into his crucified and risen body. In other words, the Church is the People of God because it is, in Christ, a sacrament. Here, too, we must note a serious failure of reception: Since the council, “the idea of the Church as sacrament has hardly entered people’s awareness.”

Ratzinger is not opposed to the ecclesiology of communion that came to the fore at the 1985 synod on the interpretation of Vatican II. Thanks to the Eucharist, the Church is communion with the whole Body of Christ. But he notes that “communion” has become, in some measure, a buzz word, and it is frequently distorted by a unilateral emphasis on the horizontal dimension to the neglect of the divine. Indeed, it is also misused to promote a kind of egalitarianism within the Church.

The early Ratzinger attached great importance to the council’s retrieval of the theology of the local church. Since 1992, however, he has contended that the universal Church has ontological and historical priority over the particular churches. It was not originally made up of local or regional churches. Those who speak of the priority of the particular church over the universal, he says, misinterpret the council documents. On collegiality, the older Ratzinger points out that according to Vatican II the bishop is first of all a member of the college, which is by nature universal. He is a successor of the apostles, each of whom, with and under Peter, was co-responsible for the universal Church. Bishops who are assigned to dioceses participate in the direction of the universal Church by governing their own churches well, keeping them in communion with the Church Catholic. The synod of bishops, in Ratzinger’s later theology, is no longer seen as a collegial organ or as a council in miniature; it is advisory to the pope as he performs his task. In so doing it makes the voice of the universal Church more clearly audible in the world of our day.

A similar shift is apparent in Ratzinger’s view of episcopal conferences, which he had earlier characterized as collegial organs with a true theological basis. But by 1986 he says: “We must not forget that the episcopal conferences have no theological basis; they do not belong to the structure of the Church as willed by Christ, that cannot be eliminated; they have only a practical, concrete function.” It is difficult to deny that on episcopal conferences, as on the synod of bishops, the cardinal retracted his earlier positions.

One of the most contentious issues in the interpretation of Lumen Gentium is the meaning of the statement that the Church of Christ “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. Some have interpreted it as an admission that the Church of Christ is found in many denominational churches, none of which can claim to be the one true Church. Ratzinger asserts the opposite. For him, “subsists” implies integral existence as a complete, self-contained subject. Thus the Catholic Church truly is the Church of Christ. But the term “subsists” is not exclusive; it allows for the possibility of ecclesial entities that are institutionally separate from the one Church. This dividedness, however, is not a desirable mutual complementarity of incomplete realizations but a deficiency that calls for healing.

In the sphere of Mariology, Ratzinger laments what he sees as another misunderstanding of the council. The inclusion of a chapter on Mary as the culmination of the constitution on the Church, he believes, should have given rise to new research rather than to neglect of the mystery of Mary. He himself has overcome certain reservations about Marian titles that he had expressed at the time of the council. It is imperative to turn to Mary, he believes, in order to learn the truth about Jesus Christ that is to be proclaimed.

The pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes in final form was primarily the work of French theologians. The German group did not control the text. At the time of the council Ratzinger already noted many difficulties, beginning with the problem of language. In opting for the language of modernity the text inevitably places itself outside the world of the Bible, so that as a result the biblical citations come to be little more than ornamental. Because of its stated preference for dialogue, the constitution makes faith appear not as an urgent demand for total commitment but as a conversational search into obscure matters. Christ is mentioned only at the end of each section, almost as an afterthought.

Instead of replacing dogmatic utterances with dialogue, Ratzinger contends, it would have been better to use the language of proclamation, appealing to the intrinsic authority of God’s truth. The constitution, drawing on the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, links Christian hope too closely to the modern idea of progress. Material progress is ambivalent because it can lead to degradation as well as to true humanization. The Cross teaches us that the world is not redeemed by technological advances but by sacrificial love. In the section on unification, Gaudium et Spes approaches the world too much from the viewpoint of function and utility rather than that of contemplation and wonder.

Ratzinger’s commentary on the first chapter of Gaudium et Spes contains still other provocative comments. The treatment of conscience in article 16, in his view, raises many unsolved questions about how conscience can err and about the right to follow an erroneous conscience. The treatment of free will in article 17 is in his judgment “downright Pelagian.” It leaves aside, he complains, the whole complex of problems that Luther handled under the term “ servum arbitrium ,” although Luther’s position does not itself do justice to the New Testament.

