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clearly been inspired by Protestant , but that no no flowers grow in episcopal gardens, while all is in longer sends a chill down the spine. Most intellectually bloom elsewhere. Meanwhile, it is the existence of over- committed Christians start from models other than the lapping and sometimes competing models---all sketches "substantialist" one, but may then find that they have to of a possible future--which makes the question "Am claw their way back there, at least for some minimum I a Catholic?" so difficult to answer today. To say "It of "substance," in order to preserve some semblance of all depends on your model" may not seem very satis- identity in the chill deserts of absolute openness. factory, yet it is more honest than rushing flat-footedly Each of the models (except for 2) has something in. Perhaps all that talk about boundaries, even ex- positive to contribute to the rich and complex and un- tended ones, was misleading, a relic of the Roman mania finished idea of the Church. In that sense I agree with for definition; and perhaps, too, the are right Ms. Ruether: the Church has still to be invented, and to distinguish grades of membership. There is a place so the cultural conversation, which is the workshop in for the "listening" friends whose "yes" to this historically which it will be forged, must go on as broadly as pos- continuous community is qualified by hesitations and sible. But it would be wrong to assume in advance that questionings. But to say that is already to select a model.

'Teaching as did?'

FAITH, THEOLOGY AND

RICHARD P. MeDRIEN

I HAVE been convinced for some time that the source of It is a matter of clarifying fundamental concepts and many, if not most, of the troubles in the Catholic the interrelationships which exist among them. My Church today is our stubborn failure to discern the thesis may be summarized in this fashion: faith is not differences among faith, theology and belief theology is not belief. Many Catholics who should know better (even a 1. Faith is not theology. Faith is a way of perceiving cardinal or two may come readily to mind) continue . The person of faith "sees" more than meets the to insist that faith and belief are somehow independent eye. Faith apprehends the "beyond in our midst" (- of theology. They assure nervous audiences of parents hoeffer), the "other dimension" (Dupr6), the ultimaey that the job of the religious educator is not to teach the of secular experience (Gilkey), the Ground of views of modern theologians but to teach the faith, (Tillich). It is a judgment of faith that reality is more indeed "to teach as Jesus did" (the title of one of the than the sum total of persons, places, things and events American bishops' recent catechetical documents). which constitute both history and the cosmos. The I could cite actual statements and identify the speak- person of faith discerns those "signals of transcendence" ers, but that would serve no useful purpose. We are (Berger) intermingled with the sights and sounds, the now long past the time when such purveyors of gross sensations and the smells of ordinary, everyday human theological distortions have to be exposed. They are experience. Faith is a stance, a posture, a fundamental known, and competent religious educators do not take attitude. Faith infers the reality of from reality them seriously any longer. itself. But like all inferences, the is circumstan- In the meantime, however, many innocent bystanders tial. In the terminology of the recent House Judiciary remain confused. They if there is any point or Committee hearings, there is no "smoking pistol" by purpose to being and remaining a Christian. The shadow which the God-problem finds its definitive resolution. of a question mark hovers ominously over everything Nixon is more easily tracked down than the of the in sight. universe. In this essay I propose a way out of the problem. But inference is, after all, something to go on. It is

