Sacrifice and Mission in the Ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

School of Theology and Religious Studies

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

By Aaron Matthew Weldon

Washington, D.C.

2017

Sacrifice and Mission in the Ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger

Aaron Matthew Weldon, Ph.D.

Director: Christopher J. Ruddy, Ph.D.

In Eucharistic Prayer III, the priest prays that the Church’s sacrifice “advance the peace and salvation of all the world.” The prayer implies that this sacrificial offering in the liturgy has effects beyond the Church. Attention to Christian sacrifice, an activity that may seem internal to ecclesial life, can contribute to an understanding of the mission of the Church. Joseph Ratzinger has aimed to emphasize the sacrificial dimension of the

Eucharist, and he understands the Eucharist to be fundamental to the nature and mission of the Church. Hence, he serves as a guide for an exploration of sacrifice and mission.

The dissertation argues that according to Ratzinger, the Church prolongs the mission of her head, Jesus Christ, whose own mission of pro-existence achieves its apex in the offering of his very self as a sacrifice for the world, and the mission of the Church is thus to offer herself as a sacrifice to the glory of God and for the salvation of the world, interiorly in her worship and exteriorly in her mission. Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice consists of four basic elements. First, sacrifice is natural. Second, true sacrifice, as Jesus

Christ shows, is the offering of oneself. Third, self-offering will necessarily entail something like death, that is, immolation. Fourth, because Jesus Christ accomplishes the fulfillment of sacrifice, human persons offer true sacrifice in Christ. The dissertation develops this argument in four chapters. Chapter one presents his understanding of

Christ as the person who is totally for others and introduces the concept of vicarious representation [Stellvertretung]. This chapter develops Ratzinger’s linking of Christ’s pro- existence [Für-Sein] and atonement. Chapter two discusses Ratzinger’s understanding of the Church as the body of Christ. Chapter three analyzes Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy, focusing on his understanding of the liturgy as sacrifice. Chapter four investigates his understanding of mission vis-à-vis sacrifice. The conclusion develops an hypothesis for how vicarious representation works in the thought of Ratzinger.

This dissertation by Aaron Matthew Weldon fufills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Systematic Theology approved by Christopher J. Ruddy, Ph.D., as Director, and by Chad C. Pecknold, Ph.D., and Michael Root, Ph.D, as Readers.

______Christopher J. Ruddy, Ph.D., Director

______Chad C. Pecknold, Ph.D., Reader

______Michael Root, Ph.D., Reader

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi Introduction: To Advance the Peace and Salvation of All the World 1 0.1. Rationale 1 0.1.1. Sacrifice as integral to the mission of the Church 1 0.1.2. Joseph Ratzinger as guide to understanding this relationship 4 0.2. The Term “Sacrifice” 7 0.3. Challenges to Sacrificial Theology 11 0.3.1. Incarnational theology in Marie-Dominique Chenu 13 0.3.2. Spiritual ‘sacrifice’ in Robert Daly 17 0.3.3. Natural Sacrifice fulfilled in Christ Joseph Ratzinger’s approach 24 0.4. Plan 27 0.5. Scope 29

Chapter 1: The Mission of Christ as Pro-Existence 33 1.1. Key Features in Joseph Ratzinger’s Thought and Their Relationship to Christology 35 1.2. The Heart of Jesus’ Mission: He Brings God 48 1.3. Pro-Existence 54 1.3.1. Jesus in from and for the Father 55 1.3.2. Pro-existence manifested in vicarious sacrifice 58 1.3.3. Sacrifice as love 63 1.3.4. Love is stronger than death 66 1.3.5. Sacrifice and truth 72 1.4. The Death of Jesus 74 1.5. Conclusion 77

iii

Chapter 2: Communion Ecclesiology in Ratzinger 79 2.1. People of God 82 2.1.1. A misunderstood term 82 2.1.2. Israel as people of God 84 2.1.3. Pilgrim people 89 2.2. Body of Christ 90 2.2.1. Jesus and the Eucharist 90 2.2.2. Eucharist and Holy Orders 92 2.2.3. Incorporated into Christ 94 2.2.4. Bride of Christ 97 2.3. The Holy Spirit and the Church 98 2.3.1. Spirit as communion 99 2.3.2. Church as communion 101 2.4. Conclusion 106

Chapter 3: The Spirit of Eucharistic Sacrifice 108 3.1. The Nature of Liturgy: Basic Features 110 3.1.1. The priority of adoration 110 3.1.2. Eschatology 114 3.1.2.1. Looking towards fullness 114 3.1.2.2. Heavenly liturgy 118 3.1.3. The givenness of liturgy 119 3.2. Participation in Christ’s Sacrifice 125 3.2.1. Self-offering of the Church, head and members 125 3.2.2. Worship in accordance with reason 131 3.3. The Erotic-Agapic Structure of Eucharistic Sacrifice 136 3.3.1. Liturgical ascent, descent 136 3.3.2. Beauty, eros, and sacrifice 139 3.3.3. Liturgy and culture 142 4.0. Conclusion 147

Chapter 4: The Meaning of Mission as Sacrifice 149 4.1. The Pro-Existent Community 150 4.1.1. Christian brotherhood distinct from the world to be for the world 151 4.1.2. Bearing burdens 157 4.1.3. The “royal way” of vicarious representation 160 4.2. Witness to Truth 168 4.2.1. To pre-Christian culture: interculturality 168 4.2.2. To post-Christian culture 176 4.2.2.1. Creative minorities 177 4.2.2.2. Witness to the state 185 4.3. Conclusion 191

In Conclusion: A Note on Stellvertretung 195 Thesis 1, on person as relation 200 Thesis 2, on the gravity of the Cross 208 Thesis 3, on human freedom 212 Thesis 4, on the mystery of grace 214 Synthesis, on the Church’s participation in the gravity of grace 215 Conclusion 220

Bibliography 222

Acknowledgments It has been a privilege to have spent time with the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, a true churchman, whose work both provokes thought and inspires devotion. I am thankful for his service to the Church. I am most grateful for the direction of Christopher Ruddy, a scholar who is the kind of theologian I aspire to be: patient, charitable, and, above all, devoted to Jesus Christ and his Church. My readers, Chad Pecknold and Michael Root, provided helpful guidance, as did Fr. Nicholas Lombardo, particularly in the project’s early stages. Fr. Thomas Joseph White gave me helpful direction in my research on

Thomistic doctrine on merit for others. Joel Shenk, John Meinert, Patrick Fleming, Josh

Brumfield, and Brett Salkeld have been faithful friends throughout my studies.

I am especially thankful for the support of my family. My parents, Mike and

Kristy, have encouraged me since I began studies at Fuller Seminary. It is a testament to their generosity that, even when my brothers and I chose paths they did not understand, they have supported us nevertheless. My brothers, Grant and Tyler, have also been unfailing in their support. Perhaps no person in my family celebrated my academic achievements as did my grandfather, Jack Weldon, himself a man who dedicated his life to education. The only sadness that tinges this work’s completion is that he is not here to enjoy the moment with me. To my wife, Lindsay, I owe a profound debt of gratitude for her patience and good humor, as I have been “at work” far more than a husband and father ought to be. From my life with her and our sons, Elijah Thomas, Abel Matthias, and Isaac Marion, I have begun to grasp the truth in that saying of Jesus Christ, often quoted by Joseph Ratzinger: one gains one’s life by giving it up for others. This is for her.

Introduction: To Advance the Peace and Salvation of All the World

0.1. Rationale

0.1.1. Sacrifice as integral to the mission of the Church

The language of sacrifice permeates Catholic liturgy. As Sacrosanctum concilium states: “Our saviour inaugurated the eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood at the last supper on the night he was betrayed, in order to make his sacrifice of the cross last throughout time until he should return (SC, §47).”1 Christian worship is an act of sacrifice, in which the Church offers the sacramental body of Christ to God in order that she might be reconciled with the Lord and be received into communion with the Triune

God. The Church’s sacrifice of the Mass embodies her devotion to Almighty God. In this sense, a theology of sacrifice reflects on a matter related to the interior life of the Church.

At the same time, in Eucharistic Prayer III, the priest prays that the Church’s sacrifice

“advance the peace and salvation of all the world.” By referring to “the world,” the prayer implies that this sacrificial offering has effects beyond the Church. How does the sacrifice advance the salvation of the world? Perhaps it does so by bringing about the salvation of those gathered to offer the sacrifice and to consume the body and blood of the victim.

These people are part of the world, and thus, perhaps their own salvation constitutes the

1 See Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Volume Two: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, [1972] 1990), p. 830.

2 advancement of the salvation of all. Or, perhaps the sacrifice strengthens the assembly for service and evangelization. Or, perhaps the faithful, gathered for worship, represent the world; and so even those not physically present receive graces through the Church’s vicarious representation of the world. These are possible answers to the question – namely, how does the holy sacrifice of the Mass effect the salvation of the world? – which animates this dissertation. This dissertation explores the relationship between Christian sacrifice and the mission of the Church. Because a theology of the mission of the Church seeks to understand the Church’s role in advancing the salvation of the world, then the question of the effects of the sacrifice of the Mass beyond the Church suggests that

Christian sacrifice is integral to the mission of the Church. To be sure, a theology of ecclesial mission will discuss topics related to the ad extra work of the Church, such as evangelization, the development of a Christian culture, social ministry, and the lay apostolate. At the same time, attention to Christian sacrifice, an activity that may seem internal to ecclesial life, can also contribute to an understanding of the mission of the

Church.

Sacrifice is integral to Christian mission, and it is fundamental to the nature of the

Church. The communion theology that has developed around Henri de Lubac, Joseph

Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, among others, emphasizes that the Eucharist makes the Church.2 In her communion with Christ in the Eucharist, the Church is

2 Henri de Lubac would be the most significant figure of this group to bring communio theology into contemporary Catholic consciousness. His important text Corpus Mysticum is key in this regard. See Henri Cardinal de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Gemma Simmonds, CJ, with Richard Price and Christopher Stephens (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006).

3 intimately connected to his sacrifice on the Cross. In her liturgy, the Church recalls and participates in the sacrificial act by which God in Christ reconciles the world to himself.

Communion ecclesiology is a Eucharistic ecclesiology. Therefore, because the Eucharist is a sacrifice, communion ecclesiology is a sacrificial ecclesiology.3 Sacrifice lies at the heart of the Church’s identity and mission.4 By attending to sacrifice, this dissertation aims to develop an understanding of Christian mission that flows from the heart of the

Church, a theology of mission that derives from a solid ecclesiological vision.5

The topic of sacrifice is important for Christian theology, for it is a significant feature of Scripture, the liturgy, and traditional piety, and its significance for the mission of the Church has received attention recently.6 This study does not attempt to present a

3 Indeed, in Book X of De civitate Dei, St. Augustine argues that the Church herself is a sacrifice. “This is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, a sacrament well-known to the faithful where it is shown to the Church that she herself is offered in the offering she presents to God” (Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (New York: Penguin Classics, 1972), 10.6, pp. 379-80). 4 The Dominican ecclesiologist, Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, devotes an entire section of his text on communion ecclesiology to the issue of sacrifice. See his Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: at the Source of the Ecclesiology of Communion, trans. Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), Ch. 3: “All Taken into the One Sacrifice: The Sacrifice of Christ in the Church of God.” 5 Theologians from multiple perspectives have, in recent decades, put mission at the forefront of ecclesiology. See, for example, Darrell Guder, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); John Fuellenbach, Church: Community for the Kingdom (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002); Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004); Craig van Gelder, The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011). 6 For example, Stanley Hauerwas refers to the work of Peter Leithart in Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), who argues that, by putting an end to pagan sacrifice, which was bound up with civil religion, “Constantine ‘secularized’ political life by showing that the state would no longer be the agent of salvation.” In other words, Christianity brought an end to blood sacrifice, and, in the process, de-mystified the state. The Church, not the state, is the site where true sacrifice is performed, and by acknowledging this truth with their lives, Christians engage the mission that Hauerwas sees as crucial for the Church in America to recover, namely, reminding the world that it is the world. See Hauerwas, “The End of Sacrifice: An Apocalyptic Politics,” in Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 31. Hauerwas has also reflected on Church, sacrifice, and politics in War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2011).

4 comprehensive account of sacrifice, nor does it attempt to develop a comprehensive account of the mission of the Church. Rather, in order to limit the scope of the study, this essay examines the theme of sacrifice vis-à-vis the mission of the Church in the theology of Joseph Ratzinger.

0.1.2. Joseph Ratzinger as guide

In his long and productive career,7 Joseph Ratzinger has offered significant reflections on the mission of the Church. He began his theological career focused on ecclesiology, and the Church has remained a central concern for him throughout his work as professor and as hierarch. His has been a major theological voice that has sought to connect liturgy with ecclesiology and Christian mission. Concerning liturgy, theologians and historians, such as Eamon Duffy, have pointed out that Ratzinger has aimed to emphasize the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist.8 If, as Ratzinger argues, the nature

William Cavanaugh addresses these topics in Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). 7 Although this dissertation mentions some biographical details about Ratzinger when doing so clarifies a point about his theological tendencies, a biographical sketch of Ratzinger is not necessary to provide a systematic analysis of the theological vision that appears in his texts. The life of Joseph Ratzinger is interesting in its own right, and his biographical information is easily accessible. Relevant works include the following: Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998); Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: Christianity at the End of the Millennium: An Interview with Peter Seewald, trans. by Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997 [1996]); Laurence Paul Hemming, Benedict XVI, ‘Fellow Worker for the Truth’: An Introduction to his Life and Thought (London: Continuum, 2005); Stephen Mansfield, Pope Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission (New York: Penguin, 2005); Maximilian Heinrich Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology: Fundamentals of Ecclesiology with Reference to Lumen Gentium, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007 [2005]); pp. 145-228; James Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions and Legitimate Hopes (New York: Paulist, 2009); Emery de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 1-72. 8 See Eamon Duffy, “Benedict XVI and the Eucharist,” New Blackfriars 88:1014 (March 2007): 195- 212.

5 and mission of the Church are rooted in the Eucharist, then this emphasis on sacrifice in

Eucharistic theology should influence his theology of mission. In other words, given that the Eucharist makes the Church, and that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, the Church and her mission should be understood in sacrificial terms. The topics of sacrifice, Eucharist,

Church, and mission are interconnected throughout Ratzinger’s corpus. This dissertation explores those connections in order to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between sacrifice and the mission of the Church.

Scholars of Ratzinger’s thought have treated several of the major topics in this dissertation, but none has analyzed his theology of sacrifice and its relationship to his theology of mission. Christopher Collins has shown the dialogical structure of Ratzinger’s

Christology, which gives shape to all of his theology.9 In a similar vein, Emery de Gaál provides an analysis of Ratzinger’s theology as a whole, showing its Christological center.10 Tracey Rowland draws attention to Ratzinger’s theology vis-à-vis faith, reason, and culture.11 Scott Hahn draws attention to the role of Scripture throughout Ratzinger’s project, devoting a chapter to his theology of sacrifice.12 Vincent Twomey examines

Ratzinger’s ideas that might inform the public effect of his papal ministry.13 This

9 Christopher Collins, The Word Made Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013). 10 Emery de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI. 11 Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Oxford, 2008); Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2010). 12 Scott Hahn, Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009). 13 Vincent Twomey, Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age: A Theological Portrait (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).

6 dissertation is similar to the work of these scholars in that it examines several areas of

Ratzinger’s thought and shows how a common thread – in this case, sacrifice – runs through those areas. Other significant works on Ratzinger provide general overviews of his work,14 while others focus on a single area of his theology, such as liturgy,15 ecclesiology,16 or eschatology.17 By showing how Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice runs through his theology as a whole and informs his theology of mission, this dissertation contributes to scholarship on Ratzinger’s theology.

In order to lay the groundwork for understanding the significance of Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice and mission, this introduction identifies the basic elements of the sacrificial action as oblation and immolation, drawing support from the magisterial teaching of two papal encyclicals that discuss Eucharistic sacrifice: Mediator Dei by Pope

Pius XII and Mysterium fidei by Pope Paul VI. This introduction then discusses two theologians who, in different ways, challenge a sacrifice-centered view of mission. First,

Marie-Dominique Chenu’s article, “Consecratio Mundi,” represents an incarnational approach to the Church-world relation that challenges a Cross-centered – and, hence, sacrifice-centered – approach to mission. Second, Robert Daly’s Sacrifice Unveiled represents a contemporary tendency to vitiate the immolationist aspect of Christian

14 See, for example, Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas; Aidan Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, New Edition: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Burns and Oats, 2007); and Hansjürgen Verweyen, Joseph Ratzinger – Benedikt XVI: Die Entwicklung seines Denkens (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007). 15 Mariusz Biliniewicz, The Liturgical Vision of Pope Benedict XVI: A Theological Inquiry (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013). 16 Maximilian Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology. 17 Patrick J. Fletcher, Resurrection Realism: Ratzinger the Augustinian (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014).

7 sacrifice. Thus, it provides a good example of a revisionist account of sacrifice. This introduction concludes with a sketch of the plan for my analysis and a note on the scope of the analysis.

0.2. The Term “Sacrifice”

Before considering two challenges to an understanding of mission that puts sacrifice at the center, it is helpful to get a basic sense of how the Church uses the term

“sacrifice.” The point here is not to develop a comprehensive theory of sacrifice, which seeks to answer all disputed questions. Rather, this section aims to clarify how the term is working in this study, as well as how the Church uses the term. Christian faith considers several acts to be sacrifices: the Mass, Christ’s death on the Cross, the praise of

God, and almsgiving, for example. In seeking to understand what makes these acts sacrifices, Catholic theology has reflected on the meaning of sacrifice in general.18 That is, a theology of sacrifice aims to describe what makes an act a sacrifice. This dissertation primarily seeks to understand Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice in general, which takes its bearings from his discussions of Eucharistic sacrifice and the life of Christ that led to his sacrifice on the Cross.

In his study on Eucharistic sacrifice, Michael McGuckian notes that when the

Council of Trent taught that the Mass is a sacrifice, it did not provide a definition of

18 See, for example, Maurice de la Taille, The Mystery of Faith: Regarding the Most August Sacrament and Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ: Book 1: The Sacrifice of Our Lord (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940), Ch. 1: Of Sacrifice in General.

8 sacrifice.19 This difficulty, he argues, was never rectified, and therefore, the theology of

Eucharistic sacrifice has remained vague.20 Nevertheless, although a comprehensive definition of sacrifice has not been presented in Church teaching, a basic understanding of the term is implied when it is used. This understanding includes two basic components: an offering or oblation, and immolation.21 The subject who performs the sacrifice makes an offering, and the object that this subject offers undergoes immolation.

Immolation involves the destruction or loss of the object, that is, the sacrificial victim.

For example, a person who pours out a libation offering to a deity gives a gift, and the gift is an object that is lost to her. In this case, the drink offering is poured out. The object, which can also be called the “victim,” is destroyed or changed. To be sure, the object may signify devotion to the deity, or, it may be understood as actually giving the deity sustenance. In any case, the sacrificer both gives and “gives up.” In this sense, a sacrifice is gift, but it is a special kind of gift. As a contemporary, non-cultic illustration, one can imagine a wealthy philanthropist giving large amounts of money to a cause. However, a

19 Michael McGuckian, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: A Search for an Acceptable Notion of Sacrifice (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2005), pp. 2-4 20 His project attempts to resolve this problem. He argues that problems that crop up around the issue of sacrifice stem from an assumed one-act theory of sacrifice. That is, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross must be when he dies on the Cross; the sacrifice of the Mass must occur through the Eucharist prayer. McGuckian argues for a three-act theory, in which a single sacrifice requires an offering, mediation, and communion. See Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, p. 29. 21 Philip McCosker presents a survey of recent Catholic theology on sacrifice, arguing that the concept is “polyvalent,” noting that theologies of sacrifice lie on a spectrum between oblationist and immolationist. This distinction between immolationist and oblationist understandings also provides a way to perceive differences in the way scholars of religion use the term “sacrifice.” In other words, it is not always clear what theologians and scholars mean when they refer to sacrifice, because they often assume either an oblationist or immolationist understanding. See Philip McCosker, “Sacrifice in Recent Roman Catholic Thought: From Paradox to Polarity, and Back Again?” in Sacrifice and Modern Thought, ed. by Julia Meszaros and Johannes Zachhuber (Oxford: Oxford University, 2013), pp. 132-146.

9 person aware of this donation would generally not refer to the gift as a sacrifice if the transfer of wealth were not experienced as a loss by the philanthropist. On the other hand, the poor widow who gives everything makes a sacrifice, even though her gift may be small. The term “sacrifice” includes this dimension of loss, destruction, or change. In the arguments over sacrifice, the meaning of immolation is the locus of disagreement.

However, as two recent studies have argued,22 removing this dimension of sacrifice effectively jettisons sacrifice altogether. This abandonment of a key theological concept is precisely what concerns the Anglican theologian Sarah Coakley, to whom this dissertation returns in its conclusion.

22 McGuckian would agree with contemporary theologians who challenge the usefulness of the concept of sacrifice itself insofar as they claim that post-Reformation Catholic theologians, as well as post- Reformation Catholic piety, has been oriented too strongly towards an understanding of sacrifice as suffering and immolation. Michon Matthiesen also seeks to work toward a concept of sacrifice that does not reduce sacrifice to immolation. Matthiesen draws from the work of Maurice de la Taille, a somewhat neglected figure, who argues that to sacrifice is to give a gift. At the same time, the material aspect of oblation, or, offering, is immolation. In other words, the end of the act is the offering of the gift, the oblation, but this is done by means of immolation. So, Matthiesen, following de la Taille, develops an understanding of sacrifice that maintains the traditional elements of the act, while putting those elements in their proper order. See Sacrifice as Gift: Eucharist, Grace, and Contemplative Prayer in Maurice de la Taille (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2013), pp. 43-6. She notes prominent strands in contemporary Catholic sacramental theology, which emphasize sacrifice as a metaphor for self-gift. These theologians claim that Christians have transformed the notion of sacrifice fundamentally, so that the notion of sacrifice involving immolation or a victim is obsolete. However, as Matthiesen claims, such a concept of sacrifice evacuates the term of its real meaning. Ibid, pp. 16-20. In McGuckian’s account of sacrifice, the act ends in a meal. In the Jewish Temple, the burning of the victim in a holocaust serves to depict the act of the victim being eaten by the God to whom the sacrifice is offered. The goal of the sacrifice, then, is to meet God in a communion, a kind of table fellowship between God and pious persons. In this account, the killing of the victim, the immolation, is simply what is necessary to make the victim fit to be consumed in a communion meal. Thus, there is an immolation, but the immolation is hardly the aim of the act. See Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, pp. 79-85. Matthias Scheeben, on the other hand, argues that the Eucharistic species is immolated when its substance is changed, that is, when it becomes the body and blood of Christ. See The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert (New York: Herder and Herder, 1946 [1865]), pp. 505-11. What these examples of theologies of sacrifice show, for the purposes of this essay, is that the term “sacrifice,” even for some who seek to overcome the perceived shortcomings of the council fathers at Trent and the theology that followed that council, involves some kind of immolation.

Pope Pius XII’s encyclical, Mediator Dei,23 can serve as a representative text, which shows that the Church has assumed that the meaning of the term “sacrifice,” when used in reference to the sacrifice of the Mass, conforms to the basic meaning that I have just sketched. The point here is not to provide an exegesis of the encyclical. Rather, it is to note that Catholic teaching, when discussing sacrifice, has assumed that a sacrificial action involves oblation and immolation. Pius repeatedly refers to the sacrifice of the

Mass as an oblation that is offered by way of immolation: for example, the Mass is “no mere empty commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, but a true and proper act of sacrifice, whereby the High Priest by an unbloody immolation offers

Himself a most acceptable victim to the Eternal Father, as He did upon the cross”

(Mediator Dei, § 68). This quote affirms that Christ is the principal subject of the liturgy, who both offers a gift and is the victim that is offered. The sacrifice consists of an oblation, while it also requires an immolation. Jesus dies on the Cross, and the Cross is the sacrifice that the sacrifice of the Mass re-presents, and so one would expect references to this sacrifice to refer to the immolationist dimension of the sacrifice. This quote suggests that Pius assumes that any sacrifice involves an immolation, because he refers to the sacrifice of the Mass as a “true and proper sacrifice,” and his reason for saying that it is

“true and proper” is because it includes an immolation. Moreover, the sacrifice that the

Church celebrates in the Mass extends to Christian life. Pius states that all Christians are commanded to become conformed to Christ, and doing so requires that they “assume to

23 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 39 (1947): 528-80.