Ratzinger is not wholly negative in his judgment. He praises the discussion of atheism in articles 19-21 as “balanced and well-founded.” He is satisfied that the document, while “reprobating” atheism in all its forms, makes no specific mention of Marxist communism, as some cold warriors had desired. He is enthusiastic about the centrality of Christ and the Paschal mystery in article 22, and he finds in it a statement on the possibilities of salvation of the unevangelized far superior to the “extremely unsatisfactory” expressions of Lumen Gentium 16, which seemed to suggest that salvation is a human achievement rather than a divine gift.

With regard to this constitution, the later Ratzinger does not seem to have withdrawn his early objections, notwithstanding his exhortations to accept the entire teaching of Vatican II. But he finds that the ambiguities of Gaudium et Spes have been aggravated by secularist interpretations. The council was right, Ratzinger maintains, in its desire for a revision of the relations between the Church and the world. There are values that, having originated outside the Church, can find their place, at least in corrected form, within the Church. But the Church and the world can never meet each other without conflict. Worldly theologies too easily assimilate the gospel to secular movements.

In scattered references here and there in his interviews, Ratzinger mentions at least three specific deviations in the interpretations.

In the first place, Gaudium et Spes did make reference to signs of the times, but it stated that they need to be discerned and judged in the light of the gospel. Contemporary interpreters treat the signs of the times as a new method that finds theological truth in current events and makes them normative for judging the testimony of Scripture and tradition.

Secondly, the pastoral constitution may have erred in the direction of optimism, but it did speak openly of sin and evil. In no less than five places it made explicit mention of Satan. Post-conciliar interpreters, however, are inclined to discount Satan as a primitive myth.

Finally, Gaudium et Spes refers frequently to the Kingdom of God. Enthusiastic readers prefer to speak simply of the kingdom (without reference to any king) or, even more vaguely, to the “values” of the kingdom: peace, justice, and conservation. Can this trio of values, asks Ratzinger, take the place of God? Values, he replies, cannot replace truth, nor can they replace God, for they are only a reflection of him. Without God, the values become distorted by inhuman ideologies, as has been seen in various forms of Marxism.

Undeniably there have been some shifts in Ratzinger’s assessment of Vatican II. Still finding his own theological path, he was in the first years of the council unduly dependent on Karl Rahner as a mentor. Only gradually did he come to see that he and Rahner lived, theologically speaking, on different planets. Whereas Rahner found revelation and salvation primarily in the inward movements of the human spirit, Ratzinger finds them in historical events attested by scripture and the early church fathers.

Ratzinger’s career appears to have affected his theology. As an archbishop and a cardinal he has had to take increasing responsibility for the public life of the Church and has gained a deeper realization of the need for universal sacramental structures to safeguard the unity of the Church and her fidelity to the gospel. He has also had to contend with interpretations of Vatican II that he and the council fathers never foresaw. His early hopes for new mechanisms such as episcopal conferences have been tempered by the course of events.

Notwithstanding the changes, Benedict XVI has shown a fundamental consistency. As a personalist in philosophy and as a theologian in the Augustinian tradition, he expects the Church to maintain a posture of prayer and worship. He is suspicious of technology, of social activism, and of human claims to be building the Kingdom of God. For this reason he most appreciates the council documents on the liturgy and revelation, and has reservations about the constitution on the Church in the modern world, while giving it credit for some solid achievements.

The contrast between Pope Benedict and his predecessor is striking. John Paul II was a social ethicist, anxious to involve the Church in shaping a world order of peace, justice, and fraternal love. Among the documents of Vatican II, John Paul’s favorite was surely the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes . Benedict XVI, who looks upon Gaudium et Spes as the weakest of the four constitutions, shows a clear preference for the other three.

Although the Polish philosopher and the German theologian differ in outlook, they agree that the council has been seriously misinterpreted. It needs to be understood in conformity with the constant teaching of the Church. The true spirit of the council is to be found in, and not apart from, the letter.