15 November 1974:134 not sheerly arbitrary. As Representative Cohen of Maine of the experience of God within human experience. argued at mid-summer, if a man wakes up in the morn- Theology may emerge in the form of a painting, a ing and finds the ground covered with fresh snow, he piece of music, a dance, a cathedral, a bodily posture, has every right to infer that snow fell during the night, or, in its most recognizable form, in spoken and written even though he never actually saw a flake of it descend. words. These forms, of course, never do complete jus- The analogy cannot be applied precisely to our pre- tice to the perception which they to express. Not sumed experience of God, but the analogy is applicable all theology is good theology. We can ineptly translate in some measure nonetheless. We infer that reality is our experience into language, or we can have a ultimately gracious and provident in our own experience thoroughly distorted or even false experience of God in of gracious and provident people. We infer that the the first place, which no form, however cleverly con- world is rooted in by of our own experience structed, can ever redeem. of love. We infer that the transcendent God is real in When all is said and done, religious educators, bish- our own experience of the transcendent of loy- ops, preachers, and the Church at large do not trans- alty, generosity, , , honesty, - mit "the faith." They transmit particular interpretations fulness, sensitivity, gentleness and love. or Understandings of faith. In direct words: they trans- Faith involves a risk-taking. We did not need Kier- mit . kegaard to tell us that, but we sometimes talk and act It is entirely beside the point to warn religious edu- as if there were no risk at all. Infallibility stands at the cators against teaching theology instead of handing on ready. In this view, religious people--especially Cath- the faith. The faith exists always and only in some olics--are supposedly more certain than others of the theological form. The question before the Church today reality of God and of the divine plan of . The and forever is not whether the faith shall be transmitted more one thinks and speaks of God, so it seems to be according to some theological interpretation, but rather assumed, the more certain one becomes of the object which theological interpretation is best suited to the of those thoughts and words. That's not true, of course, task at a particular moment in time. and the great Christian mystics should have impressed What is so offensive about appeals to "the faith" the contrary lesson upon us by now. The closer we over against the "private views" of theologians is that approach toward God, the more deafening the silence. a particular theology is subtly being cloaked in the aura The more intensive the quest, the more elusive the goal. of faith itself. Consequently, an attack upon that theo- Faith is that precognitive, prereflective, prescientific logy is automatically perceived as an attack upon the perception of God in the midst of life. But unalloyed faith (as an attack upon the character and performance faith doesn't exist. Nowhere can we discover and isolate of the President was once conveniently perceived as an "pure faith." Pure faith exists only in the mind, as a attack upon the office and institution of the Presidency). logical construct. Real faith, on the other hand, exists What some cardinal of the Roman always and only in a cognitive, (more or less) reflec- learned in his theology courses (or classes) tive, (more or less) scientific state. Every thought about in the 1920s or 1930s or what he himself may have the meaning of faith is precisely that: a thought about taught as a of theology in the 1930s or 1940s the meaning of faith. Every word of interpretation de- may be useful or not in making sense of such Pauline signed to articulate and illuminate the meaning and im- texts as "God was in Christ reconciling the world to plications of faith is, again, precisely that: a word of himself" (2 Cor 5: 19), but that theology remains only interpretation, not faith itself. When Catholic public that: a theology, a specific, time-conditioned, culturally- figures warn the rank-and-file against the contamination conditioned, interpretation of the vast expanse of human of "the faith" by "theology," they simply don't know history and, in particular, of that crucial segment of what they are talking about. human history wherein the Christ-event comes clearly Faith is not theology, to be sure, but neither does into view and focus. faith exist apart from, or independently of, theology. And so we reach the supreme contradiction of the Theology comes into play at that very moment when the piece: "the faith" which must not be confined and person of faith becomes intellectually conscious of that corrupted by any theology can only be understood in faith. From the very beginning faith exists in a theologi- terms of one theology, in this instance the scholastic cally interpreted state. Indeed, it is a redundancy to put theology popular in Catholic seminaries just prior to it that way: "theologically interpreted." For the interpre- Vatican II. tation of one's faith is theology itself. 2. Theology is not belie/. If theology is faith brought Theology is, as St. defined it to the level of self-, then belief is theology nine centuries ago, "faith seeking understanding." The- in a kind of snapshot or frozen state. Theology is a ology is that process by which we bring our presumed process; belief is one of its several products. Other pro- perception of God to the level of expression. Theology ducts include Sacred Scripture (this is exceedingly im- is the verbalizing, in a more or less systematic manner, portant to remember lest one mistakenly conclude that