11 some extent the character of a victim, that they deny themselves as the Gospel commands.... …[W]e must all undergo with Christ a mystical death on the cross”

(Mediator Dei, § 81). Sacrifice is thus a constitutive dimension of Christian life and liturgy, and a basic understanding of sacrifice is that it entails some kind of loss, destruction, or death of the victim.

This basic teaching continues to be assumed in the teaching of the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council. In Mysterium fidei,24 Pope Paul VI sees the

Eucharist as the sacrifice that perpetuates the sacrifice of the Cross (Mysterium fidei, § 4).

In his discussion of the presence of Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass, he states that

Christ is “immolated in an unbloody way in the sacrifice of the Mass and He re-presents the sacrifice of the Cross and applies its salvific power at the moment when he becomes sacramentally present” (Mysterium fidei, § 34). In the sacrifice of the Mass, the body and blood of Christ are offered and immolated. A task of theology is to seek understanding into what it means to affirm this tenet of the Catholic faith. For the purpose of this dissertation, these teachings of Popes Pius XII and Paul VI affirm that an action which is called “sacrifice” is composed of these two basic elements: oblation and immolation.

0.3. Challenges to Sacrificial Theology

The argument that sacrifice is central to the nature and mission of the Church is a challenging one to make in contemporary theology. Matthew Levering, a Catholic

24 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 57 (1965): 755-66.

12 writing from a Thomistic perspective, argues that within Eucharistic theology, a focus on the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species rather than on the Eucharist as representing the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross has led to neglect of the doctrine of the

Eucharist as a sacrifice.25 The Anglican theologian Sarah Coakley challenges the anti- sacrificial trend in recent theology, noting that the influence of René Girard has led theologians to associate sacrifice with violence, which the Cross of Christ has overcome and not ratified. She states that “the latter part of the twentieth century in the West has been marked by a strongly negative approach to the topic [of sacrifice], seeing it as essentially violent and irrational.”26 This trend presents a challenge to a theology that locates sacrifice at the center of an understanding of the nature and mission of the

Church. This section examines two texts that challenge a Cross-centered, and hence, sacrifice-centered, ecclesiology and theology of mission.27 First, a key text from an important theologian in twentieth-century Catholic theology, the French Dominican

Marie-Dominique Chenu, provides a framework within which theology, particularly a

25 Matthew Levering, Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 20-24. 26 Coakley, Sacrifice Regained: Reconsidering the Rationality of Religious Belief, An Inaugural Lecture by the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity given in the University of Cambridge, 13 October 2009, p. 5. She further claims that “liberal Roman Catholics have sought to align Girard’s early reductive pessimism about sacrifice with a critical attack on neo-Tridentine eucharistic theology.” Ibid. p. 15. In fact, part of her project is to show how natural theology might benefit from attending to the way that self-sacrifice works in the nature. I will return to her Gifford Lectures in the concluding chapter to this dissertation. 27 In addition to explicit theological reflection, there may be social and cultural influences at work, insofar as sacrifice is perceived as a hold-over from an unenlightened past, which needs to be overcome in order for liberal society to continue to make progress. For discussions of this issue, see, for example Ted A. Smith, Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (Stanford: Stanford University, 2015); William Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York: Oxford, 2009); Paul W. Kahn, Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2008).

13 theology of mission, might emphasize the Incarnation, even at the expense of the Cross.

For Chenu, the Incarnation becomes the touchstone for thinking about what God accomplishes in Christ and thus what the body of Christ seeks to accomplish in the present. Second, the contemporary American Jesuit Robert Daly has dedicated much of his career to revising a Catholic understanding of sacrifice in light of the work of both

Girard and the liturgical theologian Edward Kilmartin. This introduction examines his most recent book, Sacrifice Unveiled, which recapitulates much of his older material.

0.3.1. Incarnational theology in Marie-Dominique Chenu

In “Consecratio Mundi,” Chenu takes the Incarnation as his touchstone for thinking about engagement with the world.28 His article aims to outline a program for

Christian mission in the modern world by exploring the holiness of the world. Early in the essay, Chenu identifies the Incarnation as the basic structure for his thinking on this topic when he refers to the Church as “as a place of incarnation of the divine life among men [comme lieu d’incarnation de la vie divine parmi les hommes].”29 In other words, the way the divine enters the world in the Incarnation provides the pattern for how the

Church infuses divine life in the world. The mission of the Church continues the mission of God in the Incarnation. In the final section of the essay, he refers to the relationship

28 Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Consecratio Mundi” in Nouvelle Révue Théologique 86 (1964): 609-18. Indeed, Chenu’s life’s work focused on the Incarnation. As Christophe Potworowski quotes: “ ‘All that I have done: work, studies, practical and theoretical reflection, all this has grown within me around the pivot of the Incarnation’.” See his Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of Marie-Dominque Chenu (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University, 2001), p. xii. This work “[traces] a perspective of incarnation as the underlying pattern in Chenu’s theology.” Ibid., p. 116. 29 “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 610. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

14 between the sacred and the profane as “l’économie de l’Incarnation.”30 Thus, the essay begins and ends with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Notably, this doctrine, not the person of Jesus and his concrete life, provides the pattern for the Church’s work in the world. The upshot of his focus on the doctrine of the Incarnation is that he understands redemption as creation being brought to its final end through Christ: “The incarnation of

Christ grows and is consummated in an incorporation where all reality, every human value, enters into his body, in which all creation will be ‘recapitulated’.”31 Thus, this starting point leads Chenu to emphasize the integrity of the natural order, which one must uphold in light of Chalcedonian teaching on the hypostatic union.32

An important aspect of Chenu’s argument is his distinction between the sacred and the holy. Chenu understands consecration as an act that separates a thing from its ordinary use in order to be dedicated to God. “Consecration is the operation whereby man … removes a thing from its ordinary use, or a person from his normal capacity to act freely, to be set aside for the Divine, in order to pay homage to the mastery of God over his creation.”33 To take the example of a libation offering, a drink that would normally be

30 “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 617. 31 “L’incarnation du Christ se développe et se consomme dans une incorporation où toute réalité, toute valeur humaine, entre dans son Corps, en lequel toute la création sera «récapitulée».” “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 615. 32 As he notes: “Le monophysime n’est pas seulement l’hérésie de quelques mauvais docteurs; c’est la pente d’un «idéalisme» qui ne considère le profane que comme la matière du sacré [Monophysitism is not only the heresy of a few bad teachers; it is the tendency to ‘idealism’ that considers the profane only as material of the sacred].” “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 616. 33 “La consécration est l’opération par laquelle l’homme…retire une chose de son usage courant, ou une personne de sa disponibilité première, pour la réserver à la Divinité, en vue de rendre plein hommage à la maîtrise de Dieu sur sa crèature.” “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 611. I have rendered the term “disponibilité première” as “normal capacity to act freely” to give a better sense of the meaning in this context. It is more literally translated as “first availability.”

15 used for food is set apart and used to worship the deity. The cup of wine imbibed in a normal setting is “profane,” whereas the same cup, separated from the other wine and poured on an altar, is sacred or consecrated. The sacred stands in opposition to the profane. The holy, on the other hand, refers to God, who is the most holy, but the holy is not necessarily separated from the profane, because the holy “object, action, person, group…maintains in its existence, in its development, in its work, in its purpose, the consistency of its nature.”34 Holiness does not necessarily stand in opposition to the profane. To continue with the earlier example of wine, the act of drinking wine with friends and family in a spirit of charity might be holy, although this act is ordinary, or, profane. As Chenu pithily summarizes his argument, “The profane, passing to the sacred, ceases to be profane; the profane, becoming holy, remains profane.”35

According to Chenu, the mission of the Church is to lift up natural human activity by making it holy, not sacred. As he states, “Grace does not ‘sacralize’ nature; by making it participate in the divine life, grace makes nature more itself, so to speak.”36 In this sense, the Church does not seek to alienate the world from its natural ends. For example, in this incarnational theology, the Church serves the political order by infusing Christian virtue into politics, while at the same time allowing political practice to achieve its immanent ends. Christians promote human brotherhood but do not seek to create a

34 “…objet, action, personne, groupe…conserve dans son existence, dans sa mise, dans sa œuvre, dans ses fins, la consistance de sa nature.” “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 612. 35 “Le profane, passant au sacrè, cesse d’être profane; le profane, devenant saint, demeure profane.” Ibid. 36 “La grâce ne «sacralise» pas la nature; en la faisant à participer à la vie divine, elle la rend à elle- même, si l’on peut dire.” “Consecratio Mundi,” pp. 612-3.

“monde chrétien.”37 By discussing the natural order in this way, Chenu is able to see the

Western cultural phenomenon of secularization as mostly positive. The state is no longer an instrument of the Church, for the state acts in accordance with its own ends.38 Since the contemporary world allows the spheres of politics, economics, and science to retain their proper autonomy, the Church is free to engage in her spiritual mission and to be in solidarity with the world. She enters the “profane” world, primarily through the ministry of the laity, in order to infuse these secular spheres with faith, hope, and charity.39 Thus, the presence of the Church, by means of the laity, becomes a source of grace in the world, a grace that acts to elevate the natural structures that make up human culture.

For the purpose of this dissertation, the issue to note in Chenu’s understanding of mission is what he omits. Chenu understands the Church as carrying out a mission that is to be understood in the light of Christ. An account of the mission of the Church should root itself in an understanding of the mission of the God-man who is the head of the

Church. At the same time, it is noteworthy that neither sin nor the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross make any appearance in this text. This lacuna may owe to the abstract approach that Chenu takes to Christology. The fact of the Incarnation – rather than the concrete activity of the man who was crucified, died, and buried – structures his thought.40 In this view, the Incarnation seems to accomplish all that God desires to accomplish, and it is difficult to see what Christ would accomplish on the Cross. Whereas

37 “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 615. 38 “Consecratio Mundi,” pp. 614-5. 39 See “Consecratio Mundi,” p. 615. 40 Potworowski notes this lack of concreteness as well: Contemplation and Incarnation, p. 220.

Chenu is somewhat critical of attempts to fundamentally transform some cultural spheres or structures within those spheres, since to do so would undermine the integrity of the ends immanent to those spheres, a Cross-centered approach to mission, which inevitably will raise the issue of sin, might claim that politics, for example, needs, not merely elevation, but conversion from sin. The theology in “Consecratio Mundi” is rooted in venerable aspects of Christian tradition, and for this reason, it represents an attractive way to understand how the Church engages in mission in the world. However, it fails to reflect adequately on the significance of the mystery of Christ’s suffering and death, and thus largely ignores a central component of Christian faith and practice. This dissertation contends that Joseph Ratzinger offers a more complete theology of mission, because he reflects on the concrete life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the doctrine of the

Incarnation.

0.3.2. Spiritual ‘sacrifice’ in Robert Daly

As the title Sacrifice Unveiled suggests, Robert Daly aims at a revision of the

Christian understanding of sacrifice. He aims to show that the “negative connotations” of the word “sacrifice” stem from improper understandings or a “bad theology” of sacrifice.41

He approaches the topic as a liturgical theologian and is strongest when he undertakes close readings of liturgical texts. Following the work of Edward Kilmartin, Daly aims to

“unveil” the uniquely Christian understanding of sacrifice in Trinitarian terms. The

41 Robert J. Daly, Sacrifice Unveiled: The True Meaning of Christian Sacrifice (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009), p. 1.

18 doctrine of the Trinity reveals the truth about Christian sacrifice. The Father gives himself in the Son, whose response is also an act of self-gift. This two-fold act of self-gift constitutes the specifically Christian notion of sacrifice. According to Daly:

At its core, then, true sacrifice, absent the negative implication of a ‘loss of self’, is self-offering/self-gift – in the Father, and in the Son, and in us. …We are talking about the Christ-event, the simultaneously historical transitus and eternally transcendent en-Spirited relationship of Christ to the Father, and how we are invited into that reality.42

Sacrifice is not a matter of a theory but a personal event. Thus, according to Daly, a properly Christian understanding of sacrifice begins with the Christ-event rather than with a concept of sacrifice based on anthropology. The latter approach “is fatally flawed: flawed in its assumption that Christian sacrifice legitimately fits into the general category of sacrifice; and flawed as well in its failure to recognize that the Christ-event did away with sacrifice in the history-of-religions sense of the word.” 43 While non-Christian and pre-Christian sacrifice may require the immolation of a victim, Christian sacrifice does not involve death or loss; it is an act of self-gift or love. More specifically, Christian sacrifice is the response of believers to the God who has reached out in love to the world.

Daly seeks to understand the Eucharist as this kind of response, a response to self-gift, which reciprocates with another self-gift.44

Daly argues that an improper understanding of sacrifice has been the source of numerous problems. Because in Catholic theology, atonement is an effect of sacrifice,

42 Sacrifice Unveiled, p. 10. 43 Sacrifice Unveiled, p. 6. 44 Sacrifice Unveiled, p. 14.

Catholic theologies of atonement have been distorted. If atonement requires sacrifice as understood in the extra-Christian – that is, immolationist – sense, then God seems to be violent and even fickle. Furthermore, the emphasis on immolation led to an overemphasis on the priest as the agent who effects the change in the victim, thus setting the priest apart from the assembly. According to Daly, this incorrect theology of sacrifice seems to have been one of major causes of the Protestant Reformation. Pious Christians like Martin Luther saw the abuse of priestly power under the Roman sacrificial system, and they rightly rebelled.45 In response, the Catholic Church affirmed that the Mass is a true and proper sacrifice, and Protestants assumed that Catholicism meant the term in the history-of-religions sense.46 These controversies stem from an incorrect view of sacrifice, wherein a rite is performed that involves the offering and immolation of a victim in order to procure some benefit from a deity.

Two lines of argument underlie Daly’s thesis. First, he makes an historical argument, claiming that, within Scripture and tradition itself, sacrifice becomes increasingly spiritualized. Hence, the proper disposition of the offerer develops as an emphasis within the Old Testament, while discussions of sacrifice in Christian patristic theologians such as Origen and St. Augustine discuss sacrifice primarily as one’s entire way of life. For example, he summarizes Origen thus: “[W]e must not forget that, like most New Testament writers, foremost in his mind when he thought of what Christians do when they offer sacrifice was not a liturgical rite of the Church, but rather the internal

45 Sacrifice Unveiled, pp. 146-48. 46 Sacrifice Unveiled, pp. 148-50.

20 liturgy of the Christian heart and spirit by which one offers oneself and all one’s prayers, works and thoughts through Jesus Christ to God the Father.”47 Following this trajectory, ethics takes priority over cult.48

Second, Daly argues that the history-of-religions approach is not at all helpful, because Christian sacrifice is sui generis.49 Christian sacrifice shares but a name with other sacrifices because Christ has brought an end to natural sacrifice. Here, Daly relies on the work of René Girard, who developed his theory of violence, sacrifice, and community in several influential texts.50 The basic outline of Girard’s theory can be summarized as follows: sacrifice is a scapegoating mechanism, in which a society unloads onto a victim the tension that builds up due to mimetic desire. By mimetic desire, he means that objects of desire become objects of desire because human persons learn what to desire by imitating others. Competition for common objects of desire leads to violence. The community chooses a scapegoat, who serves as a sacrificial victim, in order to stop this cycle of violence, thus illusorily restoring peace to the community, until the cycle begins anew.51 In this way, Girard provides not only a theory of violence, but a

47 Sacrifice Unveiled, p. 94 48 Indeed, in his concluding remarks on his summary of sacrifice in the New Testament, he states “that modern exegesis can demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the primary idea of Christian sacrifice that is revealed in the New Testament – i.e., of sacrifices that Christians offer – is not liturgical or ritual but first and foremost ethical and practical.” Sacrifice Unveiled, p. 68. 49 See, for example, Sacrifice Unveiled, pp. 155-56. 50 Notably, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1979); The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986 [1982]) ; Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann & Michael Metteer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1987); I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James Williams (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001). 51 Sacrifice Unveiled, p. 205.

21 theory of human culture. Christian theologians aiming to overcome the perceived shortcomings of satisfaction theories of atonement have looked to Girard, who claims that Christ on the Cross exposes the lie of the scapegoating mechanism, and in this way brings an end to sacrifice. Daly quotes from Girard’s Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World:

Jesus is not there in order to stress once again in his own person the unified violence of the sacred; he is not there to ordain and govern like Moses; he is not there to unite people all around him, to forge its unity in the crucible of rites and prohibitions, but on the contrary, to turn this long page of human history once for all.52

The Cross saves persons by showing the way to salvation. It reveals a cycle of violence and how to overcome it. Christian sacrifice, according to Daly, is a life lived in the way of

Jesus, following Jesus in a life of total self-giving.53 In this sense, Daly presents an

Abelardian understanding of atonement,54 and he provides theological depth to it by asserting that this kind of life is not merely ethical, although it is that, but is a participation in the inner life of the Trinity. Christian sacrifice is a life of self-giving as a loving response to the God who is love. Understood this way, Christian sacrifice differs completely from all other acts to which most people refer as sacrifices, acts which involve, in some sense, loss or immolation.

52 See Sacrifice Unveiled, pp. 219. 53 See Sacrifice Unveiled, pp. 220-22. 54 Daly’s account of atonement in Abelard is basically positive. Abelard shows how, in Christ, God seeks to bring about a change in individual human persons. In contrast, according to Daly, St. Anselm provides a strictly objective account of atonement, one that does not speak to the subjective psychological and ethical dimension of salvation. Whereas, according to Daly, Abelard is “incomplete,” Anselm “project[s] onto God human ideas of justice, fairness, and legality.” Sacrifice Unveiled, pp. 110-14.

Much like Chenu, Daly bases his arguments on solid aspects of Christian tradition, and thus his claims can be attractive. His historical discussion shows that the Christian life is holistic, consisting of love of both God and neighbor. I will set aside the matter of how well he represents the figures he treats in order to focus on his second argument.55

This point brings with it a theological problem, which Daly never seems to acknowledge, namely, the relationship between grace and nature. Daly’s view suggests a radical discontinuity between the aims of ‘natural’ sacrifice and Christian, or, ‘graced’ sacrifice.

He does not present an account of the desire to sacrifice as a positive aspect of human nature. That is, if sacrifice is rooted, in part, in a broken community’s desire to restore peace, then there is a fundamentally good desire at the heart of sacrifice, even if the means by which that good is attained are not good. Daly draws from a theory that rightly claims that sacrifice is an act that is part and parcel of what it means to be human. Yet, if sacrifice is a human act, then one would expect that Christian sacrifice would preserve the good of ‘natural’ sacrifice while bringing that act to graced perfection. Grace does not destroy nature. However, Daly does not present natural sacrifice as accomplishing a human good, because he understands sacrifice solely as violent scapegoating. It follows for Daly that there is no relationship, no analogy, between natural sacrifice and Christian

– that is, graced – sacrifice.

Daly’s historical arguments show that, for biblical and patristic writers, sacrifice came to be understood differently in the light of revelation. They show that sacrifice

55 However, Gordon Lathrop rightly points out that Daly approaches some issues in a cursory manner: “Book Review: Sacrifice Unveiled,” Worship 81:1 (January 2010): 85. This point applies to his treatment of historical figures.

23 became fuller, expanding beyond cult. To offer true liturgical sacrifice requires a sacrificial life, a life shot through with charity. Furthermore, Daly is right to argue that sacrifice should not be identified with immolation, as if the destruction of the victim were the goal of sacrifice.56 However, it is never clear in Daly’s text why Christian writers continued to use the term sacrifice. If what Christians mean by sacrifice shares nothing with the meaning of this term in its ordinary usage, then it seems to present a problem for Christian language. Indeed, if Daly has successfully unveiled the true meaning of

Christian sacrifice, then the term itself is unnecessary for the Christian community. In other words, Daly does not need the term “sacrifice” for his understanding of the

Christian life as participation in Trinitarian gift exchange. The claim that Christ has brought an end to the sacrificial system seems to entail that Christians should drop the term “sacrifice” altogether. While some terms that Christians use may take on a somewhat different meaning within the language-games to which Christians put the terms to use, but Daly, as Matthiesen has rightly noted, argues that Christian sacrifice is something completely other than what people mean when they use the term. For Daly, the term seems to mean something more like altruism or service, and it would seem to follow that Christians simply do not sacrifice but rather give gifts or perform works of mercy. Daly rightly argues that Jesus’ sacrificial life, culminating in his death and resurrection, changed how sacrifice might be understood. However, he argues for a radical break between natural sacrifice and graced sacrifice, and in doing so, he seems to

56 This dissertation takes up this issue in its account of Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice.

24 suggest a break between cultic sacrifice and ethical living as sacrifice, since in his view, the latter constitutes true sacrifice. This dissertation argues that Joseph Ratzinger develops a more complete theology of sacrifice, because his theology takes account of the way that Christ, rather than completely destroying natural sacrifice, fulfills the deepest aims of natural sacrifice. In other words, Ratzinger affirms the basic integrity of this natural human act, while showing that grace opens natural sacrifice to conversion to true worship.

0.3.3. Natural sacrifice fulfilled in Christ: Joseph Ratzinger’s approach

Chenu’s challenge to a sacrifice-oriented conception of mission differs markedly from that of Daly’s. Whereas Daly addresses sacrifice itself in order to subvert it, Chenu, in “Consecratio Mundi,” focuses on the mission of the Church without addressing sacrifice at all, making sacrifice peripheral to Christian mission. Chenu pays little attention to the

Cross when he argues for the way that the Church should be in the world, preferring to draw from the doctrine of the Incarnation and its consequences for the relationship between the sacred and the secular. Ratzinger’s basic approach to the theological task differs from Chenu’s in that the former attends to the particularity of the subject of the

Incarnation. That is, on many questions, Ratzinger reflects on the story of Jesus Christ in

Scripture, whereas Chenu focuses on the doctrine of the Incarnation itself. The fact that

God and humanity are reconciled in the very person of Christ provides Chenu with a way to understand how the Church might engage the world. However, in Ratzinger’s thought, the person and mission of Jesus become visible through the concrete actions that he

25 performs in his life, and that mission achieves fulfillment in his death, resurrection, and ascension. In other words, one must consider the actual facts of Jesus’ life and mission, as narrated in Scripture, in order to make sense of what God accomplishes in assuming human flesh. According to Ratzinger’s interpretation of Scripture, the incarnation of the

Word cannot be fully understood apart from the Cross, since the Cross serves as the climax of a particular narrative. Chenu largely ignores the Cross in “Consecratio

Mundi,”and, by ignoring the Cross, he cannot help but distort the mission of the Son, in which the Church participates.

Whereas Chenu argues that the Church must promote the fulfillment of human culture, Daly argues that Christ and the Church put an end to a significant aspect of human culture. Daly’s argument for a deep rupture between natural sacrifice and

Christian sacrifice is antithetical to Ratzinger’s basic approach to theology. Throughout his work, Ratzinger points to Christ as the fulfillment of all human aims. The understanding of love in Deus caritas est (DCE) provides an example of this approach.

Pope Benedict claims that human eros finds its fulfillment in the Christ who is agape.

Erotic love refers to that kind of love that reaches out for the beloved. It is ascending, for the subject aims to reach up out of herself to grasp and possess the beloved. In this sense, while erotic love, or, natural love, aims at ascent, it can also lead to self-seeking (DCE, §§

4-5).57 Christian faith brings eros to its completion by bringing in the agapic dimension.

Agapic love renounces self. It does not possess; rather, the agapic lover gives himself to

57 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 (2006): 217-252. Translated as God Is Love (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).