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The Covenant With Israel

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The question of the present status of God’s covenant with Israel has been extensively discussed in Jewish-Christian dialogues since the Shoah. Catholics look for an approach that fits in the framework of Catholic doctrine, much of which has been summarized by the Second Vatican Council. According to post-conciliar documents, in interpreting the council, priority should be given to the four great constitutions, then to the decrees, and finally to the declarations. The Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, though excellent, is not exhaustive or sufficient. It needs to be understood in the broader context of the full teaching of the council.

The Second Vatican Council taught with great emphasis that there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. All salvation comes through Christ, and there is no salvation in any other name. In Christ, the incarnate Son of God, revelation reaches its unsurpassable fullness. Everyone is in principle required to believe in Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, and in the Church he has established as an instrument for the salvation of all. Anyone who, being aware of this, refuses to enter the Church or remain in her cannot be saved. On the other hand, persons who “through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God, and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them” may attain to everlasting salvation in some manner known to God.

Christ gave the apostles, and through them the Church, the solemn commission to preach the saving truth of the gospel even to the ends of the earth: “The obligation of spreading the faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his ability,” as Lumen Gentium puts it. The Church “prays and labors in order that the entire world may become the People of God, the Body of the Lord, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in Christ, the Head of all, there may be rendered to the Creator and Author of the Universe all honor and glory.”

In seeking to spread the faith, Christians should remember that faith is by its very nature a free response to the word of God. Moral or physical coercion must therefore be avoided. While teaching this, the council regretfully admits that at certain times and places the faith has been propagated in ways that were not in accord with—or were even opposed to—the spirit of the gospel.

Christian revelation did not come into the world without a long preparation, beginning with our first parents, Adam and Eve. Through Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, God taught Israel “to acknowledge him as the one living and true God, provident Father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by him,” as the council’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, Dei Verbum , declares. God “entered into a covenant with Abraham (cf. Gen 15:18) and, through Moses, with the people of Israel.” “The principal purpose to which the plan of the Old Covenant was directed was to prepare for the coming both of Christ, the universal Redeemer, and of the messianic kingdom.” One and the same God is the inspirer and author of both the Old and the New Testaments. He “wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and that the Old be made manifest by the New.”

The people of the new covenant have a special spiritual bond with Abraham’s stock, the council’s Nostra Aetate insists. The Church gratefully recalls that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people of Israel. She is aware that, even though Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation, and the Jews in large numbers have failed to accept the gospel, still, according to Paul, the Jews still remain most dear to God because of their fathers.

The Second Vatican Council, while providing a solid and traditional framework for discussing Jewish-Christian relations, did not attempt to settle all questions. In particular, it left open the question whether the Old Covenant remains in force today. Are there two covenants, one for Jews and one for Christians? If so, are the two related as phases of a single developing covenant, a single saving plan of God? May Jews who embrace Christianity continue to adhere to Jewish covenantal practices?

In the half-century since Vatican II major contributions to Catholic covenant theology have been made by Pope John Paul II, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Walter Cardinal Kasper, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Pontifical Biblical Commission. With these contributions, together with some less authoritative writings, we may find a path through the thickets of controversy.

A place to start is the term “Old Covenant,” which is sometimes criticized on the ground that the adjective “old” suggests the idea of being antiquated, even obsolete. Perhaps because I am no longer young, I find it difficult to share this criticism. When people speak of the “old country,” for example, they do not imply that the old no longer exists or is close to dissolution. In any case the term “Old Covenant” is solidly in place. It appears in writings of Paul and in much official teaching, including the documents of Vatican II. Some writers, following the Letter to the Hebrews, may prefer to speak of the “first” or “prior” covenant. All of these terms, considered in themselves, leave open the question whether or not the earlier covenant is still in force.

To judge from the Scriptures, the Old Covenant itself is multiple. In the Hebrew Bible we read of a whole series of covenants being established before the coming of Christ, notably those made with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. In Romans, Paul speaks of the Jews having been given “covenants” in the plural. The Fourth Eucharistic Prayer in the Roman Missal praises God for having offered covenants to his people “many times” ( foedera pluries hominibus obtulisti ). The term “Old Covenant” could be used to refer to the whole series, but when Paul uses the term in 2 Corinthians 3:14 (compare Galatians 4:24-25), he is evidently referring to the Mosaic Law. And this, I believe, is the normal practice of Christians. The Old Covenant par excellence is that of Sinai.