Commonweal: 13S theology is reflection on the biblical message; it is en- dreds of different beliefs vie with one another for a tirely the other way round: the biblical message is itself kind of momentary or long-term dominance. Some of a product of theological reflection), doctrines (beliefs these beliefs are grounded solidly in the history of the elevated to the level of official approbation), Church (e.g., belief in the Real Presence of Christ in (doctrines that carry the highest level of official appro- the Eucharist), while others have very short and tender bation, the denial of which normally separates one from roots indeed (e.g., belief in the Pope as an absolute, the community of faith), (lex orandi, lex infallible monarch). credendi the perception of God in ritualized form), The sorting-out process is never finished. We are artistic works (churches, statues, paintings, music, faced constantly with the problem of evaluating and dance, and so forth). re-evaluating our beliefs in the light of our ongoing ex- In stop-action language: theology follows faith, and perience and our fundamental (theological) interpreta- belief follows theology. But this is said only for pur- tions of that experience, and these in turn are judged poses of distinguishing among the three elements. As against that instinct of faith which somehow gives the we have already seen, faith and theology do not really whole Church its inner coherence and its radical identity exist apart from one another, whereas belief and theo- and continuity. It is at the point of the "somehow" logy can and do exist apart. The theologian can express in the preceding sentence that our rich poetry about all sorts of judgments about the reality of God as he/she the Holy inserts itself. presumably experiences God, without at the same time At key historical moments in that sorting-out pro- resorting to formulae or propositions which have re- cess, representative leaders of the whole Church may ceived an official (doctrine) or quasi-official status be compelled to assemble in solemn (catechism, textbook, etc.) within the com- (the broader the representation, the more ecumenical munity of faith. the council) to confront an issue of belief that threatens And that has been yet another serious distortion of the very unity of the Church. Their task is not to draw the meaning of theology and of its relationship to be- the circle so tightly that many will fall beyond its limits, lief and/or doctrine. Many, especially in the Roman but to draw it as generously as conscience allows so Catholic tradition, have assumed that theology is essen- that as many as possible might continue to stand to- tially the study of church teachings. Indeed, Catholic gether within it. Nothing in this essay is intended to be seminary courses were for many years labeled simply prejudicial to the important, irreplaceable function of "." The task of the theologian, in this view, is what we Catholics call the official , but to analyze, explain and defend what is already "on neither does this essay support the ultramontane men- the books" (in Denzinger and in modern papal docu- tality which still prevails in certain vocal sectors of the ments). With that kind of understanding of theology American Catholic community and even among some abroad in the Catholic Church throughout most of this of its pastoral leaders. For papal and/or episcopal pro- century, it is hardly surprising that the dissident posture nouncements are no less conditioned than the biblical of some contemporary Catholic theologians should have message itself. And if we have adjusted ourselves at shocked and infuriated so many of their brothers and long last to the critical reading of Sacred Scripture, then sisters in the Church. But theologians are not com- it is certainly time that we similarly abjured our gallop- missioned to be the Church's (or the Pope's) Ron ing in the use and abuse of ecclesias- Zieglers. They are more nearly her Walter Lippmanns. tical documents and doctrines. It is never enough to 3. Faith is not belief. There are many beliefsbut only know what a conciliar text said. What did the text mean one faith. There are many Christian beliefs, but only in its original formulation? And what can the text mean one Christian faith. Faith is a way of perceiving God for us today? in human experience. Christian faith is a way of per- 4. Unity in diversity. Diversity and pluralism is a ceiving God in Jesus Christ as the key and focal point fact of life in the Church today. It was a fact of life of all human experience. in the Church of yesterday, in biblical and post-biblical Over the centuries of Christian history there have times alike. And it will remain a fact of life in the been literally thousands of beliefs held and transmitted Church until the very end of history. So long as we find at one time or another, i.e., interpretations of faith which ourselves in these peculiarly human circumstances where significant segments of the Christian community found no one can claim to have seen God (John 1:18), we useful for expressing and articulating their own percep- shall proceed in a groping, tentative, provisional and tion of God in Christ. Some of these beliefs endured halting manner: trusting our perceptions as far as we the test of time (e.g., the great Christological dogmas), can; articulating our convictions as modestly as we can; while others have been consigned to the intellectual formulating our beliefs as fairy as we can; and respect- rummage room (e.g., the Two Swords theory of papal ing those with different theologies and different beliefs authority). What has been true in Christian history is as conscientiously as we can. true in the contemporary Christian community. Hun- But we cannot conclude that diversity and pluralism,