26 the beloved. The lover is able to enter into the relationship at which eros aims, only by giving of himself, that is, by loving agapically (DCE, §§ 6-7). Benedict points out that neither kind of love can operate well alone. “[M]an cannot live by oblative love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive” (DCE, § 7). Eros and agape complement each other. This point seems to be Benedict’s way of re-stating the classic Catholic dictum that grace does not destroy but perfects nature. For, indeed, agape is a supernatural love, but it works complementarily with natural love. This same pattern appears in his personal works. For example, in Eschatology, he notes that in Greek philosophy, the idea developed that if one were to die in service to justice in one’s city, then one would live eternally in some sense.58 Similarly, in the scriptures of Israel, to die for the sake of the

Lord, for the sake of righteousness, could not entail that one becomes separated from

God. Rather, this kind of death becomes an entry into life with God, that is, eternal life.59

Both of these ways of thinking about death and eternal life provide the theological foundation for a “spirituality of martyrdom,” and the New Testament portrays Jesus of

Nazareth as the martyr par excellence. In other words, there is continuity between the insight of the Greeks into the truth about death, community, and justice, and the revealed truth of God given to the prophets and through Jesus, who fulfills this basic human longing for relationship and for eternal life in God.

58 See, Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd Edition, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988 [1977]), pp. 78-79. 59 Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 91.

In a discussion of the role of the priest and Eucharistic sacrifice, Ratzinger criticizes trends that see the Christian Eucharist as wholly new and not sacrificial. He refers primarily to Protestant theology, but his point applies to Daly. He argues that a constitutive aspect of worship in the Old Testament is sacrifice. Jesus’ sacrifice differs from the sacrifice of the old covenant in the sense that it takes up those sacrifices and achieves the end of those sacrifices. However, his offering is the way to the Father, and his sacrifice extends into perpetuity. Jesus does not bring an end to sacrifice. Rather, he fulfills the true aims of sacrifice and draws his followers into that sacrifice. By means of the sacrifice of the Mass, the Church offers up the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. A key reason that Ratzinger argues this way is that he affirms the aims of the sacrificial system that preceded Jesus. He claims that to suggest that Israel worshipped God by means of sacrifice, while the Church worships in a purely spiritual way, would cut the Church off from her roots. The Church is the new Israel. She is the renewed people of God. The worship may have changed in the sense that what was incomplete is now complete, but it remains what it was, namely, sacrifice. The claim that the God of the new covenant does not demand sacrifice, as the God of the old covenant did, would be an essentially

Marcionite claim.60

In addition to the discontinuity between Christian sacrifice and non-Christian sacrifice, the other issue that Daly raises concerns the Christian understanding of sacrifice in light of the God whom the New Testament identifies as love. In short, the question

60 Ratzinger, “The Ministry and Life of Priests,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn &Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), pp. 173-74.

28 that is put to the theologian who would make sacrifice central is this: how can a violent act such as sacrifice be central to the faith of Christianity, whose God reveals himself as merciful and loving? This question asks about the nature of sacrifice rather than an overall theological approach. Hence, this dissertation will address this problem as it develops an account of Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice.

0.4. Plan

This dissertation provides an analysis of Ratzinger’s understanding of the mission of the Church by way of an exploration of his theology of sacrifice. The four chapters that make up the body of the dissertation show that Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice consists of four basic elements. First, sacrifice is natural. The human person naturally desires to make an offering to the divine. Second, true sacrifice, as Jesus Christ shows, is the offering of oneself. God does not desire that the worshipper give some object but that she give her whole self to God and offer her life in service to others. Third, in a world marked by sin, self-offering will necessarily entail something like death, that is, immolation.

Immolation is not the goal of sacrifice, but sacrifice in a fallen world requires immolation.

Fourth, because Jesus Christ accomplishes the fulfillment of sacrifice, human persons offer true sacrifice in Christ, that is, by responding freely to the divine intitiative and participating in the true worship that has begun in Jesus. This dissertation fleshes out these elements and shows how Ratzinger’s understanding of sacrifice informs his theology of the Church and her mission.

Chapter one lays the foundation by discussing Ratzinger’s Christology. This chapter presents his understanding of Christ as the person who is totally for others and introduces the concept of vicarious representation [Stellvertretung]. Furthermore, this chapter develops Ratzinger’s linking of Christ’s pro-existence [Für-Sein] and atonement.

Hence, it discusses Ratzinger’s understanding of Christ as the very embodiment of that self-giving love that is stronger than death. The next three chapters take up ecclesiological questions concerning the nature and purpose of the Church. To answer this set of questions, these chapters address three topics: an ecclesiology of communion, liturgy, and mission. Chapter two discusses Ratzinger’s understanding of the Church as the body of Christ. This chapter aims to show the connection between Christ and his

Church. Chapter three analyzes Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy, focusing on his understanding of the liturgy as sacrifice. Chapter four investigates his understanding of mission vis-à-vis sacrifice. It attends primarily to two aspects of mission: Christian brotherhood and pro-existent solidarity with the world, and Ratzinger’s use of sacrificial language to describe the encounter of the Gospel with both pre-Christian and post-

Christian cultures.

A key thread that runs through the dissertation is the concept of vicarious representation, which can also be considered as pro-existence. Vicarious representation figures prominently in Ratzinger’s theology, but he is never explicit about how it works.

The conclusion will develop an hypothesis for how vicarious representation works in the thought of Ratzinger by engaging him on four issues: person as relation; atonement as drawing creation into true worship; human freedom; and the mystery of salvation for the

30 others. In this way, the conclusion proposes a conception of the Church’s sacrificial, pro- existent identity and mission.

0.5. Scope

To conclude this introduction, I should address the limited scope of my dissertation. Two areas deserve particular attention. In the first place, this dissertation aims to consider the mission of the Church from the perspective of systematic theology and not of missiology. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen significant figures and texts develop missional ecclesiologies. While there are multiple perspectives on mission in the literature, scholars of missiology and missional ecclesiology aim to root the mission of the Church in the mission of God. This dissertation does not aim to become involved in the intricacies of the debates on issues such as inculturation. Rather, by attending to a central dimension of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology, it aims to provide the fundamental theological framework for those kinds of debates. In this sense, this study does not aim to provide a comprehensive account of the relationship between sacrifice and the mission of the Church. A study of the history of Christian mission vis-à-vis sacrifice, in the vein of David Bosch,61 would be fruitful, as would an account of Christian mission that takes anthropological, sociological, and cultural questions from particular

“mission fields” into consideration, as does Andrew Walls.62 I hope that this dissertation

61 In Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, 20th Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), Bosch provides a single-volume history of Christianity from the perspective of its different approaches to mission. 62 Andrew Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002).

31 can make a contribution to those theologians and missiologists who study Christian mission. At the same time, rather than working out of a historical, anthropological, or practical approach, such as a seminal missionary theologian like Leslie Newbigin, my own approach is systematic, seeking understanding of the meaning of sacrifice, the Church, and mission in the Catholic theological tradition and its classical sources. Hence, I turn to Joseph Ratzinger, a ressourcement theologian par excellence, as my interlocutor.

In the second place, although this dissertation explores the thought of Ratzinger on the question of sacrifice and the mission of the Church, it does not develop a full account of the theology of Joseph Ratzinger. It aims to move systematically and in a focused way toward an understanding of the implications of Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice for his ecclesiology and theology of mission. Hence, issues such as whether or not Ratzinger changed or how his thought developed on a particular topic over the course of his career do not receive attention, except insofar as they aid my analysis. Some topics, such as his emphasis on the positive relationship between faith and reason, receive relatively little attention in this dissertation, even though that topic in particular is a major recurring subject in this theology. In other words, while this dissertation aims to be systematic, it does not attempt to arrange all of Ratzinger’s thought into a system.

This study begins with a question – namely, what does sacrifice have to do with the mission of the Church? – and then looks to Ratzinger as a way to begin an answer to that question.

Finally, I should address the complications involved in assessing the thought of a theologian who has also produced texts as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of

32 the Faith and as Pope.63 This dissertation analyzes the theology of Joseph Ratzinger as a

‘personal’ rather than an ‘official’ theologian. The primary sources for this dissertation are those works that he has composed on his own behalf and that do not carry the weight of the office he may have held at the time of the composition. Although he published the volumes on Jesus of Nazareth while he was pope, he published them under his baptismal name, not his papal one, and so I will treat those sources as primary. A major question that some have asked is this: how can a theologian separate his personal theology from the judgments he makes due to his office?64 This question is not an unimportant one.

Due to the nature of the roles he has assumed, it is a complicated matter as to whether particular statements, such as Dominus Iesus, can be taken as representative of

Ratzinger’s theology. In some areas, one can find continuity between his private theology and his magisterial work, such as his papal encyclicals. I will rely on his personal theological texts for my analysis of his theology, but in a few areas, I will use his magisterial texts as secondary sources, if doing so helps to elucidate a point.

63 In his review of Fergus Kerr’s book, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians (Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, 2006), R.R. Reno states that the theological legacies of Karol Wojtyła and Joseph Ratzinger are complicated by the positions they occupied within the hierarchy. “Theology after the Revolution,” in First Things 173, May 2007: 15-21, at 15. 64 Part of the point of the reader edited by Mannion and Boeve seems to be to show how the prelate made judgments based on the ideas of the professor. See The Ratzinger Reader: Mapping a Theological Journey, eds. Lieven Boeve & Gerard Mannion (New York: T&T Clark, 2010).

Chapter 1: The Mission of Christ as Pro-Existence

Joseph Ratzinger’s theology as a whole is thoroughly Christocentric,1 for Christ is the center of the Gospel.2 In his thought, the person of Jesus Christ is the foundation for the mission of the Church. Therefore, a study of the mission of the Church in his ecclesiology must build on his Christology. This chapter aims to demonstrate that, in the theology of Ratzinger, the mission of Jesus is to establish communion between God and a sinful world through his self-sacrificial love, in which he gives himself completely for many.3 The mission of the Church flows from this mission, for the Church draws toward

1 As Emery de Gaál puts it, “the inner motivation and fulcrum of his theology is supremely Christological.” The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 1. Commenting on the extraordinary effort that Pope Benedict took to produce a “three-volume theological treatise” – that is, the Jesus of Nazareth volumes – while performing his duties as pope, Christopher Collins states that “Benedict made it unmistakably clear that the figure of Jesus Christ is at the center of his whole project, both theologically and pastorally.” The Word Made Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), pp. 55-6. In a work focused on ecclesiology, Maximilian Heim alludes to Ratzinger’s christocentrism. Discussing Ratzinger’s consistency, Heim states, “For himself personally, he does not exclude gradually developing corrections to his theological knowledge and thus different accentuations as well. They are at the service of a renewal as a transformation through God’s Word, which for him is simultaneously orientation to Christ, the incarnate Word of God. Hence, labels like ‘conservative’ or restaurativ — in my opinion—misrepresent the christological foundation and the goal that motivate Ratzinger.” Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology: Fundamentals of Ecclesiology with Reference to Lumen Gentium, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007 [2005]), p. 205.

2 According to Ratzinger, “[W]hereas the axis of Jesus’ preaching before Easter is the Kingdom of God, Christology is the center of the preaching of the Apostles after Easter.” Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 48. 3 Concerning this formulation, Ratzinger argues both “for all” and “for many” are “found in Scripture and in tradition.” The former correctly alludes to God’s desire to save all people, whereas the latter, which conforms to the formulation in Scripture, refers to human freedom “to choose to enter into [God’s] great mercy.” “God’s Yes and His Love Are Maintained Even in Death: The Origin of the Eucharist in 33

34 union with God “in the serving discipleship of the Son of God who descended [in der dienenden Nachfolge des abgestiegenen Gottessohnes].”4 Thus, sacrifice lies at the center of the mission of Jesus. In order to provide a context for Ratzinger’s Christocentric theology of mission, the first section of this chapter provides a brief survey of key features of Ratzinger’s thought, noting how those features emerge from or point to his

Christology. The next section presents his argument that the mission of Jesus is to bring

God and humanity into communion. After presenting this understanding of Christ’s mission, the chapter discusses Ratzinger’s theology of pro-existence, advancing the claim that pro-existence is the defining feature of Ratzinger’s Christology. Next, this chapter develops Ratzinger’s understanding of the sacrifice of Christ, showing that his sacrifice embodies his pro-existence. Finally, the chapter discusses the meaning of Jesus’ death in

Ratzinger’s theology.

This chapter lays the ground work for the ecclesiological parts that will follow.

Since this chapter serves to set up Ratzinger’s ecclesiology, it does not aim to provide a full account of his Christology. Rather than aim to describe all aspects of the person and activity of Jesus Christ according to Ratzinger, I seek to describe how Christ’s being for others, his pro-existence, which is manifest most fully in the sacrifice on the Cross, is identical with his very person and mission.5 The next chapter will discuss Ratzinger’s

the Paschal Mystery” in God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, ed. Stephan Otto Horn & Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003 [2001]), pp. 37-8. 4 Joseph Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969), p. 46. 5 Ratzinger’s fullest discussions of the person and work of Jesus Christ appear in his Jesus of Nazareth volumes, and many of the important points that he develops therein receive treatment in his early work, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius, [1968] 2004), as well as Behold

35 theology of the Church as the body of Christ. To identify the heart of Christ’s being, for

Ratzinger, is to identify the heart of ecclesial being.

1.1. Key Features in Ratzinger’s Thought and Their Relationship to Christology

James Corkery has identified four “facial features” of Ratzinger’s theology. Corkery rightly notes the difficulty of attempting to briefly summarize Ratzinger’s work due to the range of themes he addresses, but the four features that Corkery names appear consistently throughout Ratzinger’s corpus. First, he notes the unity of the God of philosophy and of theology.6 In other words, the use of reason as a means for knowing the truth about God is elevated and completed by faith, but faith does not destroy reason, and reason purifies faith.7 This positive relationship between faith and reason, in which

the Pierced One: An Approach to a Spiritual Christology, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, [1984] 1986). That one of his earliest works comports well with his latest work attests to his remarkable consistency, a point of his theology that other scholars have noted. As Lieven Boeve puts it: “Ratzinger’s theological insights have not fundamentally changed, but have rather demonstrated a firm internal consistency throughout more than fifty years.” See The Ratzinger Reader: Mapping a Theological Journey, eds. Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), p. 12. Since the Jesus of Nazareth volumes make up his fullest treatment of Christology, I will rely most heavily on these texts. 6 One of clearest expressions of this “facial feature” occurs in his “Regensburg Address,” which he delivered as Pope Benedict XVI. He states: “God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf.” The address is available online at https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict- xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html, as well as in James Schall, The Regensburg Lecture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007). I have cited “Faith, Reason, and the University: From Meeting with Representatives of Science, Apostolic Journey to Germany, University of Regensburg, September 12, 2006” in A Reason Open to God: On Universities, Education, and Culture, ed. J. Steven Brown (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2013), p. 13. Emery de Gaál notes that “as early as his inaugural lecture as professor at the University of Bonn on June 24, 1959, [Ratzinger] had spoken on this germane topic [of faith, reason, and the value of a positive relationship between the two for interreligious dialogue]” (Theology of Pope Benedict, p. 270). The lecture at Bonn is published in Ratzinger, Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der theologia naturalis, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Heino Sonnermans (Leutesdorf: Johannes, 2005). 7 James Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions and Legitimate Hopes (New York: Paulist, 2009), p. 30.

36 reason and faith assist each other, flows from his Christology. The key here is the identification of Jesus with the Logos in John’s Gospel.8 As Aidan Nichols states:

St John’s declaration that Jesus of Nazareth is self-identical with the divine Logos may be taken as expressing the Church’s fundamental conviction that in faith what is manifested is the rational. …As Ratzinger puts it, since reason is manifested in Christian faith, faith naturally seeks its own reasons, and in that reason the very rationality of the real. Conversely, faith entrusts to reason the philosophical task of recognising in faith the condition of possibility for its own activity.9

Greek philosophy “purified religion” by coming to understand that “the Creator creates with intelligence in such a way that is accessible to reason.”10 By claiming that the divine reason, that is, logos, is incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christian faith brought about a new synthesis of faith and reason. Christian faith in the incarnate Word promotes reason and serves as a stimulus to philosophical inquiry, which, when rightly practiced, is open to God. As Emery de Gaál aptly puts it, Jesus Christ is the “reconciler of faith and reason.”11 Thus, the first feature that Corkery identifies is a deeply Christological

8 The development of the name of God in Scripture begins with Moses, to whom God identifies himself as “I am,” and culminates in John’s Gospel: “Christ himself, so to speak, appears as the burning bush from which the name of God issues to mankind. But since in the view of the fourth Gospel Jesus unites himself, applies to himself, the ‘I am’ of Exodus 3 and Isaiah 43, it become clear at the same time that he himself is the name, that is, the ‘invocability’ of God.” See Introduction to Christianity, pp. 130-33. Ratzinger continues this line of thinking in the subsequent chapter, when he discusses how the early Church turned to philosophy as an aid for the proclamation of the Gospel to the pagans: “[E]arly Christianity boldly and resolutely made its choice and carried out its purification by deciding for the God of the philosophers and against the gods of the various religions.” Introduction, p. 137. On the image of Christ as the true philosopher in early Christianity, see Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today’s Debates, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, [1993] 1995), p. 14. 9 Aidan Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, New Edition: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Burns and Oates, 2007), p. 181. 10 Christopher Collins, The Word Made Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), pp. 13-17, 44, 73. 11 See de Gaál, Theology of Pope Benedict, pp. 269-73.

37 one, to which I will return in my discussion of both worship as logikē latreia in chapter 3 and Christian witness to truth in chapter 4.

The second facial feature is “[t]he priority of logos over ethos, of receiving over making, of being over doing [which] lies at the heart and centre of Joseph Ratzinger’s theological synthesis.”12 This set of priorities appears across Ratzinger’s works. For example, his critiques of modernity often focus on the way that modern life and ethics have become wholly pragmatic and concerned with activity. He identifies Giambattista

Vico as a culprit in this new order, since Vico argues that human persons know what is made rather than what is. Since history is the study of human activity and the artifacts and events that result from that activity, Vico’s thought leads to a shift in first questions, namely, from metaphysics – that is, the question of what exists and being as such – to history.13 This shift is problematic to Ratzinger, who argues that the contemplation and love of what is true, what is, must precede true activity.14 The priority of logos over ethos is a crucial feature of Ratzinger’s theology. Again, this priority derives from Christology.

Logos precedes ethos, because God speaks first. Receiving precedes making, because the human person receives a word from God before responding with right action:

Ratzinger sees God as the one who speaks. Humanity is best understood as those who listen to God’s word and then are able to respond. God and humanity are dialogue partners. But this is not a dialogue of equals; it is necessarily asymmetrical. It matters who speaks the first word. …This communication that

12 Corkery, Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas, p. 31. 13 Introduction to Christianity, pp. 58-62. 14 See, for example, Introduction to Christianity, pp. 74-9; also “If You Want Peace… Concience and Truth,” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), p. 90.

unfolds throughout human history culminates in speaking himself in the person of Jesus Christ.15

The human person is made for communication with the God who speaks in the Incarnate

Word, Jesus Christ. Thus, Ratzinger’s anthropological emphases on receiving, being, and logos point to an underlying priority, namely, the priority of the God who is revealed in

Jesus Christ.

Ratzinger’s attention to liturgy also manifests this feature. Certainly, Ratzinger has a personal affection for the liturgy, whose beauty touched him deeply at a young age.16

Yet, his love for liturgy is not merely a reflection of a particular aesthetic sensibility. The centrality of adoration is a theme in his work that is always close at hand. Adoration, contemplation, and, to use the Augustinian terminology that is appropriate to Ratzinger, enjoyment, rather than utility, are always primary. Speaking of the Catholic practice of

Eucharistic adoration, Ratzinger states:

Communion and adoration do not stand side by side, or even in opposition, but are indivisibly one. Communication with Christ means having fellowship with him. That is why Communion and contemplation belong together: a person cannot communicate with another person without knowing him. …Communicating with Christ therefore demands that we gaze on him. …Adoration is simply the personal aspect of Communion.17

Christ is first and foremost to be loved and adored, and this adoration takes place most fully in liturgy. Ratzinger’s understanding of the “spirit of the liturgy” is deeply

15 Collins, Word Made Love, pp. xii-xiii. 16 See, for example, Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: Christianity at the End of the Millenium: An Interview with Peter Seewald, trans. by Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997 [1996]), p. 49. See also Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), pp. 18-20. 17 “The Immediacy of the Presence of the Lord Carried into Everyday Life: On the Question of the Adoration of the Eucharist and Its Sacredness” in God is Near Us, p. 97. I discuss this feature further in chapter 3 of this dissertation, on the priority of adoration.

Christocentric. Chapter 3 of this dissertation discusses this liturgical dimension of

Ratzinger’s thought in more depth.

Corkery’s third and fourth features figure prominently throughout this dissertation, and so I will simply mention them here. The third is “the essentially paschal pattern of Christian existence.”18 The fourth feature is the centrality of love.19 Ratzinger is a theologian of the Cross rather than an incarnational theologian. The pattern that is decisive for Ratzinger’s understanding of topics such as nature and grace or culture and missionary activity is the pattern of death and resurrection rather than incarnation, or, more precisely, death and resurrection as the culmination of the Incarnation. As I noted in the Introduction to this dissertation, Ratzinger takes this paschal approach because he focuses on the concrete person of Jesus Christ, who has reconciled the world to the Father through his sacrifice on the Cross, whereas an incarnational theologian, such as Marie-

Dominique Chenu, focuses on the meaning of God’s entering into a new kind of relationship with humanity in the Incarnation. This dissertation contends that for

Ratzinger, the sacrificial life of Jesus, which achieves its climax at the Cross, and which forms the fundamental shape of Christian existence, embodies love in this world scarred by sin. To offer true sacrifice is to love, and the “basic movement of Christianity is simply

18 Corkery, Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas, p. 33. 19 Corkery, Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas, pp. 34-35. To this point, Emery de Gaál notes that Ratzinger’s first publication, written when he was a young seminarian, was a German translation of Thomas Aquinas’s disputated questions on charity. See his The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 18.

40 the basic movement of love, through which we share in the creative love of God himself.”20

The topics that Corkery identifies refer primarily to the content of Ratzinger’s thought. A few basic features of Ratzinger’s theological method are also worth mentioning briefly. First, his work is thoroughly biblical. Scott Hahn has drawn attention to this dimension of Ratzinger’s thought:

More than any other theologian in his time, Benedict has articulated a biblical theology that synthesizes modern scientific methods with the theological hermeneutic of spiritual exegesis that began in the New Testament writers and patristic commentators and has continued through the Church’s tradition. In fact, there has been no other Catholic theologian in the last century, if ever, whose theology is as highly developed and integrated in explicitly biblical terms. …Benedict himself has identified his theology as having a “biblical character.”21

As Hahn notes, not only is Ratzinger’s theology biblical, in the sense that he engages

Scripture and develops his theology in biblical terms, but he also develops his theology in conversation with both historical-critical exegetes, who provide a service to biblical interpretation by bringing the reader into closer contact with the text as a text that originates in historical events, and the tradition of the Church. Ratzinger has aimed to integrate theology and scientific exegesis throughout his career,22 and this effort culminated in the Jesus of Nazareth volumes. As he engages the biblical text, Ratzinger also enters into conversation with the tradition of the Church, as it is handed down by the

20 What it Means to Be a Christian: Three Sermons, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006 [1965]), p. 58. 21 Scott Hahn, Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009), p. 14. 22 See, for example, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: The Question of the Basic Principles and Path of Exegesis Today,” in God’s Word: Scripture—Tradition—Office, ed. Peter Hünerman and Thomas Söding, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), pp. 91-126.