The term “covenant” is the usual translation of the Hebrew b’rith and the Greek diatheke . Scholars commonly distinguish between two types of covenant, the covenant grant and the covenant treaty. The covenant grant, modeled on the free royal decree, is an unconditional divine gift and is usually understood to be irrevocable. An example would be the covenant of God with Noah and his descendants in Genesis 9:8-17. God makes an everlasting promise not to destroy all living creatures by another flood such as the one that has just subsided. The covenant to make Abraham the Father of many nations in Genesis 15:5-6 and 17:4-8 and the promise to David to give an everlasting kingship to his son in 2 Samuel 7:8-16 are gratuitous and unilateral. They are also unconditional and irrevocable, though only in their deepest meaning.

The prime example of a conditional covenant is that of Sinai, as interpreted in the Deuteronomic tradition. It promises blessings on those who observe its conditions and curses on those who violate them (see, for example, Deuteronomy 30:15-20). The Israelites almost immediately broke the covenant by worshiping the golden calf, but after the people’s repentance, God in his mercy reestablished the covenant. Jeremiah teaches that Israel has broken the Sinai covenant, but that God will give them a “new covenant,” placing his law upon their hearts and making them his people (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The term b’rith is usually translated “covenant,” but this translation tends to emphasize the bilateral and conditional character of the engagement. The same word can also be translated “testament” and was so translated in the Old Latin version before Jerome composed his Vulgate. The term “testament” better conveys the idea that God is acting freely, out of sheer generosity, and that his gift is unconditional. The paradoxical intertwining of the unilateral and the bilateral, the conditional and the unconditional, is one of the elements that complicates the question whether the so-called “Old Covenant” still perdures.

The term “New Covenant” raises an additional set of questions. The New Testament authors, borrowing the term from Jeremiah 31:31, interpret it as a prediction of the new dispensation that would come about with Christ and the Church (Hebrews 8:8-13, 10:16; see also 2 Corinthians 3:3). According to the accounts of the Last Supper in the Gospel of Luke and in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Jesus referred to the chalice as “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25). The Gospels of Matthew and Mark record only that Jesus spoke of his “blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24).

In both versions the mention of blood points back to the solemnization of the Sinai Covenant, at which Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of sacrificed animals and poured the remainder on the altar (Exodus 24:5-8). The Eucharist therefore is the covenant sacrifice that binds God and his Church to one another. The “New Covenant” is constitutive of the “New People of God,” or the “New Israel””terms that Vatican II uses as designations of the Church of Christ.

In the Roman canon of the Mass, the Covenant established by the shedding of Christ’s blood is described as “new and eternal.” The word “eternal” comes from the Letter to the Hebrews, which speaks of “the blood of the eternal covenant” by which Jesus equips the sheep to do God’s will. Vatican II speaks in Dei Verbum of the Christian dispensation as “the new and definitive covenant.” The suggestion seems to be that the prior covenant or covenants were not eternal or definitive, but temporary or preparatory.

The New Testament, in certain passages, indicates that the Old Law or the Old Covenant has come to an end and been replaced. Paul in Second Corinthians draws a contrast between the Old Covenant, carved on stone, which has lost its previous splendor, and the New Covenant, written on human hearts by the Spirit, which is permanent and shines brightly. In the third and fourth chapters of Galatians he draws a sharp contrast between the covenant promises given to Abraham and the law subsequently given through Moses. The two covenants, in this passage, are represented by the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac. The law, he says, was our custodian until Christ came, but it was incapable of giving justification, and loses its force once Christ has come. Fulfilling the promises given to Abraham, Christ brings an end to the Old Law.