15 November 1974:136 on the one hand, and unifying theological principles, on precisely formulate our apprehension of God in those the other, are forever mutually exclusive. We Christians sacred rites, but we are one in the conviction that the may differ in the way we express our perception of God God of our theology and of our belief is truly present and formulate those expressions consensually, but we within and under these signs which serve as climactic are one in .the conviction that the God of our theology points of encounter between God and ourselves. and of our belief is a real, living God. The struggle to believe is not necessarily made any We Christians may differ in the way we express our easier by the mere enumeration of these abiding ele- perception of God in Jesus Christ and in the way we ments of Christian faith. Nevertheless, they might pro- formulate those perceptions officially, but we are one vide a tangible and meaningful context within which in the conviction that the God of our theology and of we can make sense of, and apply, three key principles our belief is truly present in Jesus of Nazareth to the which the bequeathed to us: extent that it can be said of Jesus alone that he is indeed (1) Not all beliefs are of equal importance. "In Cath- the Lord of history (Phil 2:5-11). olic teaching there exists an order or 'hierarchy' of We Christians, and particularly we Catholic Chris- , since they vary in their relationship to the foun- tians, may differ in the way we express our perception of dation of Christian faith" (Decree on Ecumenism, n. God in the community of faith called the Church and we 11 ). (2) There are very few beliefs indeed which one may differ, too, in the way we dogmatize that perception must accept in order to remain in good standing within of God in the Church, but we are one in the conviction the Christian community. "In order to restore com- that there is indeed more to the Church than meets the munion and unity or preserve them, one must 'impose eye, that God is present there in such wise that we can no burden beyond what is indispensable' (Acts 15:28)" call it the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy (Decree on Ecumenism, n. 18). (3) One cannot ques- Spirit, the People of God of the New Covenant. tion the integrity of those with whom one chooses to And, finally, we Christians, and particularly we disagree on matters of theology and/or belief. "Let Catholic Christians, may differ in the way we express there be unity in what is necessary, freedom in what is our perception of God in those signs and symbols unsettled, and in any case" (Pastoral Constitu- we call sacraments and we may differ in the way we tion on the Church in the Modern World, n. 92).

Which is the Jesus of faith?

. Lz-F IN JESUS I TODAY

, JOSEPH A. FITZMYER

o one who has lived through the last decade and our eyes, what we have heard, what we have looked up- N watched the various movements, religious, occult, on concerns the Word of Life. For to many people to- artistic, or otherwise, associated with the name of Jesus, day Jesus means life. And the question is why. can fail to realize what that Palestinian Jew of over Yet at the same time there is for individual Christians nineteen hundred years ago has come to mean to modern who are identified with various churches having a tradi- man. This is not a phenomenon that is restricted to tional Christian heritage a real struggle to believe. Many North America, for areas in Europe, Asia and South of them readily identify themselves as Christians and America have been caught up in it. Liberation has been would not have it otherwise. Yet they find it so difficult proclaimed in his name--even revolution. Nor is it a to articulate that Christian identification, to express to phenomenon that is restricted to Christians, for who themselves or to their neighbors what that really means has not heard of " for Jesus"? And to paraphrase or should mean. All that such an identification should an ancient Christian writer, what we have seen with entail might have to be explained by diverse factors,

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