41 great exponents of the Christian faith and by the Magisterium.23 In other words, he looks to Scripture and tradition. The same Spirit that inspired the Scripture continues to open the Church to fuller understanding of the God whom Scripture reveals.24 Rather than rely on critical methods alone to interpret Scripture, Ratzinger attends to key figures who have given rise to the theological tradition, particularly St. Augustine. Scripture and tradition flow from a single source, namely, Christ, the divine Word of God (Dei verbum,

§§ 7-10). His biblical and ecclesial approach embodies toward his Christocentrism.25

Ratzinger’s personalism augments this turn to Scripture and tradition. He is concerned with personal encounter, the encounter between the human person and God.26

23 His Eschatology provides a good example of this method at work. In chapter 5, he begins with “The State of the Question,” then examines the biblical data, the magisterium, and the theological tradition, which borrows from philosophy. See Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd Edition, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 1988 [1977]), pp. 104-61. 24 “Reading [Scripture] as a unity therefore means reading it on the basis of the Church as its locus in life and regarding the faith of the Church as the true hermeneutic key. That means, in the first place, that tradition does not obstruct access to Scripture; rather, it opens it up; and secondly, that it is for the Church, through her official organs, to pronounce the decisive word in the interpretation of Scripture.” “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” p. 97. 25 The Christological basis for his approach to theology is apparent when he discusses the ecclesial basis for theology: “The one who became flesh has remained flesh. …Obedience to the Church is the concreteness of our obedience. The Church is that new and greater subject in which past and present, subject and object come into contact. The Church is our contemporaneity with Christ: there is no other.” Nature and Mission of Theology, p. 60. He goes on: “the Church is…the ground of theology’s existence and the condition which makes it possible.” Ibid., p. 61. 26 This concern finds clear expression in his papal encyclical, Deus caritas est. Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 (2006): 217-252, trans. as God Is Love (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006): “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Deus caritas est, § 1. Ratzinger refers to St. Paul’s description of “the distinctive element of Christianity as a personal experience which revolutionizes everything and at the same time as objective reality.” Nature and Mission of the Theology, p. 50. Furthermore, he begins the final section of the first chapter of Introduction to Christianity by identifying the centrality of personal encounter for Christianity: “In all that has been said so far the most fundamental feature of Christian faith or belief has still not been specified; namely, its personal character. Christian faith is more than the option in favor of a spiritual ground to the world; its central formula is not ‘I believe in something’, but ‘I believe in you.’ It is the encounter with the man Jesus, and in this encounter it experiences the meaning of the world as a person.” Introduction to Christianity, p. 79.

His personalism is important for his approach to biblical interpretation, because it gives him a tool to navigate the issue of history. One of the watchwords of the theological renewal movements in twentieth-century Catholicism was “history.” Holding neo-

Scholastic theology to be abstract and propositional, “the new theology” of the early and mid-twentieth century aimed to take a concrete approach to the task by attending to the issue of history. 27 As Tracey Rowland puts it, theology had to deal with the question of being and time, that is, the relationship between ontology and history.28 The Christian mysteries do not consist of a collection of propositions, which are drawn from logical inferences and devoid of reference to a particular context. Part of the theological ferment from the twentieth century arose in response to dissatisfaction with this abstract approach to faith. Ratzinger took up such concerns early in his career. After being advised to take up a study of a medieval figure for his Habilitationsschrift, as a complement to his doctoral work on Augustine, he wrote on Bonaventure and his theology of history.29 In reflecting on his early theological leanings, Ratzinger would point out that he was drawn to the Augustinian tradition for both its personalism and its

27 Jean Daniélou represents this historical approach of the “new theology,” claiming that “[i]l faut noter en premier lieu la notion d’histoire. …[P]our Irénée, Origène, Grégoire de Nysse, le christianisme n’est pas seulement une doctrine, mais aussi une histoire, celle de l’«économie» progressive par laquelle Dieu, prenant l’humanité dans son état primitif, l’élève peu à peu, selon des étapes marquées par les grandes époques bibliques, par une pédagogie pleine de miséricorde, jusqu’à la rendre capable de recevoir le Verbe incarné.” “Les Orientations Présentes de la Pensée Religieuse” in Études 249 (Avril-Mai-Juin, 1946): 5-21, at 10.

28 See her Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 96-98. 29 Die Geschichtstheologie die heiligen Bonaventura (Munich: Schnell and Steiner, 1959). Available in Gesammelte Schriften Band 2: Offenbarungsverständnis und Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras (Freiburg: Herder, 2009). Translated by Zachary Hayes as The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 2nd Ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1989).

43 concern with history, as seen in the work of Bonaventure, as well as Augustine’s De civitate Dei.30 Ratzinger finds his theological roots in a tradition that emphasizes God as the one who acts in history.

Ratzinger values historical-critical methods of Scripture insofar as they open up the salvation history to which the text refers, for the biblical text narrates God’s acts in history. However, he argues that historical-critical methods of biblical studies are not neutral with respect to the text. These methods aim to uncover the events behind the text, sometimes at the expense of the words of Scripture themselves. Ratzinger criticizes these methods for two main reasons: they divorce the history to which the texts refer from the present; they are rationalistic, assuming that if events such as miracles and healings do not happen today, then they could not have happened in the past. These tendencies of critical scholarship fail, according to Ratzinger, because Scripture fosters a personal encounter with the living Christ. It speaks today. Hence, a rationalistic, purely historical approach cannot do justice to biblical interpretation, for it does not take the texts on their own terms. To be sure, Ratzinger affirms that biblical theology should undertake historical work: “A faith that discards history in this manner really turns into

‘Gnosticism.’ It leaves flesh, incarnation – just what true history is – behind.”31 In other words, if God has really taken on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, then the Jesus who

30 See Salt of the Earth, p. 61. 31 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 228. Here, Ratzinger refers to claims about Gnostic sources for the Gospel of John, to which he responds, “What the Gospel [of John] is really claiming is that it has correctly rendered the substance of the discourses, of Jesus’ self-attestation in the great Jerusalem disputes, so that the readers really do encounter the decisive content of this message and, therein, the authentic figure of Jesus.” Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 229.

44 has walked the earth in history cannot simply be ignored. Theology must reflect on history. On the other hand, exegetes make a mistake when they draw historical conclusions based on a priori rejection of divine action in history. If the texts claim to speak today and not refer merely to the past, then their proper interpretation must take account of this fact, must take account of their claim to present the Word of the living

God.32

Ratzinger notes that exegetes such as Rudolf Bultmann prioritized proclamation, the word, over events in order to overcome the arbitrariness of attempts to reconstruct the history behind texts, since events are sheer facticity and irrationality, whereas the proclaimed word carries meaning.33 In making this move, Bultmann aimed to uncover

32 A Scott Hahn quote of Ratzinger aptly shows his view of this matter: “The historico-critical method is a marvelous instrument for reading historical sources and interpreting texts. But it does include its own philosophy, which generally – if, for instance, I want to learn about medieval emperors – hardly affects anything. For in that case, you want to learn about the past, that is all…If you apply it to the Bible, then two factors you would otherwise scarcely notice are clearly manifest: the method seeks to know about the past as something past. It seeks to know what happened then, in the form it took then, at the point at which things stood right then. “And it assumes that all history is in principle the same kind of history: man in all his different manifestations, the world in all its manifold variety, are yet determined by the same laws and the same limitations, so that I can eliminate what is impossible. What cannot possibly happen could not have happened yesterday and, likewise, cannot be going to happen tomorrow. If we apply this to the Bible, it means that a text, an event, or a person is strictly fixed in his or its place in the past. We are seeking to bring out what the writer said at the time. It is a matter of what is ‘historical,’ what was ‘current at the time.’ “That is why historico-critical exegesis does not transmit the Bible to today, into my present-day life. The possibility has been excluded. On the contrary, it distances it from me and shows it as firmly set in the past…. Of its nature, it does not speak about today, or about me, but about yesterday, about other people. Therefore, it can never show Christ yesterday, today, and forever, but only (if it remains true to itself) Christ as he was yesterday.” Hahn, Covenant and Communion, pp. 34-35, quoting Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004 [2003]), pp. 132-33. 33 “Both [Bultmann and Martin Dibelius] assume a priority of proclamation over event: in the beginning was the word. Everything develops from proclamation. In Bultmann’s writings, this thesis is taken so far that for him, only the word can be original; the word creates the scenario. Everything that an event is, is accordingly secondary, a mythical development.” “Biblical Interpretation,” p. 104.

45 the original form of Christian proclamation. To arrive at this form, he posited a series of oppositions, such as that between Hellenistic thought and Jewish thought. Thus, for example, Bultmann can describe the Christology of primitive Christianity as Hellenized, based on his perception of Greek elements in the Gospel of John. This Gospel reflects the proclamation of a community of believers, but not the proclamation of Jesus himself, who was Jewish and thus could not have incorporated these Greek elements in his preaching.

Ratzinger’s description of Bultmann’s method is complex, and a full analysis of

Ratzinger’s important essay on exegesis exceeds the scope of this chapter. Important to note is a problem Ratzinger identifies with Bultmann’s approach, namely, that it imposes a philosophy on the text.34 Bultmann is not merely an exegete, uncovering the meaning of the text. He is a theologian, whose philosophy and method impose themselves on the text: “It has become apparent, in our analysis, that Bultmann the exegete is also a systematic theologian and that his exegetical results are not the product of historical perception but arise from a network of preliminary systematic choices.”35 By imposing his theological framework on the text, Bultmann treats the text as an object, a dead letter, rather than a medium through which a living voice might speak.

Ratzinger suggests a new synthesis for approaching Scripture, a synthesis that makes use of critical methods without allowing those methods to control the text. He proposes:

[T]he exegete must not approach the interpretation of the text with a ready-made philosophy or with the dictates of a so-called “scientific” world view, which

34 See “Biblical Interpretation,” pp. 111-14. 35 “Biblical Interpretation,” p. 110.

predetermines what may and may not be. He must not exclude, a priori, the possibility that God could speak, as himself, in human word in the world; he must not exclude the possibility that God, as himself, could act in and enter into history – however improbable this may seem to him.36

Thus, the reader of Scripture must approach the text prepared to enter into its world and to listen to the God who is speaking through the text.37 This readiness to listen to the living Word of God refuses to oppose word and event, for, in Scripture, events form a narrative and move toward a goal, and the fundamental word is Christ, who is God’s

Word to the world and, hence, an event.38 Jesus, the man who can be known, in history and by faith, fulfills the words of the Scriptures, for he is the Word to which they all point. Eternal Word and historical event are united in the actions of Jesus Christ.

This approach to biblical interpretation comports with Ratzinger’s personalism.

Christopher Collins argues that Ratzinger, by bringing a Christocentric theology into contact with the personalism of Martin Buber, shows how God enters into personal relationship with humanity. Buber is well-known for his depiction of the “I-Thou” relationship as a means of knowing an other. When a subject encounters objects in the world, the subject encounters a world of “its.” The relationship of the subject to the object is one of “I-it.” The object, the “it”, does not speak back. The “I-Thou”

36 “Biblical Interpretation,” p. 116. 37 See his short reflection on hermeneutics under “Thesis 7: The historico-critical method and other modern scientific methods are important for an understanding of Holy Scripture and tradition. Their value, however, depends on the hermeneutical (philosophical) context in which they are applied.” Behold the Pierced One, pp. 42-46. 38 “Biblical Interpretation,” pp. 118-122. In a similar vein, in Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 232, he states: “The unity of Logos and act is the goal at which the Gospel is aiming. …The Resurrection teaches us a new way of seeing; it uncovers the connection between the words of the Prophets and the destiny of Jesus. It evokes ‘remembrance,’ that is, it makes it possible to enter into the interiority of the events, into the intrinsic coherence of God’s speaking and acting.”

47 relationship, however, is one of two subjects in dialogue. The God who acts in history is a subject, who speaks to another subject, namely, humanity. Thus, Ratzinger’s theology aims to explore the way in which the human person enters into an “I-Thou,” a subject- subject relationship with God.39 In his proposal for biblical interpretation, Ratzinger calls the reader to come to Scripture as a person who is prepared to be addressed by another person, that is, to approach Scripture with a view to entering into a dialogue with the God who speaks through it. He criticizes methods that treat the Bible as an object, because the Bible itself claims to mediate an encounter with a person, namely, Jesus Christ, in whom God and man are united. In Christ, humanity encounters the God who acts in history. This Christological and personalistic approach provides a way to address the question of how human persons in history might enter into relationship with God.

A further feature of Ratzinger’s work is its episodic character. Much of his work appears in occasional essays and studies of particular issues. As Vincent Twomey notes,

“Most of his writings on the Church’s dogmas have been occasional contributions to an ongoing debate and are thus of an increasingly fragmentary nature.”40 Furthermore, his later writings have tended to be “occasioned by his responsibility for overseeing the

Congregation’s response to pressing issues such as liberation theology in Latin America or bioethics.”41 Although, owing partly to the demands of his hierarchical office, he has not

39 Word Made Love, pp. 13-17, 44. Ratzinger identifies Buber as having a decisive effect on his theology. See Milestones, p. 44. 40 See Twomey, Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age: A Theological Portrait (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), p. 59. 41 Twomey, Benedict XVI, p. 65.

48 produced a comprehensive systematic theology,42 there is a systematic quality to his work in the sense that one can trace the roots of his claims in different loci of theology to his

Christology. Thus, his Christology provides the most appropriate starting point for a systematic analysis of his theology.

These basic features of Ratzinger’s theology either draw from or point to his

Christology. His Christology forms the foundation of his work. Therefore, while this dissertation is primarily a work of ecclesiology, the Christocentrism of Ratzinger’s theology demands a Christological starting point in order to understand the heart of his ecclesiological claims. That his work is highly Christocentric is well-established. This chapter directs attention to the centrality of the theme of pro-existence in Ratzinger’s

Christology. If Christology is the heart of his theology, and if pro-existence is the heart of his Christology, then pro-existence is at the heart of his theology as a whole. Christ- shaped existence is pro-existence. Sacrifice and mission embody pro-existence, which is authentic ecclesial existence.

1.2. The Heart of Jesus’ Mission: He Brings God

The Church proclaims that human desire finds its deepest fulfillment in the person of Jesus.43 Therefore, Christ is the message that the Church speaks to the world. This

42 Ratzinger notes that his Eschatology was the most thorough of his works as a theologian working in the academy. At that point, he was prepared to begin setting forth his own vision, but his consecration to the episcopacy and subsequent duties as hierarch curtailed those ambitions. See Milestones, p. 50. 43 In his interpretation of the Christological dogma of the early councils, Ratzinger notes, “Wanting to be like God is the inner motive of all mankind’s programs of liberation.” Behold the Pierced One, p. 33. He further argues that “The question of Jesus’ filial relationship to the Father gets to the very root of the question of man’s freedom and liberation, and unless this is done everything else is futile. Any liberation of

49 point raises two basic questions: who is Jesus and what has he done? I begin with the latter question, and answer the former by discussing Ratzinger’s understanding of pro- existence. What has Jesus done? Ratzinger provides a clear answer to this question in

Jesus of Nazareth’s account of the temptations of Jesus. In the narrative of the temptations, Jesus goes out into the wilderness for forty days, where the devil makes three attempts to lead him astray: tempting Jesus to dominate, to make a religious spectacle, and to use power to solve social problems.44 Ratzinger spends considerable time on this third temptation. The devil asks Jesus to prove that he is the Son of God by turning stones into bread, and, in his commentary on this episode, Ratzinger offers a poignant commentary on the problem of hunger. Certainly, hunger is an affront to the

Gospel. In a world of abundance, of greater prosperity and technical mastery over natural resources than ever in history, the fact of world hunger represents an offense against a

Christian message of hope.45 Care for the poor is a crucial dimension of Christian faith.

Surely, the Son of God can use his power to meet the needs of the poor. And yet, the essence of the Gospel is not that the Christian faith, that Jesus Christ, eliminates social problems, although the mission of the Son surely involves addressing sin in all its forms.

Ratzinger states the mission of Jesus clearly and straightforwardly: “What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he

man which does not enable him to become divine betrays man, betrays his boundless yearning.” Behold the Pierced One, p. 35. 44 Jesus of Nazareth 1, pp. 25-45. 45 Benedict recognizes the significance of the problem, noting that “the elimination of world hunger has also, in the global era, become a requirement for safeguarding the peace of the planet.” Caritas in veritate, § 27.

50 brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God. …Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and love.”46 Jesus does not dazzle with a spectacle, nor does he overthrow the Roman occupation as a political messiah. He does not come with power as power is normally understood. The way of humility and submission does not seem to work when put alongside the way of power.47

However, Jesus brings more than alleviation of earthly suffering. Suffering will persist in history, but now that God has become joined to humanity in the person of Christ, people can see God’s face and enter into communion with God. The mission of Jesus consists in his restoring communion between humanity and God.

This point about Jesus’ mission raises two related issues. The first one has to do with the question of injustice: what does Jesus have to do with rectifying injustice? I bring this question to the forefront, because it is particularly relevant in the context of a discussion on the mission of the Church. Modern understandings of society have emphasized that social structures are made rather than simply given. People in the contemporary world are aware of themselves as agents who shape society and politics.

The Church, then, should play a role in creating a just world.48 Working for justice is an

46 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 44. 47 See Jesus of Nazareth 1, pp. 38-43. 48 E.g., Gaudium et Spes, § 33: “By effort and ingenuity the human race has always attempted to develop its life. Today, particularly with the aid of science and technology, it has extended and continues to extend its control over almost the whole of nature, and expecially with the help of increased international activity the human family is gradually recognising and realising its identity as a single worldwide community As a result it is now providing itself through its own resources with many of the things which formerly it largely expected would come from powers above.” Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Volume Two: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, [1972] 1990), p. 1089.

51 important dimension of ecclesial mission. Ratzinger’s point about the mission of Jesus to bring God rather than to solve social problems may, at first read, leave something to be desired, for it would seem that the Son of God should remove suffering and injustice from the world. Although a full examination of this issue lies outside the scope of this chapter, it is helpful to observe that Jesus begins to re-establish justice by incorporating persons into his relationship with the Father. The question of God and the proper worship that is owed to God is not extraneous to the issue of justice. According to Ratzinger, justice is not merely a matter of external relationships between human beings; it is first and foremost a matter of being in proper relationship to God, indeed, in acknowledging God as true God. He quotes the German Jesuit, Alfred Delp: “Bread is important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration.”

Commenting on this statement, Ratzinger asserts, “When this ordering of goods is no longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is not justice or concern for human suffering. The result is rather ruin and destruction even of material goods themselves.”

Addressing disordered social structures and working to alleviate human suffering is part of Christian mission, but “[i]f man’s heart is not good, then nothing else can turn out good, either.”49 Injustice in the world stems from human rebellion against God. As

Ratzinger puts it, “Where God is absent, nothing can be good. Where God is not seen, man and the world fall to ruin.”50 Hence, true justice cannot be sought apart from God.

In these passages, Ratzinger is explaining the priority of seeking the kingdom of God (See

49 Jesus of Nazareth 1, pp. 33-34. 50 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 145.

Matt 6:37). This seeking “establish[es] an order,” for “[God’s] will establishes justice, and part of justice is that we give God his just due, and in so doing, discover the criterion for what is justly due among men.”51 By showing how Jesus opens up communion with God,

Ratzinger’s Christology aims at the root of injustice, namely, disordered desire, that is, desire for earthly things such as power and material goods above God. By bringing God,

Jesus does, in fact, address the problem of injustice, for he addresses it at the deepest level.52

A second issue concerning Jesus’ mission relates to the first. In Christ, God acts in history. We see the face of God when we see Jesus. However, this act of seeing the face of

God can be accomplished only by faith. In a sense, God is not visible by way of natural perception. The knowing subject perceives God in Christ by faith. This ‘imperceptibility’ is analogous, though not identical, to the imperceptibility of Christ in the Eucharist, wherein the ‘perceptible’ can be understood to be the accidental. One perceives the substance by faith. Theology, properly understood, deals with matters of grace and faith.

A truly theological understanding of the mission of the Church depends on this logic of apparent imperceptibility, or, the connection between grace and knowing by faith. The grace of God is only seen by only faith, although this seeing is a real seeing.53 The theme

51 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 146. 52 Ratzinger repeatedly criticizes technocratic solutions to human problems, because they fail to address the source of what ails human society. For example, in his papal social encyclical he states that “progress of a merely economic and technological kind is insufficient. Development needs above all to be true and integral.” Caritas in veritate, § 23.

53 Introduction to Christianity, p. 51. This situation obtains, because, according to Ratzinger, “what cannot be seen in fact represents true reality.” Introduction to Christianity, p. 50.

53 of visibility figures prominently in the work of Ratzinger.54 For example, he discusses

“conversion” in terms of turning away from the visible: “Man’s natural inclination draws him to the visible, to what he can take in his hand and hold as his own. He has to turn around inwardly in order to see how badly he is neglecting his own interests by letting himself be drawn along in this way by his natural inclination.”55 This point entails that, according to Ratzinger, one cannot necessarily expect to see the results of the mission of the Church in ways that are sociologically verifiable. In the temptation narratives, according to Ratzinger, Jesus does not take hold of the visible, because that is not his mission. In a similar way, the mission of the Church might not produce immediately tangible results. To be sure, the Church affirms outwardly-ordered ministries that make a difference in the world. For example, Benedict affirms the importance of social work, encouraging Christians in this ministry open their work to the divine life, which is charity.56 On the other hand, it may be the case that interceding on behalf of the world is the primary way that the Church performs her mission, even though the effects of her intercessory prayer and sacrifice are unavailable to the observer who is attuned only to the visible and quantifiable.

54 See Corkery, Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas, p. 33. 55 This is not to say that faith has no effect on politics or social ordering or social mission, but Ratzinger emphasizes that faith does not provide recipes for politics, and that faith addresses the deepest levels of human existence and, thus, its effects may not be immediately observable. For example, “[the Bible] contains unequivocal political and social imperatives which will repeatedly bring Christians into conflict with the powers that be. Yet this does not make it a political recipe, and the Church, therefore, cannot and must not become a political party.” See Nature and Mission of Theology, p. 81. I will discuss this issue further in Chapter 4, which focuses more explicitly on the mission of the Church. 56 “Love – caritas – will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love.” Deus caritas est, § 28. The Church is responsible for this service of love, which does not replace the just ordering of material goods, that is, the State’s responsibility, but elevates that work of justice.

At its core, the mission of Christ is to bring persons into communion with God.

While transformed social structures and visible changes in a culture may result from communion with Jesus Christ, these goals do not identify the heart of his mission. In

Christ, God communicates himself, and thus, to encounter Christ is to encounter God.

Jesus calls people to enter into relationship with him, thereby bringing persons into relationship with God. This is the essence of Christ’s mission, and this understanding of his mission guides Ratzinger’s theology of the mission of the Church.

1.3. Pro-Existence

Jesus is the incarnate God, who is love. Hence, Jesus reveals the shape of love. The term that best describes this shape in Ratzinger’s theology is Für-Sein, that is, pro- existence, or, being-for.57 Jesus Christ is the man whose very existence is always with and for others:

[Jesus’] entire being is expressed by the word ‘pro-existence’ – he is there, not for himself, but for others. This is not merely a dimension of his existence, but its innermost essence and its entirety. His very being is ‘being-for’. If we are able to grasp this, then we have truly come close to the mystery of Jesus, and we have understood what discipleship is.58

57 See Christopher Ruddy, “ “For the Many”: The Vicarious-Representative Heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology,” Theological Studies 75:3 (2014): 564-84. According to Ruddy, “Jesus’ entire life is one of vicarious representation, of existence for the other(s), from his incarnation and baptism to his resurrection and ascension; he lives always on behalf of, and in solidarity with, sinners.” “For the Many,” p. 570. 58 Jesus of Nazareth: Volume 2, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), p. 134.

If Christology forms the foundation for Ratzinger’s theology, and if pro-existence expresses, in a single term, the entire being of Christ, then an exploration of this term should pay dividends in a study of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology.

1.3.1. Jesus is from and for the Father

In the first place, pro-existence describes Jesus’ being for the Father. Jesus does the will of the Father, and he is one with the Father. Richard Hays summarizes

Ratzinger’s work: “The single most dominant theme throughout Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus’

‘intimate unity with the Father’.” 59 He states further: “The entire aim of Jesus’ teaching and activity is to reveal his own union with God and to invite all humanity to share in an intimate, loving relation with God.”60 For example, Ratzinger says of Jesus, “He lives before the face of God, not just as a friend, but as a Son; he lives in the most intimate unity with the Father.”61 In Behold the Pierced One, Ratzinger outlines some characteristics of a “spiritual Christology.” His first thesis addresses Jesus’ relationship to the Father: “According to the testimony of Holy Scripture, the center of the life and person of Jesus is his constant communication with the Father.”62 In other words, Jesus’ ministry of preaching and healing spring from his life of prayer, and thus, his relationship with his Father is foundational for his work. As Ratzinger puts it:

59 Richard Hays, “Benedict and the Biblical Jesus,” in First Things, no. 175 (August/September 2007): 49-53, at 50. 60 Hays, “Benedict and the Biblical Jesus,” p. 50. 61 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 6. 62 Behold the Pierced On, p. 15.