In Second Corinthians Paul refers to the “old covenant” as the “dispensation of death,” which has “faded away.” In Romans he speaks of Christ as “the end of the Law,” apparently meaning its termination, its goal, or both. The Mosaic Law ceases to bind once its objective has been attained. The new dispensation may be called the “law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2) or the “law of the Spirit” (Romans 8:2). The Letter to the Hebrews contains in chapters seven to ten a lengthy discussion of the two covenants based on the two priesthoods, that of Levi and that of Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant. The Old Law, with its priesthood and Temple sacrifices, has been superseded and abolished by the coming of the New.

All these texts, which the Church accepts as teachings of canonical scripture, have to be reconciled with others, which seem to point in a different direction. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, teaches that he has come not to abolish the Law and the prophets but to fulfill them, even though he is here embarking on a series of antitheses, in which he both supplements and corrects certain provisions in the law of Moses. In a passage of great importance, Paul asserts in Romans that the Jews have only stumbled. They are branches broken off from the good olive tree, but are capable of being grafted on again, since they are still beloved by God for the sake of their forefathers, whose gifts and call are irrevocable. This seems to imply that the Jewish people, notwithstanding their failure as a group to accept Christ as the Messiah, still remain in some sort of covenant relationship with God.

Such is the Church’s respect for Holy Scripture that Catholic interpreters are not free to reject any of these New Testament passages as if one contradicted another. Systematic theology has to seek a way of reconciling and synthesizing them. The task, I believe, is feasible if we make certain necessary distinctions. Thomas Aquinas, gathering up a host of patristic and medieval authorities, distinguished the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts of the Old Law. Inspired in part by his reflections, I find it useful to distinguish three aspects of the Old Covenant: as law, as promise, and as interpersonal relation with God. The law, in turn, may be subdivided into the moral and the ceremonial.

The moral law of the Old Testament is in its essentials permanent. The Decalogue, given on Sinai, is at its core a republication of the law of nature, written on all human hearts even prior to any positive divine legislation. The commandments reflecting the natural law, reaffirmed in the New Testament, are binding on Christians. But, as St. Thomas explains in the Summa (I-II.98.5), the Mosaic Law contains additions in view of the special vocation and situation of the Jewish people. The Decalogue itself, as given in Exodus and Deuteronomy, contains some ceremonial prescriptions together with the moral.

Injunctions that were over and above the natural law could be modified. The Church, adapting the law to a new stage in salvation history, was able to transfer the Sabbath observance from the last day of the week to the first and to cancel the Mosaic prohibition against images. The New Law, in its moral prescriptions, is much more than a republication of the Old. The law is broadened insofar as it is extended to all peoples and all ages, inviting them to enter into a covenant relationship with God. It is deepened insofar as Christ interiorizes and radicalizes it, enjoining attitudes and intentions that were not previously matters of legislation.

Most important, Christ bestows the Holy Spirit, who writes the New Law upon the hearts of all who receive him. The Law of the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2) deserves to be called a law, according to St. Thomas, because the Holy Spirit, poured forth in the human heart, both enlightens the mind and stably inclines the affections toward acts of virtue. Although the law of the Spirit is especially characteristic of those who have entered the Church, St. Thomas adds the qualification that at all times some have belonged to the New Covenant. It would be a mistake to imagine that the commandment of love arose only with the coming of Jesus. Even in the Old Testament, the love of God and neighbor is seen as a fundamental obligation.

Those who treat the Old Covenant as dead and superseded are generally thinking of its legal prescriptions, especially those connected with worship, as treated in the Letters of Paul and the Letter to the Hebrews. Paul’s strictures on the Mosaic Law are found especially in Second Corinthians and Galatians, where he vehemently rejects the position of some Judeo-Christians who were seeking to impose circumcision on members of the Church. Christians, Paul insists, are not obliged to observe the rites of the Old Law. The Letter to the Hebrews, which is essentially a treatise on priesthood, teaches that with the cessation of the Levitical priesthood and the Temple sacrifices, the Old Covenant is to that extent superseded: “For where there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change of law as well.” The former commandment is set aside, since a “better hope” and a “better covenant” have been introduced. Christ therefore “abolishes the first in order to establish the second.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission, in The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible , presents a thorough discussion of the Covenant and concludes that Paul regards the covenant-law of Sinai as provisional and insufficient. Hebrews, it declares, proclaims that the cultic institutions of the “first covenant” are now “abrogated to make way for the sacrifice and priesthood of Christ.”

It took several decades of heated controversy for the Church to reach a consensus that Christians, especially those of Gentile origin, were not bound by circumcision and Jewish dietary laws. Jesus himself, of course, had been circumcised and had kept the Law in what the Catechism calls “its all-embracing detail,” even though the Pharisees did not consider him sufficiently observant. With the help of further revelation, the leaders of the Church decided that Gentile converts are not bound by Jewish dietary laws (Acts 15). But even after that decision Paul allowed Timothy to be circumcised, because he was of Jewish parentage (Acts 16:1-3).

Even with respect to the ceremonial laws and institutions, the New Covenant is not a simple abolition of the Old, but rather its fulfillment. According to Christian theology, Christ is the new Moses, the new Aaron, the new David, and the new Temple. Thomas Aquinas explains in detail how the sacraments of the New Law fulfill what is foreshadowed in those of the Old Law. Baptism, as the sacrament of faith, succeeds circumcision. The Eucharist, he says, is prefigured under different aspects by different institutions of the Old Law: the offering of Melchizedek, the day of atonement, the manna, and especially the paschal Lamb. In another passage St. Thomas lists the various solemnities of the Old Law and their antitypes in the New. The Passover, for example, becomes the Paschal triduum. The Jewish Pentecost, which celebrated the giving of the Old Law, gives way to the Christian Pentecost, which recalls the gift of the Holy Spirit. The festivals of the new moons prefigure, and give way to, feasts of the Blessed Virgin, who reflects the light of the Sun that is Christ.

With respect to the ceremonial law, therefore, we may say that the Old Covenant is in a sense abolished while being at the same time fulfilled. The law of Christ gives a definitive interpretation to the Torah of Moses. Yet the ancient rites retain their value as signs of what was to come. The priesthood, the temple, and the sacrifices are not extinct; they survive in a super-eminent way in Christ and the Church.

St. Augustine, followed by Thomas Aquinas and many medieval doctors, denied that Jewish rites had any saving efficacy, even for Jews. The Council of Florence, in its Decree for the Copts, taught that the legal statutes of ancient Israel, including circumcision and the Sabbath, ought no longer to be observed after the promulgation of the gospel, and that converts from Judaism must give up Jewish ritual practices.

In a letter to Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, then archbishop of Paris, Michael Wyschogrod pointedly asked what the cardinal meant when he wrote that in becoming a Christian he had not ceased to be a Jew and had not run away from the Jewish tradition. For Wyschogrod, it seems, Jewish identity would require observance of the Torah and Jewish tradition. By forbidding converted Jews to observe the Torah, he holds, the Church fell into a supersessionism from which it is today seeking to extricate itself. If Lustiger had responded he might have pointed out that according to the teaching of Paul, which is normative for Christians, circumcision and the Mosaic law have lost their salvific value, at least for Christians, and in that sense been “superseded.” But I do not wish to deny that the observance of some of these prescriptions by Jews who have become Christians could be permissible or even praiseworthy as a way of recalling the rootedness of Christianity in the Old Covenant.

Under its second aspect, the Old Covenant is promise. In itself, this is a point of commonality between Christians and Jews, since both groups are conscious of awaiting the historical fulfillment of the messianic age. While Jews still hope for the arrival of that age, Christians understand it to be already underway, though awaiting completion at the end-time.

The promise of the land to Abraham refers literally to the territory of Canaan, where he and his descendants were to settle, and was historically fulfilled in later centuries. The kingship promised to the Son of David in 2 Samuel is partially fulfilled in the reign of Solomon but, in its conditional aspects, was abrogated because of the sins of the king and the people.

The promises, however, have a deeper, spiritual meaning that remains intact. In the beatitudes Jesus reinterprets the “land” promised to Abraham in a spiritual sense to mean the kingdom of heaven, that is to say, the new earth to be inhabited by the saints in eternal life. Paul understands the “progeny of Abraham” to mean all who share the faith of Abraham. The Davidic kingship becomes, in the New Testament, the glorious reign of the risen Christ, the son of David. And the New Testament authors see the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church as the realization of the “New Covenant” predicted by Jeremiah.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission draws the correct conclusion: “The early Christians were conscious of being in profound continuity with the covenant plan manifested and realized by the God of Israel in the Old Testament. Israel continues to be in a covenant relationship with God, because the covenant-promise is definitive and cannot be abolished. But the early Christians were also conscious of living in a new phase of that plan, announced by the prophets and inaugurated by the blood of Jesus, ‘blood of the covenant,’ because it was shed out of love.