For the entire gospel testimony is unanimous that Jesus’ words and deeds flowed from his most intimate communion with the Father; that he continually went ‘into the hills’ to pray in solitude after the burden of the day (e.g., Mk 1:35; 6:46; 14:35, 39). Luke, of all the Evangelists, lays stress on this feature. He shows that the essential events of Jesus’ activity proceeded from the core of his personality and that this core was his dialogue with the Father.63

A key here is that Jesus’ person and his mission are identical. “In Jesus’ own awareness, as we see it in the Gospels, he does not speak and act from himself but from Another: it is of his very essence that he comes from this Other. His entire existence is a ‘sending’, a

‘mission’, i.e., a relationship.”64 His mission is to be, because his being is pro-existence.

Hence, the activity of Jesus according to Scripture, wherein he works to bring about reconciliation and communion between God and humanity, manifests his fundamental identity as for the Father, because the Father sends the Son for this purpose, and the Son exists in perfect communion with the Father.

Jesus of Nazareth depicts Christ’s life manifesting his relation to the Father when it discusses the issue of the two wills of Christ. This discussion provides a striking example

63 Behold the Pierced One, pp. 17-18. He also states, “Moses could deliver his Torah only by entering into the divine darkness on the mountain. Jesus’ Torah likewise presupposes his entering into communion with the Father, the inward ascents of his life, which are then prolonged in his descents into communion of life and suffering with men.” See Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 68. 64 Behold the Pierced One, pp. 21-22. See also Introduction to Christianity, wherein Ratzinger states: “To John, the description of Jesus as Son is not the expression of any power of his own claimed by Jesus but the expression of the total relativity of his existence. When Jesus is put completely into this category, this means that his existence is explained as completely relative, nothing other than ‘being from’ and ‘being for,’ coinciding precisely in his total relativity with the absolute. In this the title ‘Son’ is identical with the designation ‘the Word’ and ‘the one sent’.” Introduction to Christianity, p. 225. Furthermore, “It is no longer a simply a question of speaking about the work, the doings, the sayings, and teachings of Jesus; on the contrary, it is now established that at bottom his teaching is he himself. He as a totality is Son, Word, and mission; his activity reaches right down to the ground of being and is one with it.” Introduction to Christianity, p. 226. Ratzinger also develops the notion of the person of Christ as relation in his essay “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17.3 (1990): 439-454. Ruddy discusses this theme in “For the Many,” p. 570. I discuss Ratzinger’s essay in more detail in the conclusion to this dissertation.

57 of the mutual influence of exegesis and theology. According to the teaching of the

Church, human nature and divine nature are united in the one person of Christ. In order to affirm the full humanity and full divinity of Christ, “Neo-Chalcedonian” theology has affirmed that Jesus has two wills, a human will and a divine will.65 Ratzinger raises this discussion of the two wills of Christ in order to describe Christ’s pro-existence as it appears in the prayer at Gethsemane. In this prayer, Jesus offers a “sacrifice of obedience” to God the Father, in which “the Son’s whole being is expressed in the ‘not I, but you’ – in the total self-abandonment of the ‘I’ to the ‘you’ of God the Father. This same ‘I’ has subsumed and transformed humanity’s resistance, so that we are all now present within the Son’s obedience; we are all drawn into sonship.”66 In other words, the human will of

Christ achieves its highest end precisely by being directed by and toward the will of God.

Thus, “[Jesus’] oneness with the Father’s will is the foundation of his life. The unity of his will with the Father’s will is the core of his very being.”67 Furthermore, “Jesus’ whole existence is summed up in the words ‘Yes, I have come to do thy will.’ It is only against this background that we fully understand what he means when he says, ‘My food is to do

65 Ratzinger’s sixth thesis in Behold the Pierced One discusses this topic: “There are not two ‘I’s in him, but only one. The Logos speaks in the I-form of the human will and mind of Jesus; it has become his I, has become adopted into his I, because his human will is completely one with the will of the Logos. United with the latter, it has become the pure Yes to the Father’s will. Maximus the Confessor, the great theological interpreter of this second phase of the development of the christological dogma, illuminates this whole context by reference to Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives, which, as we already saw in Thesis 1, expresses Jesus’ unique relationship to God.” See Behold the Pierced One, pp. 39-41. 66 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 161. 67 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 149. See also Jesus of Nazareth 1, pp. 341-5.

58 the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 4:34).”68 The center of who Jesus is and all that he says and does derives from his pro-existence vis-à-vis the Father.

1.3.2. Pro-Existence manifested in vicarious sacrifice

Ratzinger does not present what one would consider a theology of atonement in the sense of an exploration of the mechanics of atonement in the manner of a theologian such as St. Anselm. He is consistent in arguing that Jesus is for others, and that Jesus’ pro-existence achieves its clearest expression in his vicarious sacrifice, but he does not offer a theory of atonement. Accordingly, I will present a hypothesis about how vicarious sacrifice works in Ratzinger’s theology in the conclusion to this dissertation. Here, I gather some of the relevant data that will be necessary for that hypothesis.

On Sundays and Solemnities, in chapels, oratories, and Christian houses of worship all over the world, Christians recite a version of the words, “For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.” This “for us” defines all that Jesus has done and continues to do.69 Jesus acts totally for the world. This being-for, pro-existence, is his mission:

The hyphen between Jesus and Christ, the inseparability of person and word, the identity of one man with the act of sacrifice – these also signify the hyphen between love and faith. For the peculiarity of Jesus’ ‘I’, of his person…lies in the fact that this ‘I’ is not at all something exclusive and independent but rather is Being completely derived from the ‘Thou’ of the Father and lived for the ‘You’ of men [emphasis added].70

68 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 150. 69 See Introduction to Christianity, p. 204. 70 Introduction to Christianity, p. 208.

Deriving from his communion with the Father, Jesus’ “being itself is service” totally for others.71 Hence, all of his actions are ordered to bringing persons into communion with

God, and in this sense, he exists completely for the world. That is, Christ always acts for others, because Christ is for others. His acts manifest his being.

This understanding of pro-existence as the core of Jesus’ being and mission entails two key points for a theology of sacrifice and mission. First, Ratzinger unites a theology of the Incarnation with a theology of the Cross. As he puts it:

For we have found that the being of Christ (“Incarnation” theology!) is actualitas, stepping beyond oneself, the exodus of going out from self… Conversely, this “doing” is not just “doing” but “being”; it reaches down into the depths of being and coincides with it. This being is exodus, transformation. So at this point a properly understood Christology of being and of the Incarnation must pass over into the theology of the Cross and become one with it; conversely, a theology of the Cross that gives its full measure must pass over into the Christology of the Son and of being.72

Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross manifests his being. In other words, the communion between

God and humanity that exists in the person of Christ, indeed, which is Christ himself, is revealed to be opened to the world in the Cross. The Son of God is sheer openness, and the Cross enacts this openness, a being broken open for others, in the fullest way.

Since Jesus always acts for others, a basic continuity characterizes his earthly ministry. In other words, his death on the Cross, which is interpreted as an act of sacrificial self-offering in the institution narratives, is the fulfillment of his ministry and not an aberration. Ratzinger notes that some scholars have downplayed these narratives,

71 See Introduction to Christianity, p. 226. 72 Introduction to Christianity, p. 230.

60 because they do not seem to comport with a Jesus who already offers grace in his teaching, preaching, and healing.73 On this kind of view, if the message of Jesus is that the kingdom of God is now breaking in, bringing a new order of peace, justice, and healing,74 then it is not clear what sacrifice would accomplish. In other words, expiation for sin does not seem necessary in the message of Jesus, but the institution narratives depict Jesus offering himself for his disciples. In response to this interpretation of Jesus’ mission, Ratzinger stresses that Jesus willingly took on the role of the Suffering Servant, the one who suffers for the many, and that taking on this role is consistent with his preaching of the kingdom:

Some notable exegetes…argue that Jesus began by offering the good news of God’s kingdom and his unconditional forgiveness, but that he had to acknowledge the rejection of this offer and so came to identify his mission with that of the Suffering Servant. They argue that after his offer was refused, he realized that the only remaining path was that of vicarious expiation: that he had to take upon himself the disaster looming over Israel, thereby obtaining salvation for many.75

Ratzinger rejects the sharp contrast between the early and late preaching of Jesus, but he accepts the “plausibility” of the point these exegetes are making. In other words, rather than a fundamental change in mission, Jesus always is and acts for others, and in this

73 “The principal argument against the historical authenticity of the words and actions of the Last Supper may be summarized as follows: There is an insoluble contradiction between Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God and the notion of his vicarious expiatory death. Yet the key element in the words of institution is the ‘for you—for many’, the vicarious self-offering of Jesus including the idea of expiation.” Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 118. 74 Ratzinger discusses alternative interpretations of the nature of the kingdom, noting that a “regnocentric,” i.e., kingdom centered view, has come to prevail in recent theology. According to Ratzinger, “ ‘Kingdom,’ on this interpretation, is simply the name for a world governed by peace, justice, and the conservation of creation. It means no more than this.” Jesus of Nazareth 1, pp. 49-51. 75 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 120. Ratzinger relies heavily on a study from the German theologian and Catholic convert from Lutheranism, Erik Peterson. See Peterson, “The Church” in Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. Michael Hollerich (Stanford: Stanford University, 2011), pp. 30-39.

61 sense, his mission does not change from his early ministry to his work on the Cross.

While it is plausible that certain emphases in Jesus’ preaching shifted somewhat, according to Ratzinger, “Jesus’ message was shaped by the Cross from the outset.”76

This first point leads to the second point, namely, that true sacrifice is for others.

Jesus’ identification of his mission with that of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant reveals this understanding of sacrifice, for the basic mission of the Servant is to suffer as Stellvertreter, as a vicarious representative, for others.77 Ratzinger notes that Jesus understood himself to be fulfilling the mission of the Suffering Servant:

Here [in Mark 10:45] he is clearly speaking of the sacrifice of his life, and so it is obvious that Jesus is taking up the Suffering Servant prophecy from Isaiah 53 and linking it to the mission of the Son of Man, giving it a new interpretation. …The most we can say is that he knew that the mission of the Suffering Servant and the mission of the Son of Man were being fulfilled in himself.78

This text from Mark concludes a passage in which two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, request to sit with Jesus when he is glorified. In his response, Jesus refers to service, saying that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many

(Mark 10:45). Thus, Jesus offers to suffer for others as an act of service for the world. In

Christ’s self-offering, “the mystery of vicarious atonement shines forth, and it is this that constitutes the most profound content of Jesus’ mission.”79 The mission of Jesus is identical with his pro-existence, which finds ultimate expression in sacrifice for others.

76 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 123 77 On the Suffering Servant, see The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, trans. Daniel Bailey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004 [1996]). 78 Jesus of Nazareth 2, pp 136-37. 79 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 172.

Sacrifice, understood as the enactment of pro-existence, includes two major dimensions for Ratzinger. First, it consists of solidarity between the offerer and his or her beneficiaries. Second, it includes the notion of self-gift. As the Suffering Servant, Jesus

Christ takes on the burdens of others and offers his life as a vicarious sacrifice for the many. To offer oneself for others requires some kind of a relationship between the offerer and an other for whom the offering is offered, whereby the offerer is qualified to stand on behalf of the other. I will revisit this theme in chapter 4, which discusses Ratzinger’s early article on “Vicarious Representation.” Here, I note simply that Jesus’ fulfillment of the mission of the Suffering Servant requires his solidarity with the world. He makes the burdens of the world his own. Hence, Ratzinger comments on Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the Cross:

[It] is no ordinary cry of abandonment. Jesus is praying the great psalm of suffering Israel, and so he is taking upon himself all the tribulation, not just of Israel, but of all those in this world who suffer from God’s concealment. He brings the world’s anguished cry at God’s absence before the heart of God himself.80

Jesus enters into solidarity with the world in order to take on its sufferings and to open a means by which sinful humanity can enter into communion with God. His pro-existence entails that he suffer with the world, while pushing beyond the limits of suffering and death on behalf of the world. The world is, in some sense, in him. He carries the world and its burdens with him to the Cross.

Ratzinger discusses Jesus’ solidarity with the world in his exegesis of the accounts of his baptism in the Jordan. According to Ratzinger, in Jesus’ baptism, which

80 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 214. Ratzinger cites Augustine on Christ as the “corporate personality”: “He prays as both head and body.” Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 215.

63 inaugurates his public ministry, he explicitly identifies himself as one who is in solidarity with sinful humanity. Baptism involves confession of sin, yet Jesus has no sin to confess.

By receiving baptism, he identifies himself with all of humanity. He says Yes to God on behalf of all.81 Gary Anderson argues that the thrust of Ratzinger’s interpretation of the baptism of Jesus as an expression of Jesus’ solidarity with humanity is essentially correct.

Anderson demonstrates from texts in Ezra and Tobit, and in line with John Meier, that, in the logic of Israel’s Scriptures, an individual could be guiltless and yet could still suffer for and confess sin on behalf of the nation:

Benedict’s claim that Jesus’ consent to baptism intended to express ‘solidarity with men who have incurred guilt but yearn for righteousness’ is not some sort of apologetic veneer awkwardly pasted over the more sober and searing historical judgment proposed by [Paul] Hollenbach; it is rather the likeliest historical reading of the event.82

As the Suffering Servant, Jesus offers sacrifice in solidarity with the world. And his ministry begins with a sign of his solidarity. From baptism to crucifixion, Jesus’ mission is one of taking on the burdens of humanity in order to open up a path to communion with

God.

1.3.3. Sacrifice as love

The essence of the life of Christ, which climaxes in the Paschal Mystery, is his self- offering. Through his suffering, he gives himself completely in order to repair the

81 Jesus of Nazareth 1, pp. 17-18. 82 See Anderson, “The Baptism of Jesus: On Jesus’ Solidarity with Israel and Foreknowledge of the Passion” in Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, ed. John Cavadini (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2012), p. 246.

64 division between God and humanity. He exists in solidarity with the world so that he can give himself for the world. “‘His blood’ – that is, the total gift of himself, in which he suffers to the end all human sinfulness and repairs every breach of fidelity by his unconditional fidelity. This is the new worship, which he establishes at the Last Supper, drawing mankind into his vicarious obedience.”83 By giving himself completely for the many, Jesus reveals the true form of love.

Ratzinger emphasizes that Jesus’ sacrificial death is an act of love, of total gift of self. “His crucifixion is his coronation; his kingship is his surrender of himself to men, the identification of word, mission and existence in the yielding up of this very existence. His existence is thus his word. He is word because he is love.”84 Jesus does not offer himself, in the first place, as a sacrifice to placate an angry Father.85 Rather, because his life is completely defined as self-giving love, Jesus’ death reveals a love that goes to the end. His death signifies that nothing would prevent him from being completely for the world. In fact, because he is the Word of the Father, who fulfills all the words of the prophets, his death expresses the love of the Father for the world: “Because his death has to do with the word of God, it has to do with us, it is a dying ‘for’.”86 If all that Jesus does expresses the will of God, then to see the love of Jesus in his self-offering is to see the love of God the

83 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 134. 84 Introduction to Christianity, p. 206. 85 See Introduction to Christianity, p. 283. He discusses this point in Introduction to Christianity with respect to the Anselmic account of atonement. Ratzinger seeks to go beyond Anselmic concerns with merit and honor in order to place the emphasis on God’s love, even though he accepts that Anselm is trying to make sense of the impulse of the message of Scripture. 86 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 252.

Father. This connection between pro-existence and love allows Ratzinger to claim that

Christianity itself, when distilled to its essence, is about love.87 All that Jesus is and does enacts the love of God for the world, a love that enters the human situation in order to overcome death.

Pro-existence holds together Incarnation and atonement, and thus defines love as self-offering for others to the end. As the incarnate Son, Jesus brings God, showing humanity the way back to God. His reconciling action comes to a climax in the Cross, a seemingly tragic end to a holy life. However, Christ transforms his death into an act of self-gift by offering his body to his disciples in the Last Supper.

[B]y way of anticipation [in the Supper], he can already distribute himself, because he is already offering his life – himself – and in the process receiving it again. So it is that he can already institute the sacrament in which he becomes the grain of wheat that dies, the sacrament in which he distributes himself to men through the ages in the real multiplication of loaves.88

In one sense, his death itself would be meaningless, were it not for his transformation of the event in the Last Supper, when he offers himself to his disciples, and his Resurrection,

87 Introduction to Christianity, p. 270. “‘Caritas’, care for the other, is not an additional sector of Christianity alongside worship; rather, it is rooted in it and forms part of it.” See Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 129. Emery de Gaál summarizes this point about pro-existence well: “The unity of suffering and exaltation in Jesus’ life shows proexistence as a central feature of his life in living for the ‘the many’ (Jn 11:52). By living in complete love and obedience to his heavenly Father, Jesus bears witness that ‘He comes from God and hence establishes the true form of man’s being…not just one individual, but rather he makes all of us ‘one single person’ (Gal 3:28) with himself, a new humanity.” Christocentric Shift, p. 121, quoting Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 330. See also What it Means to Be a Christian: Three Sermons, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006 [1965]), pp. 65-76.

88 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 131. Heinz Schürmann makes this case as well: “Jesu Tod ist die Selbsthingabe des gehorsamen Gottesknechtes, der sich in den Tod gab an Stelle der vielen, die eigentlich den Tod verdient hätten. Im Licht von Is 53 ist Jesu Tod ein stellvertretender Tod. Damit ist das „für“ im Sinne der Stellvertretung als „an Stelle von“ gedeutet.” See Ursprung und Gestalt: Erörterungen und Besinnungen zum Neuen Testament (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1970), p. 119. Ratzinger notes his indebtedness to Schürmann, stating, “The whole of his living and dying is concealed within the word ‘for’; as Heinz Schürmann in particular has repeatedly emphasized, it is ‘pro-existence’.” See Jesus of Nazareth 2, pp. 173- 74.

66 which effectively declares that love is stronger than death. Ratzinger argues that here, he communicates himself to all, because he has given the world a memorial of his death, which is the capstone of his pro-existent life. In this way, by offering up his suffering, a suffering that he by no means deserves, in solidarity with others, he gives himself completely to others. The Cross is the high moment of a life that is a gift for others, but it is made into a gift by Jesus’ self-offering in the Eucharist. Jesus redeems the world by his act of self-giving love, and having risen from the dead, he continues to “[give] himself to his followers as food and thus [make] them sharers in his life, in life itself.”89

1.3.4. Love is stronger than death

“On the Cross, death is conquered.”90 To say that Jesus establishes communion between God and human persons is to say, negatively, that Jesus abolishes whatever alienates humanity from God. According to Ratzinger, he accomplishes this mission by love. “Jesus’ suffering is a Messianic Passion. It is suffering in fellowship with and for us, in a solidarity – born of love – that already includes redemption, the victory of love.”91

While his being-for others leads him to his death, love overcomes death. “The sting of death is extinguished in Christ in whom the victory was gained through the plenary power of love unlimited.”92 In this sense, it is important to note that the Last Supper, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus form a single event. The resurrection begins in the

89 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 271. 90 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 166. 91 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 216. 92 Eschatology, p. 97.

67 supper, when Jesus offers his body in the Eucharist, an offering that achieves fulfillment on the Cross, for in this total self-gift, he has already beaten back death. As Ratzinger states, “the Resurrection is not just Jesus’ personal rescue from death. He did not die for himself alone. His was a dying ‘for others’; it was the conquest of death itself.”93 Thus, the supper and Cross bring to completion a life of love, a lived completely for others, and the resurrection shows that this life could not be extinguished.

Ratzinger makes claims about sacrifice that bear some resemblance to Daly’s claims, which the Introduction to this dissertation presented. Ratzinger focuses on self- gift and love rather than on the destruction of the victim, arguing that the telos of sacrifice is love. However, Daly argues that sacrifice is merely self-gift, as if immolation were not involved at all. Ratzinger, on the other hand, does not diminish the necessity of suffering, even as he argues that the suffering involved in sacrifice is ordered to love.

God himself becomes the locus of reconciliation, and in the person of his Son takes the suffering upon himself. God himself grants his infinite purity to the world. God himself ‘drinks the cup’ of every horror to the dregs and thereby restores justice through the greatness of his love, which, through suffering, transforms darkness.94

Rather than jettison the aspect of sacrifice that involves the death or suffering of the victim, Ratzinger explains that God is the one who suffers, and he suffers because he takes on the sin of the world as an act of love.

Benedict’s understanding of love in Deus caritas est (DCE) helps to shed light on

Ratzinger’s discussions of Jesus on the Cross. Benedict teaches that eros names a love

93 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 165. 94 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 232.

68 that reaches out, ascending love, while agape names a love that descends and is willing to sacrifice for the other (DCE, §§ 3-10). When he discusses Jesus’ death in Introduction to

Christianity, Ratzinger does not use the terms agape and eros as a way to identify the different movements love in Christ’s self-offering. However, that book anticipates in a remarkable way his discussion of love in his first papal encyclical. Ratzinger aims to show how an Anselmic account of atonement, which sees Jesus’ death in terms of rights and expiation, fails to describe the depth of what Jesus has accomplished.95 In the Cross, there is a descending moment. God acts from above; he shows his profound love for humanity by reaching down to reconcile the world to himself in the Cross. “[I]n the New

Testament, the Cross appears primarily as a movement from above to below. …Letting

God act on us—that is Christian sacrifice.”96 This understanding of sacrifice recurs in the description of agape in Deus caritas est, which Benedict describes as “oblative” love (DCE,

§ 7).97 This love is a divine love, and thus when one sees Jesus on the Cross, one sees the expression of divine charity.

Even as Christ reveals a descending love, his self-offering includes an ascending moment. “In a whole series of texts, [the Cross] does appear as the upward movement of mankind to God.”98 Here, Ratzinger considers the liturgical dimension of the Cross.

Most prominently, in the letter to the Hebrews, the New Testament authors understand

95 See Introduction to Christianity, pp. 231-33. 96 Introduction to Christianity, p. 283. 97 Benedict acknowledges that one sees erotic, as well as agapic, love in God, particularly in those Old Testament passages that refer to God’s passion for the chosen people of Israel. The electing God is the erotic God. See Deus caritas est, § 9. 98 Introduction to Christianity, p. 284.

Jesus’ death in terms of Old Testament cult. In cultic sacrifice, one sees the human reaching upward. This kind of sacrifice corresponds to ascending love, which Benedict affirms when he states that “eros and agape – ascending love and descending love – can never be completely separated” (DCE, § 7). However, all cultic sacrifices “were bound to remain useless human work,”99 for God has no need for bulls, grain offerings, or any other object that one might try to give him. Ratzinger suggests that these objects are meant to vicariously represent the person making the offering, who recognizes that he ought to make an offering to his god: “The idea of vicarious atonement pervades the entire history of religions.” However, “[w]hat is offered by way of substitution is still a mere proxy for one’s own offering and can in no way take the place of the one needing to be redeemed.”100 It is important to note here, especially when comparing this text to

Benedict’s notion of erotic love, that Ratzinger affirms a positive aspect in this activity.

The human impulse to reach out to God is brought to fulfillment in the work of Jesus

Christ. This impulse is good, but it cannot attain its aim unless it moves the subject to offer himself or herself. Pro-existence joins the desire to ascend to its fulfillment in descent. Rather than offer up an animal as a “replacement” offering, Jesus offers himself for others out of love. “He took from man’s hands the sacrificial offerings and put in their place his sacrificed personality, his own ‘I’.”101 The love for God that reaches out, ascending love, is manifest in cultic sacrifice, and Jesus brings this erotic worship to its

99 Introduction to Christianity, p. 285. 100 Jesus of Nazareth 2, pp. 172-73. 101 Introduction to Christianity, p. 287.

70 fullness by offering himself as the victim, the representative for others. His ascent comes to fruition in descent. Thus, Jesus reveals that eros finds its fulfillment in agape.