It could be asked whether there are any promises to Israel that are not fulfilled in Christ and are waiting to be fulfilled in some other way. Is Judaism still needed to point to these further possibilities? Paul replies: “All the promises of God find their Yes in Him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). There is nothing incomplete in Christ’s fulfillment of what is promised and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. It is true, of course, that human beings still have to enter fully into that fulfillment. God is still leading the elect toward the fullness of truth and life in Christ. Christians themselves are still growing into him who is the head of the body (Ephesians 4:15) and becoming incorporated into God’s holy temple (Ephesians 2:21-22).

Judaism, in this view, does not point to possibilities Christ failed to fulfill. But the witness of Jews to their tradition helps Christians understand the foundations of their own faith. By providing a living testimony to the hope of Israel and to the ancient promises, faithful Jews can inspire and strengthen Christians, who share the same hope and promises, though in a new modality.

The Old Covenant has been understood predominantly in terms of the Law and the promises it contains. But in the light of modern personalism, another dimension is becoming more evident: the covenant as an interpersonal relationship between God and his elect people. In his Many Religions— One Covenant , Cardinal Ratzinger remarked: “In asking about the covenant, we are asking whether there can be a relationship between God and man, and what kind of relationship it might be.” At the heart of all the laws and promises is a loving relationship that the Scriptures do not hesitate to describe quite simply as a “marriage” (Hosea 2 and 11; Ezekiel 16). In this marriage God remains faithful to his partner even in the face of human infidelity.

At the heart of the covenant lies the promise: “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:28, Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 7:23, etc.). Under Christianity, the Church understands herself to be the New People of God (1 Peter 2:9-10, Revelation 21:3). But this claim does not settle the status of the Old Israel, the People of the First Covenant. Does Israel cease to be the People of God?

For an answer to this question the key text would seem to be, for Christians, chapters nine through eleven of Romans. Paul’s thought in these chapters is exceedingly complex and has given rise to a variety of interpretations. Perhaps Paul himself intended to leave some questions open. He ends the section with an exclamation of awe-filled humility before the incomprehensible ways of God: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways!”

Without any pretense of giving a final solution I shall try to indicate some elements of a tenable Catholic position. Paul in this passage clearly teaches that God has not rejected His People, for His gifts and call are irrevocable. As regards election, they are unceasingly beloved for the sake of their forefathers. “If they do not persist in their unbelief,” he says, the children of Israel “will be grafted in” to the olive tree from which they have been cut off. He predicts that in the end “all Israel will be saved” and that their reconciliation and full inclusion will mean life from the dead. God’s continuing love and fidelity to his promises indicate that the Old Covenant is still in force in one of its most important aspects—God’s gracious predilection for His Chosen People.

Pope John Paul II, whose theology was deeply affected by personalism, spoke of the Jews as a covenant people. In an address in Rome on October 31, 1997, he discussed the act of divine election that brought this people into existence: “This people is assembled and led by Yahweh, creator of heaven and of earth. Its existence is therefore not purely a fact of nature or of culture in the sense that the resourcefulness proper to one’s nature is expressed in culture. It is a supernatural fact. This people perseveres despite everything because it is the people of the covenant, and despite human infidelities, Yahweh is faithful to his covenant. To ignore this most basic principle is to adopt a Marcionism against which the church immediately and vigorously reacted, conscious of a vital link with the Old Testament, without which the New Testament itself is emptied of meaning.”