Love and sacrifice, then, are closely associated for Ratzinger. Just as love consists of both ascending and descending motions, so too does sacrifice. Furthermore, as in love, so in sacrifice, the ascending motion can reach its completion only in descent. Showing the connection between love and sacrifice makes sense of seemingly contradictory elements in Ratzinger’s claims about sacrifice. He clearly wants to affirm that atonement, restoration of communion with God, requires expiation.102 However, he also wants to affirm that love, not expiation in itself, is the essence of sacrifice. He can make both of these affirmations, because he understands two different dimensions of Christian sacrifice, which takes its bearings from the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The sacrificer first desires to reach out, to transcend the self and to touch the divine. She offers a sacrifice as a means of expiating the guilt that would prevent her from achieving this aim.

The expiatory aspect of sacrifice belongs to the erotic dimension, the reaching out toward the divine. This is natural and human. However, Ratzinger’s understanding of love suggests a new version of the Scholastic axiom, “Grace does not destroy but perfects nature,”103 which might read, agape does not destroy but perfects eros. The sacrificer

102 “But true forgiveness exists only when the ‘price’, the ‘equivalent value’, is paid, when guilt is atoned by suffering, when there is expiation. The circular link between morality, forgiveness and expiation cannot be forced apart at any point; when one element is missing, everything else is ruined. …In the Torah, the five books of Moses, these three elements are knotted together inseparably, and it is therefore impossible to follow the Enlightenment in excising from this core of the Old Testament canon an eternally valid moral law, while consigning the rest to past history.” Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996 [1991]), p. 152. 103 Ratzinger discusses Bonaventure’s understanding of this axiom, as well as relevant New Testament passages, in his essay “Gratia Praesupponit Naturam: Grace Presupposes Nature,” trans. by Michael Miller in Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life, Unabridged Edition, ed.

71 reaches out to God, not by offering up other objects to expiate guilt, but by offering up one’s whole self out of love for God and the world that God so loves. Christ reveals that true sacrifice is the embodiment of pro-existence. On the Cross, Jesus offers himself, thus achieving what cultic sacrifice aims to accomplish, transforming human cult into divine liturgy.

When he discusses love and suffering, Ratzinger presents Christ as opening up the means for entering into communion with God. That is, on the Cross, Jesus is opened up.

He is physically pierced, an incarnate manifestation that he himself is the opening to divine life. Because his communion with human beings, his being-for his brothers and sisters, is an extension of his being-for the Father, his outward communion actually extends his inward communion. That is, he does not cease to be with the Father when he is with others. By being both completely with God and completely with the condemned,

Christ is stretched to the breaking point, but this breaking creates the opening through which human persons may enter in order to come into communion with God: “He who took flesh and now retains his humanity forever, he who has eternally opened up within

God a space for humanity, now calls the whole world into this open space in God…. …The triumph of love will be the last word of world history.”104 Christ is life, and so by entering into Christ, the human person enters a relationship of communion that is stronger than

Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011 [2005]), pp. 143-61. Ratzinger affirms the axiom, insofar as it the axiom affirms that grace does not destroy “what is truly human.” However, he refers to Pascal, noting that “Man has obtained for himself a second nature, the core of which is his susceptibility to egoism — concupiscence” (p. 158). Therefore, “the way that grace travels to reach man has to pass through the ‘second nature’, breaking open the hard shell of vainglory that covers the divine glory within him.” “Grace Presupposes Nature,” p. 159. 104 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 287.

72 biological death. Communion with the person who is love itself, who is pure being for others, is atonement.

1.3.5. Sacrifice and Truth

Moshe Halbertal has recently argued that sacrifice and self-sacrifice are acts by which human persons aim at transcendence. These acts are often for an other or for a group, allowing the sacrificer to identify with a larger whole, to go beyond oneself.105 He points out, however, that one can perform self-sacrificial acts for clearly false ends. This point presents a challenge, particularly to a theologian – such as Ratzinger or Hans Urs von Balthasar – who identifies self-offering and self-sacrifice with love. To love means to be willing to go the depths for the other.106 However, suppose a Christian were to say,

“Yes, I am willing to suffer the pains of hell for my people.” What would that entail?

Halbertal notes that some people have understood the call to self-sacrifice as a call to sacrifice one’s conscience.107 In other words, this person says, “I will commit an atrocity that consigns me to hell, because committing that act is necessary for others whom I love, such as my family, nation, or state.” In this case, the self-sacrificer allows herself to be the

105 Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice (Princeton: Princeton University, 2012), pp. 63-67. 106 This theme appears throughout Balthasar’s corpus, but, as an example, he points out how Moses and Paul were willing to die on behalf of Israel. See Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? with a Short Discourse on Hell, trans. David Kipp & Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988 [1986, 1987]), pp. 204- 10. As Steffen Lösel puts it, “[i]f Easter causes human liberation, it also signifies for Balthasar a call to discipleship. …Interestingly, the call to discipleship extends for Balthasar even to the substitutionary aspect of Christ’s suffering on the cross and his descent into hell. Christians can suffer with Christ on behalf of others.” See “A Plain Account of Christian Salvation? Balthasar on Sacrifice, Solidarity, and Substitution,” in Pro Ecclesia Vol. XIII, No. 2 (Spring 2004): 141-71, at 155. 107 Halbertal, On Sacrifice, pp. 70-71.

73 victim, in a sense, of the larger group. Halbertal points out, as an example, that SS officers understood themselves in this way. One can imagine a torturer today justifying his actions as necessary while seeing himself as sacrificing for his country because he sacrifices his conscience. Such an understanding of sacrifice merits some attention at this point, because it highlights the importance of the relationship between love and truth.

For Ratzinger, love and truth cannot be separated, and they cannot be separated precisely because Jesus Christ is Love and Truth. In the theology of Ratzinger, self-sacrificial love has a form, and that form is Christ, who is the incarnate Word. That is, the fullness of love and truth are manifest in a single person, whose whole person is a single act of self- sacrifice for others.

Ratzinger argues forcefully for the necessity of obeying one’s conscience. A key reason that he does so is that conscience is a means by which the human person comes to know the truth. Discussing John Henry Newman’s undertanding of conscience and truth,

Ratzinger claims:

Conscience is central to his thinking because truth is the heart of everything. …For Newman, conscience does not mean that it is the subject that has the final word vis-à-vis the claims made by authority in a world devoid of truth, a world that lives on the basis of a compromise between the claims made by the subject and the claims made by societal order. Rather, conscience signifies the perceptible and commanding presence of the voice of truth in the subject itself. Conscience means the abolition of mere subjectivity when man’s intimate sphere is touched by the truth that comes from God.108

In other words, to act rightly is to act in accordance with the truth, and, as the voice of truth, the conscience helps persons to act rightly. An act of self-sacrificial love cannot

108 “If You Want Peace… Concience and Truth,” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), pp. 85-86.

74 violate the truth. Love is not love without the truth, and the truth cannot be apprehended or lived apart from love.109 This connection of love and truth, a prominent feature in Ratzinger’s theology, is rooted in his Christology. Jesus Christ is the man for others, and he is the Logos in the flesh. In Christ, one sees the incarnation of eternal reason. Thus, love and reason, self-sacrifice and truth, are not at odds. The problem that

Halbertal presents receives an answer in Christology. To sacrifice one’s conscience, to act in a manner that does not accord with reason, is not to love. The unity of love and truth entails that a Christ-shaped sacrifice will not be senseless, for in Christ and his love, we see the truth.110

1.4. The Death of Jesus

While it is not necessary to go into an extensive discussion of Ratzinger’s theology of death, it is helpful to consider this theme in order to see Jesus’ death as a matter of going to the end. According to Ratzinger, a significant aspect of death is that it involves a cutting off of communication, that is, relationship. To die is to be separated from community and from God. However, the Old Testament reveals that biological death need not be the end of relation, and hence the person who loves, who lives for

109 This theme is crucial for Benedict’s social teaching: “Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is a fatal risk facing love.” Caritas in veritate, § 3. 110 The death of Jesus shows not only a man who is willing to love in the face of radical opposition, but it also shows the capacity of humanity to reject love and truth. It shows humanity without truth, opposing the truly just man. Hence, according to Ratzinger, in Pilate’s statement in John’s Gospel, Ecce homo, the term “homo” refers not only to Jesus but to humanity itself. In this suffering servant of truth and justice, one sees the fullness of humanity. Introduction to Christianity, p. 293.

75 righteousness, may live beyond biological death.111 Even so, death marks a limit. In the context of his discussion of purgatory, Ratzinger states that “the fundamental option of the baptismal candidate becomes definitively established with death.”112 In other words, at death, the basic intention, the underlying motivation that animated the person throughout her life, is set. There will be no more plot twists, so to speak, which might have redefined previous events in the narrative that makes up the life of the person. For this reason, to give oneself totally is bound up with death, because only in death does one reach the limit, demarcating the totality of the life of the lover.

Jesus dies because of sin. That is, when the worlds of faith and politics colluded against the embodiment of love and truth, the world said No, and this No led to Jesus’ death.113 Jesus spoke and did the truth in love, and when the world rejected him, Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, transforming the world’s No into the eternal Yes of love to God. This No brought Jesus to the limit. In this sense, one can say that in his death, in loving all the way to the end, Jesus’ “fundamental option” is “definitively established” as being for others. Sacrifice will involve pain and suffering in a fallen world. A crucial passage from Introduction to Christianity expresses this point well, and it pulls together several points from this chapter:

Now to the extent that this exodus of love is the ec-stasy of man outside himself, in which he is stretched out infinitely beyond himself, torn apart, as it were, far

111 “He who dies into the righteousness of God does not die into nothingness, but enters upon authentic reality, life itself. ...In the path followed by the men who wrote the Old Testament, it was suffering, endured and spiritually borne, which became that hermeneutical vantage point where real and unreal could be distinguished, and communion with God came to light as the locus of true life. …[C]ommunion with God means a life stronger than death.” Eschatology, p. 91. 112 Eschatology, p. 227. 113 See Introduction to Christianity, p. 293.

beyond his apparent capacity for going stretched, to the same extent worship (sacrifice) is always at the same time the Cross, the pain of being torn apart, the dying of the grain of wheat that can come to fruition only in death. But it is thus at the same time clear that this element of pain is a secondary one, resulting only from a preceding primary one, from which alone it draws its meaning. The fundamental principle of the sacrifice is not destruction but love. And even this principle only belongs to the sacrifice to the extent that love breaks down, opens up, crucifies, tears — as the form that love takes in a world characterized by death and self-seeking.114

Jesus’ loving pro-existence leads him to death, because it leads him to the limit of life in a world marked by sin. Jesus breaks the limits of death, and hence the burden of sin, by meeting the No of sinfulness and countering it with the Yes of divine and human love.

Jesus’ life of loving service cannot be understood apart from his self-sacrifice on the Cross, and this sacrifice cannot be understood apart from his suffering and death. To be sure, Ratzinger aims to correct a faulty understanding of sacrifice, which would put the emphasis on loss or suffering. At the same time, he insists that a “death-like” event115 and expiation are necessary dimensions of the faith. To put it in scholastic terms, the end of the act is to give love, but the object of the act is the immolation. That is, the means by which one attains the end is through suffering, but one does not aim at suffering. There

114 Introduction to Christianity, p. 289.

115 “The discovery of life entails going beyond the I, leaving it behind. It happens only when one ventures along the path of self-abandonment, letting oneself fall into the hands of another. But if the mystery of life is in this sense identical with the mystery of love, it is, then, bound up with an event which we may call ‘death-like’.” Eschatology, p. 94. He suggests this idea earlier in Eschatology: “That Kingdom is found in those persons whom the finger of God has touched and who have allowed themselves to be made God’s sons and daughters. Clearly, such a transformation can only take place through death. For this reason, the Kingdom of God, salvation in its fulness, cannot be deprived of its connection with dying.” Eschatology, p. 62. Elsewhere, he claims: “[C]onversion in the Pauline sense is something much more radical that, say, the revision of a few opinions and attitudes. It is a death-event. In other words, it is an exchange of the old subject for another. The ‘I’ ceases to be an autonomous subject standing in itself. It is snatched away from itself and fitted into a new subject. The ‘I’ is not simply submerged, but it must really release its grip on itself in order then to receive itself anew in and together with a greater ‘I’.” Nature and Mission of Theology, p. 51.

77 can be no sacrificial offering without pain. One cannot offer up loving service to God without being drawn out of the sinfulness of fallen humanity.116 In other words, death is a kind of limit on a human life, which is broken precisely by being met and transcended.

The total gift of self necessarily involves pushing through death, and rising above sin thus requires a death-like experience.

1.5. Conclusion

The mission of Christ is to bring the world into communion with God, the communion that he himself enjoys as the Son of the Father. In his earthly ministry, he assumed the role of the Suffering Servant, bearing the burden of all sin on the Cross, offering himself as a vicarious sacrifice on our behalf, and drawing the world back into proper relationship with God. However, the mission of Jesus has not come to an end.

Rather, it continues in and through the people that he has joined to himself. Ratzinger summarizes this Christologically-based understanding of the mission of the Church:

Jesus did not need to start by founding a People of God (the ‘Church’). It was already there. Jesus’ task was only to renew this People by deepening its relationship to God and by opening it up to all mankind. …Jesus made the old People of God into the new People by adopting those who believe in him into the community of his own self (of his ‘Body’). He achieved this by transforming his death into an act of prayer, an act of love, and thus by making himself communicable. Put differently, Jesus has entered into the already existing subject

116 The classic Augustinian understanding of sin as being closed in on oneself is apparent in Ratzinger, as he argues that salvation entails being drawn out or opened up. For example, “The Pharisee does not really look at God at all, but only at himself; he does not really need God, because he does everything right by himself. …The tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. …He draws life from being-in-relation, from receiving all as gift; he will always need the gift of goodness, of forgiveness, but in receiving it he will always learn to pass the gift on to others.” See Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 62. As Pope, he states that “modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life, and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in on himself, and it is a consequence – to express it in faith terms – of original sin.” Caritas in veritate, § 34.

of tradition, God’s People of Israel, with his proclamation and his whole person, and by doing so he has made it possible for people to participate in his most intimate and personal act of being, i.e., his dialogue with the Father.117

Jesus himself is the Gospel, because Jesus in his person is the reconciliation and communion of God and humanity. By being joined to Christ, one enters into loving relationship with the Father, and one is with Christ by participating in his mission.

“Being with Jesus and being sent by him seem at first sight mutually exclusive, but they clearly belong together. …Being with him includes the missionary dynamic by its very nature, since Jesus’ whole being is mission.”118 If the Church participates in the mission of her head, then her own mission should take a similar shape as the mission of Christ. As

Helmut Hoping summarizes the relationship between ecclesiology and Christology:

Jesus lived so much from the prayer to his Father, that one can say that his life up through his death was a single prayer. Also, for ecclesiology, the key is to look at Jesus’ prayer. The church and its confession emerges from the praying Jesus. Joseph Ratzinger shows this especially in Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, and on the Cross.119

In other words, the Church, as the body of Christ, participates in Christ’s pro-existence.

Ecclesial existence is pro-existence. The following chapter will explicate the link between

Christology and the mission of the Church by analyzing Ratzinger’s communion ecclesiology.

117 Behold the Pierced One, p. 30. 118 Jesus of Nazareth 1, p. 172. 119 “Jesus lebte so sehr aus dem Gebet zu seinem Vater, dass man sagen kann, sein Leben bis in sein Sterben hinein war ein einziges Gebet. Auch für die Ekklesiologie ist der Schlüssel im Beten Jesu zu suchen. Die Kirche und ihr Bekenntnis gehen aus dem Beten Jesu hervor. Joseph Ratzinger zeigt dies vor allem am Beten Jesu beim Abendmahl, im Garten Getsemani und am Kreuz.” Helmut Hoping, “Christologie und Liturgie bei Joseph Ratzinger / Benedikt XVI,” in Zur Mitte der Theologie im Werk von Joseph Ratzinger / Benedikt XVI, eds. Maximilian Heim and Justinus C. Pech (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2013), p. 112.

Chapter 2: Communion Ecclesiology in Ratzinger

The Church’s mission flows from her identity, which depends on its Christological foundation. This chapter describes how Ratzinger understands that identity in order to show that the mission of the Church is coextensive with the mission of Christ.

Consequently, if the mission of Christ is his pro-existence, then the Church, likewise, fulfills her mission to the extent that she exists for others and for the Father.

Communion ecclesiology emphasizes the organic relationship between Christ the head of the Church and Christ in his members.1 The head and the other members of the body act in concert, and thus the mission of the Church and the mission of Christ is a single mission, even if Christ and the Church remain distinct. Joseph Ratzinger, a premier contemporary proponent of communion ecclesiology, describes the Church chiefly in these organic terms, echoing his friend, Henri de Lubac,2 who argued that the Church is

1 According to Dennis Doyle, communion ecclesiology “represents an attempt to move beyond the merely juridical and institutional understandings by emphasizing the mystical, sacramental, and historical dimensions of the Church.” He identifies four characteristics of communion ecclesiology, which are shared aCross a wide variety of ecclesiologies that he considers to be communion ecclesiologies: retrieval of patristic vision; spiritual fellowship; unity symbolized in the Eucharist; and interplay between unity and diversity. See Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), pp. 12-13. 2 Both Ratzinger and de Lubac worked with Hans Urs von Balthasar to form the journal Communio, in which the development of this communion theology has found its home. For Ratzinger’s account of his involvement in founding the journal Communio, see “Communio: A Program,” Communio: International Review, 19:3 (1992): 436-49. See also Francesca Murphy, “De Lubac, Ratzinger and von Balthasar: A Communal Adventure in Ecclesiology,” in Ecumenism Today: The Universal Church in the 21st Century, eds. Francesca Aran Murphy and Christopher Asprey (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 45-80.

80 the true body of Christ, and the Eucharist makes her this body, even as the Church makes the Eucharist.3

This chapter aims to show that Ratzinger’s Christological claims, as presented in the first chapter, apply to the Church. This aim restricts the scope of the chapter. I do not attempt to present a comprehensive overview of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology.4 This chapter builds a bridge between Ratzinger’s Christology and the Church’s mission, but a full account of his ecclesiology is not necessary for that bridge. The intimate relationship between Ratzinger’s Christology and ecclesiology is firmly established in scholarship on

Ratzinger. Christopher Collins notes:

Many of the essential elements of his Christology can be translated into his ecclesiology, including…how Christ’s presence and nature are not static but dynamic and are ultimately made known in the event of the cross, where the fullness of love is revealed. It is the event of the cross that is experienced ever

3 See Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Gemma Simmonds, with Richard Price and Christopher Stephens (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006) and The Splendor of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (San Francisco: Ignatius, [1956] 1999), ch. 4. See also Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), pp. 75-85. 4 Ratzinger’s major works on communion ecclesiology are Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969); Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Robert Nowell. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008 [1987]; Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996 [1991]); and the essays collected in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor, 90-122. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005. His ecclesiologically focused works are collected in Gesammelte Schriften: Kirche – Zeichen unter den Völkern: Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene, Band 8 (Freiburg: Herder, 2010). For overviews of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology, see Maximilian Heinrich Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology: Fundamentals of Ecclesiology with Reference to Lumen Gentium, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007 [2005]); Thomas Weiler, Volk Gottes – Leib Christi: Die Ekklesiologie Joseph Ratzingers und ihr Einfluß auf das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1997); and James Massa, “The Communion Theme in the Writings of Joseph Ratzinger: Unity in the Church and in the World through Sacramental Encounter” (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1996). See also the discussion of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology in Christian Schaller, ed., Kirche – Sakrament und Gemeinschaft: Zu Ekklesiologie und Ökumene bei Joseph Ratzinger (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2011). An important topic in Ratzinger’s ecclesiology that this dissertation does not treat is his argument for the priority of the universal church to the local church. For an overview of this argument and his debates with Walter Kasper, see Kilian McDonnell, “The Ratzinger/Kasper Debate: The Universal Church and Local Churches,” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 227-50.

anew in the context of the liturgy of the church. For the church, then, this fundamental expression of the love of Christ poured out on the cross and experienced again and again in the eucharistic liturgy becomes the criterion by which it can be judged as being true to itself in its mission in the world.5

In other words, the Church’s mission flows from her participation in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. The Church offers this sacrifice in her liturgy, and this sacrifice is fundamentally an act of love for the world. Furthermore, Ratzinger’s Das neue Volk

Gottes alludes to the Church’s extension of Christ’s mission in her service to the world:

That there is only one legitimate form of the Church’s openness to the world, and so must it certainly always be. That form is two-fold. It is: mission as the prolongation of the movement of the Word’s procession and the simple gesture of disinterested serving love in the actualizing of the divine love, a love which streams forth even when it remains without response.6

The mission of the Church to the world – and the form of the Church’s openness to the world – derives from her Christic form as the body of Christ.7 This chapter will establish that the Church extends Christ’s mission, while the following two chapters describe this mission as it is lived in the Church’s liturgy and evangelical outreach to the world. In order to describe the continuity between the mission of Christ and the mission of the

5 Collins, The Word Made Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), pp. 93-94. 6 “Folglich gibt es legitimerweise nur eine doppelte Form der Öffnung der Kirche zur Welt, und sie freilich muß es immer geben: die Mission als Mitvollzug der Bewegung der Sendung und die einfache Geste der absichtlos dienenden Liebe im Mitvollzug der Liebe Gottes, die sich verströmt, auch wo sie antwortlos bleibt.” Das neue Volk Gottes, p. 285. Translation by Aidan Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, New Edition: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Continuum, 2007), p. 107. Also cited in Emery de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 175. 7 Christopher Ruddy says: “The Church is the totus Christus, whose head and members are inseparable. The Church, like Jesus, is chosen for the sake of a saving mission. The Church’s deepest vocation, like Jesus’, is pro-existence; it is called to exist for others, and so its nature and mission – like Jesus’ – are identical (even if the Church, unlike its Lord, is not sinless).” “ ‘For the Many’: The Vicarious- Representative Heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology,” in Theological Studies 75:3 (September 2014): 564-84, at 573.

Church, this chapter describes Ratzinger’s theology of the Church as the people of God and body of Christ. The body of Christ formulation is the most important for my argument. This chapter also briefly discusses Ratzinger’s theology of the Church and the

Holy Spirit. Thus, this chapter shows Christology and communion ecclesiology to be the bases for Ratzinger’s theology of mission.

2.1. People of God

2.1.1. A misunderstood term

The term “people of God” figures prominently in Lumen Gentium,8 and represents a significant achievement in Catholic ecclesiology in the twentieth century. As

Maximillian Heim notes, “people of God” serves as a way to overcome the difficulty that the formulation “body of Christ” presents for ecumenism. As Heim puts it, “people of

God” has a “roomier” sense, whereas “body” can imply that the juridical lines of the

Church are coextensive with the lines of the actual body of Christ.9 According to

Ratzinger, a body permits no intermediary stages. One is either a member or one is not.

The term “people of God” allows for a larger vision, for it allows the Church to understand

“the relationship of non-Catholic Christians to the Catholic by talking about them being

8 See Lumen Gentium in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Volume Two: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, [1972] 1990, pp. 849-99. Chapter II is on the people of God, and the formulation also appears in articles 18, 21, 23, 28, 29, 30-33, 40, 41, 44, 45, 50, 66, 68, and 69.

9 Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, p. 334. In a more comprehensive study of Catholic ecclesiology, a discussion of the subsistit in formula would be appropriate here. However, my aim in drawing attention to Heim’s remark is simply to note an aspect of the context in which the term “people of God” arose in prominence.

‘joined in many ways’ [Lumen gentium, §15] and that of non-Christians by talking of them

‘related’ [Lumen gentium, §16].”10 In this way, the term provides a potentially helpful way for Catholic theologians to respond to non-Catholic Christianity.

Ratzinger devoted his first dissertation to the topic of the people of God,11 and this study put him in a position to see how the expression became somewhat misunderstood after Vatican II. According to Ratzinger, theology after the Council often focused on the

“the people” as if the Church could be understood primarily in sociological or political terms. According to Heim:

The political and philosophical movements of the Enlightenment, as well as Marxism, pragmatism, subjectivism, skepticism, proportionalism, and, last but not least, relativism, were in his judgment influential during the postconciliar period in contributing to the transformation of the concept of People of God into something political and sociological, especially in Europe and America.12

In this sense, “people of God” seems to imply that the Church is merely a voluntary organization, like a club or political party.13 A negative consequence of this way of looking at the Church is that anthropology and social science can replace theology.