Vatican II brought out the profound truth that the mystery of Israel and the mystery of the Church are permanently intertwined: “As this sacred people searches into the mystery of the Church, it recalls the spiritual bond linking the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.” The Church is conscious that she is a branch grafted onto the olive tree of Israel. Pope John Paul II was deeply conscious of this affinity. Speaking at the synagogue of Rome on April 13, 1986, he made the point: “The Jewish religion is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain way is ‘intrinsic’ to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”

In continuity with Vatican II and earlier Catholic tradition, John Paul II saw the two covenants as intrinsically related. The Old is a preview and promise of the New; the New is the unveiling and fulfillment of the Old. “The New Covenant,” he declared, “serves to fulfill all that is rooted in the vocation of Abraham, in God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai, and in the whole rich heritage of the inspired Prophets who, hundreds of years before that fulfillment, pointed in the Sacred Scriptures to the One whom God would send in the ‘fullness of time.’

Some Christians, in their eagerness to reject a crude supersessionism, give independent validity to the Old Covenant. They depict the Old and New Covenants as two ‘separate but equal’ parallel paths to salvation, the one intended for Jews, the other for gentiles. The commentator Roy H. Schoeman correctly remarks this thesis “has been presented as though it were the only logical alternative to supersessionism, despite the fact that it is utterly irreconcilable with both the core beliefs of Christianity and with the words of Jesus himself in the New Testament.” Joseph Fitzmyer, in his scholarly commentary on Romans, likewise opposes the theory of two separate ways of salvation: “It is difficult to see how Paul would envisage two different kinds of salvation, one brought about by God apart from Christ for Jews, and one by Christ for Gentiles and believing Jews. That would seem to militate against his whole thesis of justification and salvation by grace for all who believe in the gospel of Christ Jesus (1:16). For Paul the only basis for membership in the new people of God is faith in Christ Jesus.”

It is unthinkable that in these chapters of Romans Paul would be proposing salvation for Jews apart from Christ. He spent much of his ministry seeking to evangelize his fellow Jews. In the very passage in which he speaks of God’s abiding love for Israel, he confesses his great sorrow and anguish at Israel’s unbelief. He would be ready, he says, to be accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of his brethren, his kinsmen by race, who have not accepted Jesus as Messiah.

The Catholic Church clearly teaches that no one will be condemned for unbelief, or for incomplete belief, without having sinned against the light. Those who with good will follow the movements of God’s grace in their own lives are on the road to salvation. They are not required to profess belief in Christ unless or until they are in a position to recognize him as Messiah and Lord. The fact that Jews and Christians have honest differences about this point is a powerful incentive for dialogue between them.

John Paul II was not content to let Judaism and Christianity go their separate ways. Speaking at Mainz in 1980, he called for ongoing dialogue “between the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God, and that of the New Covenant.” He expressed hope for an eventual reconciliation in the fullness of truth. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994) he wrote of Judaism: “This extraordinary people continues to bear signs of its divine election. . . . The insights which inspired the Declaration Nostra Aetate are finding concrete expression in various ways. Thus the two great moments of divine election—the Old and New Covenants—are drawing closer together. . . . The time when the people of the Old Covenant will be able to see themselves as part of the New is, naturally, a question left to the Holy Spirit. We, as human beings, try only not to put obstacles in the way.”

The last word should perhaps be left to Pope Benedict XVI. In a set of interviews from the late 1990s, published under the title God and the World, he recognizes that there is “an enormous variety of theories” about the extent to which Judaism remains a valid way of life since the coming of Christ. As Christians, he says, we are convinced that the Old Testament is directed toward Christ, and that Christianity, instead of being a new religion, is simply the Old Testament read anew in Christ. We can be certain that Israel has a special place in God’s plans and a special mission to accomplish today. The Jews “still stand within the faithful covenant of God,” and, we believe, “they will in the end be together with us in Christ.” “We are waiting for the moment when Israel, too, will say Yes to Christ,” but until that moment comes all of us, Jews and Christians, “stand within the patience of God,” of whose faithfulness we can rest assured.

Believing that the Son of God has lived among us, Christians will wish to make him known, loved, praised, confessed, and obeyed by as many people as possible. They will want the whole world to profit from Christ’s teaching and to enjoy the fullness of sacramental life. But they will also strive to be patient in awaiting the appointed time. All of us, Jews and Christians alike, depend on God’s patience as we strive to be faithful to the covenant and enter into its deepest meaning.,

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