10 See Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Robert Nowell (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008 [1987]), p. 15-16.

11 Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche, München theologische Studien: 2, Systematische Abteilung; Bund 7 (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1992 [1951]). Published in Gesammelte Schriften: Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche: Band 1 (Freibourg: Herder, 2011). 12 Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, p. 388. 13 See Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), pp. 46-47. Also, Called to Communion, Epilogue: Party of Christ or Church of Christ?”: pp. 157-65. Aidan Nichols notes that “in the post-conciliar period, the formula ‘People of God’ is in danger of becoming the vehicle for an anti- hierarchical ecclesiology, a revolutionary category in which to appropriate the concept of a ‘new’ Church.” The Thought of Benedict XVI, p. 177. See also Tracy Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 86.

Theologians begin speaking of the Church in purely social-scientific terms.14 Certainly, one can study the Church as a human institution and make use of the social sciences.15

However, such study fails as theology when it does not account for the origin of the

Church in God.16 Ratzinger repeatedly argues against this reductive understanding of the

Church, which he believes to derive from a crisis of faith in God.17 As Ratzinger states:

The Church is not there for her own sake but should be the instrument of God for gathering men to him, so as to prepare for the moment when God shall be “everything to everyone” (1 Cor 15:28). The idea of God is the very thing that had been left aside in the “fireworks” surrounding this term, and it had thereby been deprived of its entire meaning.18

According to Ratzinger, the term “people of God” has been misinterpreted in a way that leads theology away from divine contemplation and towards self contemplation. Hence, he aims to provide a proper understanding of the term.

2.1.2. Israel as people of God

The term “people of God” has a positive theological content. Its appearance in the documents of the Council is of a piece with the conciliar aim of incorporating the images

14 See “The Ecclesiology of the Constitution Lumen Gentium,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, p .127. He also notes concern about “increasing emphasis on the horizontal dimension” in both “people of God” and “communion.” See ibid, p. 132. 15 For example, Joseph Komonchak makes a compelling case for utilizing social theory in ecclesiology in Foundations in Ecclesiology (Boston, MA: Boston College, 1995). 16 For example, in a discussion of how the Church might properly make use of technology to serve the world, he notes that “no service is rendered to anyone by a Church that we make for ourselves, one that is cut off from her spiritual foundations.” “Church as the Locus of Service to the Faith,” trans. in Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life, Unabridged Edition, ed. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011 [2005]), p. 227. 17 See “Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium,” pp. 124-25. 18 “Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium,” pp. 128-29.

85 and language of Scripture. As Ratzinger notes, in Scripture “people of God” does not figure largely as a name for the Church, but it refers to Israel.19 In the Old Testament,

God elects this nation to participate in his plan of salvation for the whole world. The

Church stands in continuity with Israel. According to Ratzinger, when the term “people of God” is used for the Church, it implies that the Church has become the new Israel.

This point about the Church as the new Israel, the people of God, recalls a major theme throughout Ratzinger’s corpus, namely, the unity of the testaments.20 He understands the Old Testament to reach its fulfillment in the New, particularly, in the person of Jesus Christ, but at the same time, one cannot isolate the New from the Old.

For example, in a discussion on Christian worship and the priesthood, Ratzinger states:

In the Resurrection of Christ…the temple is rebuilt through God’s own power (Jn. 2:19!). This living temple – Christ – is himself the new sacrifice, which has in the body of Christ, the Church, its own enduring ‘today.’ …[A]ny conception that presupposes a complete break, in matters of worship and priesthood, with the Christian history of salvation and that denies any connection between Old Testament priesthood and that of the New Testament must be rejected. …Through

19 “[W]hile the term ‘people of God’ occurred very frequently in the New Testament, only in very few passages, probably only in two, did it mean the Church, and its normal meaning indicated the people of Israel. Indeed, even where it could denote the Church the fundamental meaning of Israel was retained, though the context made it clear that now the Christians had become the new Israel.” Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, p. 18. The term is used in the Old Testament for Israel: “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Dt 7:6, NRSV). A passage from 1 Peter illustrates Ratzinger’s point: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9, NRSV). 20 Scott Hahn writes: “The unity of the Bible – the copenetration of the Old and New Testaments and their interpretation in the light of Christ – is a key to Benedict’s biblical theology.” Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), p. 100. Hahn notes a reference of Ratzinger to Dei Verbum: “The Council text regards…the understanding of Holy Scripture as an inner unity in which one part sustains the other, has its existence in it, so that each part can be read and understood only in terms of the whole. With this, we have in fact touched upon the fundamental concept of patristic exegesis, of which the central exegetical idea was unity – the unity that is Christ himself, who permeates and sustains all Scripture.” Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius, [1982] 1987), pp. 135-36.

the sacrifice of Christ and its acceptance in the Resurrection, the entire cultic and sacerdotal heritage of the Old Covenant has been handed over to the Church.21

I will comment on the implications of this statement for his theology of the liturgy in the next chapter. At this point, I note that for Ratzinger, the ministry of the Church stands in continuity with the ministry of Israel. The Church has taken up the “heritage” of Israel, because that heritage is fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.22 The Christological foundation for his notion of the Church as Israel and thus as people of God is central:

‘People of God’ in Scripture, in fact, is a reference to Israel in its relationship of prayer and fidelity to the Lord. But to limit the definition of the Church to that expression means not to give expression to the New Testament understanding of the Church in its fullness. Here ‘People of God’ actually refers always to the Old Testament element of the Church, to her continuity with Israel. But the Church receives her New Testament character more distinctively in the concept of ‘Body of Christ’. One is Church and one is a member thereof, not through a sociological adherence, but precisely through incorporation in this Body of the Lord through baptism and the Eucharist.23

In his fidelity to the Father and his self-offering for the world, Jesus Christ fulfills the vocation of Israel. His self-offering involves an opening of himself and incorporation of others into himself, and by this incorporation Jesus fashions a new people of God.

Ratzinger thus claims:

The Incarnation is in fact the new synthesis that has been brought about by God himself: it transcends the limits of the Old Testament…while taking up and preserving the whole of its legacy so as to open it up and to fill it with the wealth of

21 “The Ministry and Life of Priests,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, pp. 174-75. Pablo Gadenz provides an overview of the image of the New Temple in Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth. This notion of Jesus as Temple places Jesus in his Jewish context. The Old Testament Temple is the place of both sacrifice and presence. Jesus fulfills the meaning of the Temple, since he is now the place of presence and sacrifice. See “Jesus the New Temple in the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2013): 211-230. 22 “[I]it is entirely impossible to conceive of the New Testament’s notion of the people of God apart from Christology.” Called to Communion, p. 33. 23 The Ratzinger Report, p. 47.

the other cultures: the Incarnation is at the same time the reconciliation, atonement, and fellowship (communion) of those who hitherto were set in opposition to one another – Jews and Gentiles (see Eph 2:11-22).24

The Old Testament reveals the spiritual taproot of the salvific event to which the New

Testament points. Hence, for Ratzinger, it is appropriate to refer to the Church in terms of this original call of God on a people and fulfillment of the aim of that call in Christ and his Church. By receiving the Eucharist, Christians are drawn into Christ, and, in this way, they are made a people.25 The Church cannot cut herself off from the Old Testament, nor can she leave behind her “fathers in faith,”26 the Jewish people. Indeed, the continued existence of Israel herself is empirical proof that the gifts and call of God are irrevocable.27

God gives his people a task. The exodus is, to be sure, liberation from literal slavery, but it is also more. God does not free the people merely to give them land. The goal of the exodus is worship.28 The people of Israel are called to come out of Egypt so that they can render proper homage to their God. Although scriptural, this reason for the

24 “Communion: Eucharist—Fellowship—Mission,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, p. 76.

25 “We could also say that by his Eucharistic action, Jesus draws the disciples into his relationship with God and, therefore, into his mission, which aims to reach ‘the many’, the humanity of all places and of all times. These disciples become a ‘people’ through communion with the Body and Blood of Jesus, which is simultaneously communion with God.” Called to Communion, p. 29. He also states: “Just as the old Israel once revered the temple as its center and the gurantee of its unity, and by its common celebration of the Passover enacted this unity in its own life, in like manner this new meal is now the bond uniting a new people of God. There is no longer any need for a center localized in an outward temple…. The Body of the Lord, which is the center of the Lord’s Supper, is the one new temple that joins Christians together into a much more real unity than a temple made of stone could ever do [Das neue Volk Gottes, p. 79].” Called to Communion, p. 27. See also Church, Ecumenism, Politics, p. 18. The relationship of Eucharist and community also appears in The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, trans. W.A. Glen-Doeple (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966 [1960]), which I discuss in Chapter 4. 26 See Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times, A Conversation with Peter Seewald, trans. Michael Miller and Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), p. 82. 27 See Roch Kereszty, “A Catholic Perspective on the Mission of Israel,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition 12:1 (2014): 147-62, at 158 28 The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), pp. 15-16.

88 liberation of Israel is a fact that can be obscured in theology that elevates activism over contemplation or cult. By showing the connection between the Church and Israel through his discussions of the theme of the people of God, Ratzinger shows the true scriptural meaning of liberation. The people that is truly liberated is the people that has become freed from anything that hinders complete and open service to God, since true freedom can be realized when relationships are in proper order, and the proper ordering of creation entails that the Creator receive love from the creation.29

The idea of the people of God has sometimes been misunderstood, because of a modern tendency to focus too heavily, or even exclusively, on the horizontal dimension of faith, to the detriment of the vertical. The point about the purpose of the liberation of

Israel is apt here. Israel is not liberated primarily to live in its own land, freed from the tyranny of Pharaoh, although that is certainly an aspect of her liberation. Israel is liberated primarily to worship God. Ratzinger claims that the people of God are such insofar as they are a people oriented towards God.30 In other words, Ratzinger puts the accent on God rather than on humanity, thereby prioritizing theology over social science.31 He combats what he sees as the problem of viewing the Church exclusively in sociological terms. Renewal in the Church, which entails concrete, visible effects, begins with interior conversion and the grace of God. When Christians succumb to the temptation to focus on intra-ecclesial power dynamics, a temptation which flows from a

29 See Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 18-19. 30 Church, Ecumenism, Politics, pp. 18-19, 21. 31 “The Christian ‘community’ cannot be explained in a ‘horizontal,’ essentially sociological way.” “Communion: Eucharist – Fellowship – Mission,” pp. 78-79.

89 reductively horizontal focus on the Church, they can lose sight of the Lord who has called the Church into being and sent her on mission.32 For Ratzinger, the Church must never lose contact with her vital source, the God who has come in Jesus Christ.

2.1.3. Pilgrim people

While the mission of the Church is coextensive with the mission of Christ, and while the Church may rightly be called the body of Christ, the Church is not identical with Christ. The concept of the Church as the body of Christ might simply identify the

Church with Christ, leading to the notion that, for example, to disagree with the Church on a doctrine is tantamount to rejecting Christ himself.33 However, one must not simply identify the Church with Christ in this manner. The people of God is a people on pilgrimage. Hence, the name “people of God” adds a helpful eschatological dimension to ecclesiology.34 In other words, the Church on earth has not yet achieved her end. She is the people of God in the sense that she has been called by and is on the way toward God.

This point about the Church as a pilgrim people is important, because it precludes triumphalism. The Church on earth is not the heavenly city. It is evident that she is far

32 “While the Lord moves towards his Passion, while the Church is suffering, and he suffering in her, we are back on our favorite topic, on the question of privileges. …There may of course be an extravagant and excessive Roman centralization, which then has to be identified and corrected. Yet such questions should not divert us from the real task of Church: primarily, the Church is not there to talk about herself but about God.” “The Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium,” p. 133. See also Church, Ecumenism, Politics, pp. 22-28. 33 Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, pp. 16-17. 34 Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, p. 17.

90 from perfect.35 At the same time, the present imperfection of the Church does not diminish the dignity to which God calls her. In this sense, despite the sinfulness that one finds within her, her call to continue the mission of Christ persists. She may be said to have achieved her end to the extent that she participates in the mission of Christ.

2.2. Body of Christ

The body of Christ, which is given for many in the Eucharist, is the core of

Ratzinger’s communion ecclesiology. The Eucharist incorporates people into Christ, and in this way, it makes a people. The new people of God is the body of Christ. As Emery de

Gaál puts it, “the term ‘people of God’ receives its proper valence ‘only and exclusively’ in combination with the notion of the Church as the ‘body of Christ’.”36 Although the

“people of God” formulation guards against triumphalism and grounds ecclesiology in the biblical narrative, the understanding of the Church as body of Christ enjoys pride of place in Ratzinger’s ecclesiology.

2.2.1. Jesus and the Eucharist

At the Last Supper, Jesus gives his very self to his disciples, and in this way, he makes it possible for the mission of pro-existence to persist bodily through the ministry

35 Ratzinger openly talks about mistakes of the Church. See, for example, Salt of the Earth: Christianity at the End of the Millenium: An Interview with Peter Seewald, trans. by Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997 [1996]), pp. 170-80. 36 de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010) p. 181. See also Weiler, Volk Gottes – Leib Christi, pp. 69-84, 296-301.

91 of his disciples.37 At the supper, he anticipates his death and transforms his sacrifice on the Cross into an act of self-gift that is shared with the whole world in perpetuity.

Moreover, he brings his disciples into the ministry of his sacrifice: “[H]is Pascha is…far more than a meal: it is loving unto death. It is consequently sharing out [Teilgabe] and sharing in [Teilhabe] his own life, which is torn open for everyone in death.”38 Through the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist, persons are brought into communion with Jesus. He gives himself in order to unite the recipient to himself, and in this way, he unites persons to God.

This communion between God and man that is realized in the person of Jesus Christ for its own part becomes communicable to others in the Paschal Mystery, that is, the death and Resurrection of the Lord. The Eucharist effects our participation in the Paschal Mystery and thus constitutes the Church, the body of Christ.39

In the Eucharist, the communicant receives the body of Christ and, through this reception, is transformed into the body of Christ. A key dimension here is the bodily communication that Jesus accomplishes through the Eucharist. The Eucharistic body makes the ecclesial body:

Being a Christian is in reality nothing other than partaking in the mystery of the Incarnation, or, to use Saint Paul’s expression: the Church, insofar as she is the Church, is the “body of Christ” (that is, in fact, men’s partaking of communion between man and God, which is what the Incarnation of the Word is).40

37 As Francesca Murphy puts it in an essay on communion ecclesiology, “The sending or mission of Christ disseminates other, human, missions, each a little nexus of relations.” “De Lubac, Ratzinger and von Balthasar,” p. 56. 38 “Communion: Eucharist – Fellowship – Mission,” p. 73. 39 “Communion: Eucharist – Fellowship – Mission,” pp. 82-83. 40 “Communion: Eucharist – Fellowship – Mission,” p. 77.

The term ‘body of Christ’ is not merely a metaphor. Through the partaking of the sacramental body and blood of Christ, the communicant participates in the mystery of

Christ’s being. She is joined to the person of Christ. Hence, the Church really is Christ’s body, and the work that Christ was sent by the Father to do continues to be done on earth in and through the Church.

2.2.2. Eucharist and Holy Orders

Wherever a Eucharistic community is “legitimately” formed, there is the Church.

Legitimate means that the ecclesial community celebrates the Eucharist in communion with the bishop.41 The bishop is a living, bodily connection to the apostolic faith.

Therefore, the sacrament of ordination is essential for the tradition of the Eucharist. That is, the enduring handing on of the faith and of Christ’s body is possible because Jesus has entrusted the communication of his self-offering to the Twelve, whose mission of communicating the faith continues in the episcopal college.

Recovering episcopal collegiality represents one of the major aims of documents of the Council:42

41 Heim discusses Ratzinger’s interpretation of this teaching from Lumen Gentium, § 26 in Joseph Ratzinger, pp. 276-78. As Ratzinger puts it, “The eucharistic nature of the Church pointed first to the local gathering; at the same time we recognized that the episcopal office is an essential component of the Eucharist – as a service to the unity that follows necessarily from the character of the Eucharist as sacrifice and reconciliation.” Called to Communion, p. 79. 42 Ratzinger notes that the apostles themselves were, in the first place, a college, for each could only be what he was as one of the twelve. As successors to the apostles, the bishops are bishops insofar as they are members of the college. A key issue here is that the apostles, according to Ratzinger, were not pastors of local churches but were missionaries on behalf of the universal Church. “In the apostolic period it is above all the figure of the apostle itself that stands outside of the local principle. The apostle is not the bishop of a community but rather a missionary for the whole Church.” Called to Communion, p. 83. See also, Das neue Volk Gottes, p. 219.

One of the key aspects of Vatican II was collegiality. Its immediate meaning was that the episcopal ministry is a ministry with others. It is not that a particular bishop succeeds a particular apostle, but rather that the college of bishops is the continuation of the college of apostles. Thus one is not alone as bishop but essentially with others. …Ultimately, a basic principle of Christianity is evident here: it is only in the community of all the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ that one is a Christian, not otherwise.43

The bishops form a college, and being a member of the college of bishops is a constitutive aspect of the episcopate. Ratzinger’s point about collegiality has ramifications for his notion of pro-existence. A community that celebrates the Eucharist is the body of Christ, but this community must celebrate a valid Eucharist, that is a Eucharist celebrated under the auspices of a bishop. A bishop is a member of the college, and thus, he is called to be in communion with the whole college of bishops, representing the whole Church. To be a legitimate local or particular church is to be, not only gathered in a given place, but gathered while being opened out to the universal Church.44 Ratzinger makes this argument in order to support his claim that ecclesial being cannot be made or conjured up but only received. The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ is given by the

Spirit, but the bishops, as successors to the apostles, maintain a concrete connection to the original event.45 It is striking to note the parallel between the individual Christian and the individual ecclesial community. In each case, the relationship with Christ comes as a gift. The individual receives baptism and is brought into the Church. The local church receives, or is in principle open to receiving, the whole Church by means of her

43 Principles, p. 375. Cited in Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, pp. 455-56. 44 Called to Communion, pp. 88-89, 94. See also Church, Ecumenism, Politics, p. 10. 45 “Church Movements,” p. 184.

94 communion with the other churches through her bishop, who represents her. Being open, being for, is constitutive for the Church.

2.2.3. Incorporated into Christ

By means of Eucharistic communion, the faithful are incorporated into Christ.

They are made members of the body of Christ and, as members of this body, truly share in his very being:

Communion means the fusion of existences; just as in the taking of nourishment the body assimilates foreign matter to itself, and is thereby enabled to live, in the same way my “I” is “assimilated” to that of Jesus, it is made similar to him in an exchange that increasingly breaks the division.46

To receive baptism and communion involves not only a personal relationship with Christ as an individual, but also an incorporation into his body, within which one becomes

“assimilated” to Christ. The Church comes into being in the self-gift of Christ in the

Eucharist, which breaks the walls that divide persons and puts persons into relation with each other and with Christ. “Fellowship in the body of Christ and in receiving the Body of

Christ means fellowship with one another.” 47

Baptism and the Eucharist make the Church by making people into one body.

Two key points arise from this basic proposition. First, communion with Christ through the Eucharist brings people into communion with one another. In this sense, Ratzinger affirms the social dimension of the Church, or what one might call the horizontal

46 Called to Communion, p. 37. 47 See “Communion: Eucharist – Fellowship – Mission,” p. 69.

95 dimension of Church.48 At the same time, he argues that the vertical dimension precedes the horizontal. In other words, the individuals, families, parishes, and communities that make up the Church do not form a people because they are an affinity group. Their being connected through natural bonds to one another is not what, in the first place, makes them Church. Rather, they are bound to the divine person of Christ, who makes them a single body, and it is as this single body that the individual members are in communion with one another. Second, and most importantly for my argument, Jesus and the Church form a single subject: “Through baptism, answers Paul, we are inserted into Christ and united with him as a single subject. …Only Christ’s self-identification with us, only our fusion into unity with him, makes us bearers of the promise.”49 Christ unites people to himself, thereby effecting unity between persons and nations. As Aidan Nichols puts it,

“Just as sin is an unholy mystery of separation, so Christ’s person and work make up a mystery of re-unification.”50 The Church is truly one with Christ, and so her mission simply is the mission of Christ. This mission entails being opened up to and for the world, in order to bring the world into loving communion with God.

48 Henri de Lubac’s Catholicisme exerted a profound influence on him. In his foreword to the English edition published by Ignatius Press, Cardinal Ratzinger notes that this text on the social dimension of dogma was “an essential milestone on my theological journey.” Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988 [1947]), pp. 11-12. 49 Called to Communion, p. 33. 50 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, p. 103.

Ratzinger identifies a concept that is important for understanding how the Church and Christ can form a single subject: corporate or corporative personality.51 This Semitic concept forms the backdrop for the ecclesiology that emerges from the epistles of St.

Paul. A corporate personality is the head of a body of persons. The head incorporates the community, such that when the head acts, the community is understood to act as well.

Adam is considered as a corporate personality in the sense that all of humanity exists in the first place in him.52

Ratzinger notes that the concept of corporate personality is foreign to the

Enlightenment mind, which sees persons as autonomous individuals: “In the modern era, with its apotheosis of the subject, this notion became entirely incomprehensible. The ‘I’ was now a fortified stronghold with impassable walls. Descartes’ attempt to derive the whole of philosophy from the ‘cogito’… is typical in this regard.”53 In the contemporary

“social imaginary,”54 persons are, in the first place, individuals. Although Ratzinger does not offer a theory of corporate personality from a philosophical perspective, he uses this important biblical concept to argue that the boundaries between ecclesial persons are opened up, and thus a person participates in the life of the Church, to the extent that he is open to the other members of the Church, that he reflects in his existence Jesus’ pro-

51 Jean-Marie Roger Tillard claims that one can understand papal primacy in terms of corporate personality, exploring the implications of the unity of the pope and the episcopal college. See his The Bishop of Rome, trans. John de Satge (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1983 [1982]), p. 157-60. 52 Called to Communion, p. 35. See also Das neue Volk Gottes, pp. 81-82. 53 Called to Communion, p. 35. 54 Charles Taylor uses this term in A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, 2007), pp. 27, 35-43, 61, 83. Much of his discussion about the “buffered” modern self in contrast to the porous pre-modern self would resonate with Ratzinger’s discussion of the autonomous individual.

97 existence. Christ is the corporative personality par excellence. Paul calls him the “the new Adam” to indicate that in Christ a renewed humanity has begun. In the Church, the

“dispersed pieces of Adam” are brought back together into a single whole,55 because the

Church is the site where persons enter into communion with Christ, who is the head of one body.56 In Christ’s headship of the Church, then, the ministry of the Church and of

Christ are co-extensive.

2.2.4. Bride of Christ

Although Ratzinger refers to Christ and the Church as a single subject, he is careful to note that the Church remains distinct from Christ:

Christ and the Church are one body in the sense in which man and woman are one flesh, that is, in such a way that in their indissoluble spiritual-bodily union, they nonetheless remain unconfused and unmingled. The Church does not simply become Christ. …The Church must constantly become what she is through unitive love and resist the temptation to fall from her vocation into the infidelity of self- willed autonomy.57

She is distinct, because the Church is the body of Christ insofar as she is his bride. In communion, the two become as one flesh, but the distinction remains. This point prevents Ratzinger from wholly identifying the Church with Jesus, and it helps to preserve the unique role of Christ the head. Everything that the Church does is a derivative

55 “Church does not mean another idea in addition to man, but rather man on the way to himself. If the Holy Spirit expresses and is the unity of God, then he is the real vital element of the Church, in which distinction is reconciled in togetherness and the dispersed pieces of Adam are fit together again.” “The Holy Spirit and the Church,” in Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts, trans. John Rock and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006 [1997]), p. 65. 56 See Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, pp. 250-59. 57 Called to Communion, pp. 39-40

98 participation in Christ’s work.58 This distinction does not weaken the fact that the

Church and Christ form a single subject. The Church partakes of the divine nature when she “resists the temptation to fall…into the infidelity of self-willed autonomy,” and exists for others, namely, for the world and hence for her Lord.

2.3. The Holy Spirit and the Church

Ratzinger claims that reflection on the Church must always begin with Christ. The first line of Lumen Gentium, for example, is “Christ is the light of the nations.”59 At the same time, as Nichols puts it, “The image of the Church as Christ’s mystical body tells us that the Church … is the organism of the Holy Spirit, something vital, which works intimately within us and makes the mystery of the Incarnation present in our lives.”60 In other words, Ratzinger’s ecclesiology is Christological and pneumatological.61 He states:

Ecclesiology appears as dependent on Christology. …Yet because no one can talk correctly about Christ, the Son, without also straightway talking about the Father,

58 He mentions that the body of Christ and bride of Christ work from a similar starting point, since the biblical vision of the relationship of bride and bridegroom is one where the two become one flesh. See “Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium,” pp. 134-35. 59 “Lumen gentium cum sit Christus, ‘because Christ is the light of the nations’ there exists the mirror of his glory, the Church, that reflects his radiance. To understand Vatican II correctly one must always and repeatedly begin with this first sentence.” Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, p. 5. 60 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, p. 173. 61 In asserting the fundamental importance of the Resurrection for a theology of the body of Christ Ratzinger notes “that ‘body of Christ’ is in truth a pneumatalogical concept, which establishes the connection of ecclesiology not only with Christology, but also with the life of the Holy Spirit [daß „Leib Christi“ in Wahrheit eine pneumatalogischer Begriff ist, der die Verbindung der Ekklesiologie nicht nur mit der Christologie, sondern mit der Lehre vom Heiligen Geist herstellt]” (Volk Gottes, p. 245). Collins sums up the issue nicely: “While Christ is the absolute center of history and the One through whom all creation came about and toward whom all of salvation history is oriented, the Holy Spirit is the One in whom these developments are realized. As the history of the church unfolds, it is always moving from the center of history: the event of the incarnation and paschal mystery of Christ. Yet the church is also vivified and expresses itself in new ways by the ongoing movement of the Spirit.” Word Made Love, p. 98. See also Weiler, Volk Gottes – Leib Christi, pp. 84-86.

and because no one can talk about the Father and the Son without listening to the Holy Spirit, then the christological aspect of ecclesiology is necessarily extended into a trinitarian ecclesiology.62

The orientation of the Church with respect to the Father follows from her origins in the mission of the Son who is always for the Father and united in love to the Father by the

Spirit. The origin of the Church is the Trinity, and the pilgrim Church on earth is on her way to the Trinity. Therefore, the measure of the faithfulness of the Church to her mission must always be the Trinity,63 and for this reason, a properly theological account of the mission of the Church requires attention to Ratzinger’s communion ecclesiology in terms of pneumatology, as well as Christology.

2.3.1. Spirit as communion

Ratzinger emphasizes that the communion that the Father and Son enjoy is itself

God and is a person. The Holy Spirit is this communion. In the Trinity, we see perfect communion:

Being a Christian is essentially conversion, and conversion in the Christian sense is not the changing of a few ideas, but rather a process of death. The limits of the I are broken. The I loses itself in order to find itself anew in a larger subject that spans heaven and earth, past, present, and future, and therein touches truth itself. This ‘I and no longer I’ is the Christian alternative to nirvana. We could also say: The Holy Spirit is this alternative. It is the power of opening and fusing into that new subject that we call the Body of Christ or the Church.64

62 “Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium,” p. 140.

63 As Ratzinger puts it: “The Trinity is the measure and foundation of the Church.” “Spirit and Church,” p. 65. 64 “Spirit and Church,” p. 71.

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In this communion, the identity of the subject, the person, is not dissolved into the other, while at the same time, the boundaries that separate the subjects are overcome. The Son is not the Father, and yet his identity is totally in and for the Father. Ratzinger claims, thus, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the Christian answer to the Buddhist teaching on nirvana, that is, the idea that “[r]edemption is dis-solution, …the return to the void, the shedding of the ego as the sole true and final liberation.” 65 Communion in the Christian tradition does not entail that the personal subject must seek to be absorbed into nothingness, to have one’s self dissolved, in order to realize communion with others. The doctrine of the Trinity reveals a different vision, because the Most Holy Trinity is the perfection of communion between distinct subjects, and the Spirit is this communion.

Importantly, this relationship of communion is love. Ratzinger draws attention to this understanding of the Spirit when he reflects on pneumatology and the Church. He focuses on the concrete dimensions of a Trinitarian ecclesiology. In fact, he expressly rejects pitting the mystical Spirit against the institutional Son as a way to understand the

Church as the Church of the triune God.66 Thus, by arguing that the Spirit is love and communion itself, Ratzinger further underscores the significance of love in his theology as a whole. Love, understood in concrete terms, lies at the Church’s essence. The Spirit animates the Church as a communion of love.

65 “Spirit and the Church,” p. 67. 66 The Spirit is love, which abides, or, endures. Thus, love leads to unity, and the goal of the institution is to foster this unity. See “Holy Spirit as Communion,” p. 45. As Heim notes, “the Body of Christ image signifies a ‘spiritual union in the body,’ which does not oppose institution and Spirit but rather acknowledges their interpenetration.” Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, p. 243.

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2.3.2. Church as communion

Ratzinger reflects on the meaning of communion as the organizing principle of the

Council’s ecclesiology.67 At the most basic level, communion refers to a relationship of union between subjects even as the subjects remain distinct. The Spirit is the communion between the Father and the Son. The Church is a communion, or fellowship, of persons. The inner principle that animates the Church is communion, that is to say, the Holy Spirit.68

One way of entering Ratzinger’s thought on communion is through his discussion of baptism. This sacrament initiates the person into the Church and thus transforms the

“I” into an “ecclesial I”: “[Baptism] is not an isolated and autonomous decision of the subject but essentially a reception: a sharing in an already existing life form, the life form of the Church of Jesus Christ.”69 Baptism is, at its core, a reception, that is, a receiving and a being received. In the same way, the Christian faith comes as a gift to be received.

Christians cannot conjure up the faith. It comes from without, as “a gift.”70 Ratzinger reflects on the Creed, which originated as a baptismal formula. The profession of faith in the Triune God within the context of this initiation rite inserts the baptizand into the

67 See “Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium,” p. 129. His essay, “Communion: Eucharist—Fellowship— Mission,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, which also appears in Behold the Pierced One, represents one of his most sustained descriptions of the essence of the Church. The first chapter of Called to Communion, “The Origin and Essence of the Church,” also discusses the Church as communion. 68 By bringing the Spirit to the fore in his ecclesiology, Ratzinger begins to address the lacuna that Yves Congar identifies in Catholic ecclesiology, wherein the Eucharist, the Pope, and Mary often function as substitutes of the Spirit. See Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 2006 [1979-1980]), pp. I:163-164.

69 See Principles, p. 37. 70 Principles, p. 38.

102 heart of the Church and the very life of God. One enters this divine life in baptism, because in this rite, the invocation of the “name” of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – entails that the baptizand is called to share in the sonship of Christ, and thus, to be a son of the Father:

The one transcendent God of the Old Testament uncovers his inmost life: he shows that he is in himself a dialogue of eternal love. Because he is in himself relationship – word and love – that is why he can speak, feel, respond, and love. Because he is relationship, he is able to open himself up and establish a relationship of his creature to himself.71

Baptism is “entrance into the Son’s existence,”72 which transforms the “I.” The key is that the ecclesial “I” is a subject who is in communion with others. “Baptism means, then, that we lose ourselves as a separate, independent ‘I’ and find ourselves in a new ‘I.’”73 The ecclesial I, then, is one whose being is in relation to others. The subject is not self-made or isolated but rather receptive and in communion.

The Spirit is communion, and so it is the Spirit that makes one an ecclesial I, that is, that initiates the person into the Son’s (pro)existence. When he refers to the Spirit as communion, Ratzinger states that the Spirit overcomes the boundaries between subjects.

Much as the Spirit is the communion between the Father and Son, so the Spirit who animates the Church traverses the space that separates human persons. The ecclesial I is the I who has been brought by the Spirit into deepest relation with other persons. The person in this holy communion no longer lives for herself. In this sense, the term “pro-

71 “Communion,” p. 76 72 Principles, p. 32. 73 Principles, p. 33.

103 existence” is apropos in this context. To be in communion with another is to be for the other. To be for others in the Church has a concrete form. Hence, Ratzinger will point out that Christians bear each other’s burdens.74 Baptism thus inserts the person into a fellowship of persons who share a common faith and who share each other’s burdens.

Christians, taken as a collective, are to live for others, and this being for others should be understood as a mode of existence that applies at multiple levels of Christian life.

Ratzinger refers to the Church as an icon of the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus is the icon of the Father, so the Church is the icon of the Spirit. In his essay on the Church and the Holy Spirit, he states, “The Holy Spirit becomes visible and depictable in the Church.

If Christ is the icon of the Father, the image of God, and at the same time the image of man, so the Church is the image of the Holy Spirit.”75 His concern to keep pneumatology concrete is important for his understanding of communion. Those who have been brought into the Church have been brought into a communion with one another, but this communion is realized when the faithful allow themselves to undergo conversion, to be broken open to and for others, to draw near to the fire of God: “Only when we do not fear the tongue of fire and the storm it brings with it does the Church become the icon of the

Holy Spirit.”76 To be an ecclesial I is to be for others, to be pro-existent. By serving one another, and by bearing each other’s burdens, the members of the Church make her communion visible to others. In his Christology, Ratzinger makes clear that when we see

74 Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004 [1968]), pp. 343-45. I discuss the topic of bearing burdens and service within the Church in chapter 4. 75 “Holy Spirit,” p. 68. 76 “Holy Spirit,” p. 73.

104 the Son, we see the Father. The life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus reveal the Father.

When the Church acts out of her deepest essence, the Holy Spirit is visible. The Church reveals the Spirit that opens persons, that crosses boundaries and brings subjects into communion with each other.

Sin in the Church is a theological problem, since Christians profess faith in a holy

Church. Sin might appear to be a particular problem for Ratzinger, since he draws such a strong line from the divine life to ecclesial life.77 However, his point about communion and burden-bearing allows him to address the problem of sinfulness in the members of the Church. He comments on St. Augustine’s response to the Donatists – who wished to separate themselves from the sinful members of the Church – pointing out that the great

77 Some scholars see Ratzinger as working with an understanding of the Church that is too conceptual and not grounded in the Church as she actually exists in local communities. For example, in his chapter on “neo-exclusivist” ecclesiology, Gerard Mannion argues that Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar embrace a form of communion ecclesiology that emphasizes the priority of the universal Church, which Mannion understands to be the institutional church. In other words, Mannion criticizes Ratzinger and Balthasar for their top-down, hierarchical approach to ecclesiology, which pays insufficient attention to the the lived experience of local Christian communities. See his Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2007), pp. 55-71. Similarly, Lieven Boeve has argued that Pope Benedict abdicated in response to “cognitive dissonance,” which arose from an ecclesiology that focuses on the Church as the subject that initiates conversion in the world – in other words, an ideal Church whose observable holiness gives her the power to prick the consciences of persons in the modern world. According to Boeve, Vatican scandals presented Ratzinger with a different picture of the Church, and he chose to relieve his dissonance by stepping down from the chair of Peter. See Boeve, “Conversion and Cognitive Dissonance: Evaluating the Theological-Ecclesial Program of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI,” Horizons 40:2 (December 2013): 242-54. One can set aside this attempt at psychoanalysis and see that something similar to Mannion’s “neo-exclusivism” is at work in Boeve’s reading of Ratzinger’s theology. Both of these authors understand Ratzinger to describe a Church that is ideal and, thus, perfect. David Gibson has accused Ratzinger of wanting a “purer” Church in his The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. 16. This line of interpretation does not account for the texts where Ratzinger discusses sin in the Church, aiming to understand it through the person of Christ. In fact, Roch Kereszty cites Ratzinger in order to support an ecclesiology of the holy Church of sinners. See Kereszty, “ ‘Sacrosancta Ecclesia’: The Holy Church of Sinners,” p. 676 in Communio 40 (Winter 2013): 663-79. Ratzinger relies heavily on St. Augustine, who provides a theological framework for understanding why the pilgrim Church on earth is not “pure.” The notion that Ratzinger needs the Church to be empirically perfect in order for her to achieve her mission does not accord with Ratzinger’s actual words on this topic.

105 doctor of the Church argued that the Donatists sin against charity, and thus against the

Holy Spirit, when they enter into schism from the Church. According to Ratzinger, in his exposition of St. Augustine, “Accepting the whole community of believers is, indeed, part of being a Christian, the humility (humilitas) of love (caritas), the ‘bearing with one another’ – for otherwise the Holy Spirit himself is missing, the One who unites.”78 The fact of sinful members in the Church is actually a place where the holiness of the Church is visible. The Church does not make herself holy. Her holiness is a gift from God, and the holiness of God is most visible in the crucified Christ, who suffers by taking on the sins of the world. He bears the burdens of sinful humanity. The Church is holy in bearing the sins of her members. By bearing with one another, by taking on the burdens of each other’s sins, the members of the Church manifest their communion with one another, and in this sense, they reveal the Spirit who is Holy. Sinfulness in the Church does not entail that the Church is not holy; in fact, the Spirit transforms this sinfulness into an icon of holiness.

While the foundation of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology is clearly Christological, attention to his thought on the Spirit and the Church shows that there is no conflict between a

Christologically-conceived ecclesiology and a pneumatalogically-conceived one. The three persons of the Trinity are one God, and the Spirit who is the communion between

Christ and his Father is the same Spirit that transforms the human I into an ecclesial I by incorporating the person into Christ. There is a direct line from the action of the Holy

Spirit to the Church as the body of Christ. “[T]he crucified Lord is the spring that makes

78 “Holy Spirit as Communion,” p. 52.

106 the world fruitful. The source of the Spirit is the crucified Christ.”79 The communion that the Spirit both is and enables manifests as pro-existence, which sits at the very heart of his Christology.

2.4. Conclusion

In the communion ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger, there is a kind of hierarchy of communion. Communion identifies a relationship of a person (1) with God (2) through encounter with Christ (3) in the Eucharist, (4) entailing communion with others who are in communion with Christ, and (5) leading to evangelization and service. A believer enters into this entire hierarchy. A strictly “horizontal” communion, wherein level 3 is a matter of supporting levels 4 and 5 would not work in Ratzinger’s schema, while a purely

“vertical” communion, levels 1 and 2, is impossible. These levels are all dimensions of one, whole communion. In this dissertation, chapters 3 and 4 build on this holistic understanding of the Church and her mission. Chapter 3 presents Ratzinger’s understanding of sacrifice in liturgy, which primarily serves levels 1, 2, and 3, while chapter 4 presents Ratzinger’s understanding of mission as a sacrifice of service – or, diaconal sacrifice – and thus primarily serves levels 4 and 5. Liturgical sacrifice and diaconal sacrifice are distinct dimensions of Christian sacrifice, yet they are dimensions of a single, Christic sacrificial life. The concept of pro-existence provides the interpretive key here, because at every level of Christian communion, the personal subject is opened up to exist completely for the other. The encounter with Christ in the Eucharist breaks

79 “The Holy Spirit as Communion,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, p. 47.

107 open the self-enclosed I, bringing the I into relationship with others, leading to service for others. It does so because Christ himself is the person who is completely open, being for the Father, and who thus leads others into communion with the Father. Hence, the

Church, as this communion, enters into union with Christ and continues his pro-existent mission.

Christ’s mission of bringing persons into concrete communion with God does not end with his ascension into heaven, but continues in and through the Church. The aim of this chapter has been to show that the mission of the Church is co-extensive with the mission of Christ by presenting a basic sketch of how Ratzinger understands the nature of the Church. Christ brings people into communion with God, and the Church is that people who enjoy this communion with God and thus with each other. Christ’s mission is extended in history through the Church. The Church, then, exists for others. Ecclesial pro-existence derives from Christic pro-existence. The following two chapters flesh out the meaning of these claims.

Chapter 3: The Spirit of Eucharistic Sacrifice

Liturgy is central to the life and the theology of Joseph Ratzinger. He has identified the power that liturgy exerted on him from his youth as one of the driving forces in his theology,1 and has expressed concerns with the impoverishment of the liturgy after Vatican II.2 His reflection on liturgy is an important part of his legacy,3 and so it was fitting that the first published volume of his collected works would be that on liturgy. In the preface to that volume, he notes that the question of faith, of who God is and why we believe, gives rise to the question of the proper response to God:

1 See, for example, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), pp. 17-20. 2 For example, he states that “what began as process of making everything uniform has swung to the opposite extreme: a widespread dissolution of the rite, which must now be replaced by the ‘creativity’ of the community.” See The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), p. 16. John Baldovin provides a balanced critique of Ratzinger in his response to critics of recent liturgical reform. See his Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008). 3 Ratzinger’s most important work on liturgy is The Spirit of the Liturgy. Other major works include the essays collected in God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, ed. Stephan Otto Horn & Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003 [2001]); A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today, trans. Martha M. Matesich (New York: Crossroad, 1996 [1995]); and Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986 [1981]). For an overview of Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy, see Mariusz Biliniewicz, The Liturgical Vision of Pope Benedict XVI: A Theological Inquiry (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2013). Volumes of collected essays on his understanding of liturgy include Janet Rutherford and James O’Brien, eds., Benedict XVI and the Roman Missal: Proceedings of the Fourth Fota International Liturgical Conference, 2011 (New York: Scepter, 2013); Janet Elaine Rutherford, ed., Benedict XVI and Beauty in Sacred Music: Proceedings Of The Third Fota International Liturgical Conference, 2010 (New York: Scepter, 2012); D. Vincent Twomey and Janet E. Rutherford, eds., Benedict XVI and Beauty in Sacred Art and Architecture: Proceedings of the Second Fota International Liturgical Conference, 2009 (New York : Scepter, 2011); and Rudolf Voderholzer, ed., Der Logos-gemäße Gottesdienst: Theologie der Liturgie bei Joseph Ratzinger (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2009).

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I chose fundamental theology as my field because I wanted first and foremost to examine thoroughly the question: Why do we believe? But also included from the beginning in this question was the other question of the right response to God and, thus, the question of the liturgy. My studies on the liturgy are to be understood from this perspective. I was concerned, not about the specific problems of liturgical studies, but always about anchoring the liturgy in the foundational act of our faith, and, thus, also about its place in the whole of our human existence.4

The theme of sacrifice is integral to his work on liturgy. Indeed, his most developed text on liturgy, The Spirit of the Liturgy, includes extensive discussion of sacrifice, and he focuses on the concept because it is central in Scripture and tradition.5 This chapter on his liturgical theology will show how the mission of the Church is informed by sacrifice.

This chapter analyzes Ratzinger’s understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice. This chapter argues that in Ratzinger’s theology, the Church, through the Eucharist, participates in Christ’s self-offering to the Father, and thus her being takes the form of his being, which is from and for the Father. In this sense, liturgy and prayer primarily form the vertical dimension of pro-existence. Just as Christ’s mission for the world flows from his relationship to the Father, so the Church’s ad extra mission flows from her relationship to God, which is instantiated definitively in the Eucharistic sacrifice. I develop this thesis in three stages. First, I identify some basic features of Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy. This part creates the context in which one can understand his arguments for Eucharistic sacrifice. Second, I discuss liturgy as sacramental participation

4 Collected Works,Vol. 11: Theology of the Liturgy: The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence, ed. Michael Miller, trans. John Saward, Kenneth Baker, Henry Taylor, et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2014 [2008]), p. xvi. 5 See “The Theology of the Liturgy,” trans. Margaret McHugh and John Parsons, in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger: Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, ed. Alcuin Reid (Farnborough, NH: St. Michael’s Abbey, 2003), pp. 21-22.

110 in Christ’s sacrifice, a participation that informs her being for the world. Finally, I show how the erotic-agapic structure of sacrifice, which I analyzed in chapter 1, appears in

Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy.

3.1. The Nature of Liturgy: Basic Features

3.1.1. The priority of adoration

Adoration permeates Ratzinger’s understanding of the liturgy. When adoration – simply being with the Lord, loving him and praising him and his glory – is not the raison d’être of worship, then liturgy loses its fundamental meaning. Adoration precedes action.

This understanding of liturgy and adoration reflects “[t]he priority of logos over ethos, of receiving over making, of being over doing [which] lies at the heart and centre of Joseph

Ratzinger’s theological synthesis,”6 which I noted in chapter one. Authentic liturgy begins with a divine initiative, because worship is fundamentally a response to God’s grace bringing humanity into communion with himself. Ratzinger argues that a mistaken understanding of “active participation” following the liturgical reforms inaugurated by the

Second Vatican Council has contributed to a crisis in the Church by reversing the proper ordering of priorities,7 that is, by assuming a modern understanding of the human person primarily in terms of making and doing, thus taking increased “active participation” to refer to a proliferation of external and pragmatic activities. He agrees that liturgical

6 James Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions and Legitimate Hopes (New York: Paulist, 2009), p. 31. 7 See Biliniewicz, Liturgical Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, pp. 19-20.

111 reforms were necessary at the time of the Council, but “the word [participatio actuosa] was very quickly misunderstood to mean something external, entailing a need for general activity, as if as many people as possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action.”8 In this sense, active participation is often taken to mean that lay persons participate in the liturgy through audible or visible actions, such as serving as a Lector or

Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist. In this view, still and silent adoration does not constitute active participation in the liturgy.

In the liturgy, according to Ratzinger, persons gather to adore and honor God.

Simply being before the Lord in humble adoration must form the basic foundation on which liturgical action should rest. He makes this point in his discussion of eucharistic adoration. He notes that opponents of this practice assert that the Eucharist is for eating, not for watching. Against this view, Ratzinger argues:

So let no one say, ‘The Eucharist is for eating, not looking at.’ …Eating it…is a spiritual process, involving the whole man. ‘Eating’ it means worshipping it. Eating it means letting it come into me, so that my ‘I’ is transformed and opens up into the great ‘we’, so that we become ‘one’ in him (cf. Gal 3:16). 9

I note here that Ratzinger uses both active and passive verbs to describe the worshipper.

Giving priority to adoration entails eating and worshipping, but it also involves receptivity and transformation. In adoration, the worshipper not only acts but is acted upon.

8 See Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 171. 9 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 90.

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Adoration enables communion. Ratzinger claims that the Church has long understood that the Lord gives himself to the faithful in a real, tangible way in the

Eucharistic species. Thus, it is logical that Christians would show reverence to the host, in which Christ is present.10 This devotion allows the faithful to celebrate the liturgy, to receive communion, with fidelity to the true meaning of the celebration. Liturgical celebration does not simply give Christians an opportunity to perform activities. Rather, in the liturgy, the faithful commune with the Living God. It is necessary to come to know the Lord before one can receive him in communion:

In this sense, ‘to adore’ refers to a posture of reception, of listening and seeing, allowing the Word of God to enter one’s heart and mind. Such adoration may take place interiorly, but it also achieves an important expression in the longstanding practice of adoration of the host. Expressing agreement with a statement from Karl Rahner that the

Eucharist, and all sacraments, are ordered to reception, Ratzinger also states, “this reception encompasses many factors: to ‘receive’ Christ essentially involves ‘adoration’.”12

10 See “The Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrament,” in God is Near Us, pp. 88-9. 11 “The Immediacy of the Presence of the Lord Carried into Everyday Life: On the Question of the Adoration of the Eucharist and Its Sacredness,” in God is Near Us, p. 97. 12 See Ratzinger, “Change and Permanence in Liturgy: A Conversation with the Editor of the International Catholic Periodical Communio,” in Feast of Faith, p. 92.

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It is important to note that when Ratzinger makes these arguments, the priority of adoration is logical. He is claiming that true worship requires assent to the truth of God’s identity, as one to whom all glory and honor are accorded. To speak of a priority of adoration as a feature of liturgy, then, is simply to note an area where Ratzinger is consistent throughout his theology. He argues for the priority of being over doing in

Introduction to Christianity, a point consistent with the work of Romano Guardini, whom

Ratzinger acknowledges as a major influence.13 In his own The Spirit of the Liturgy,

Guardini claims that the priority of will over intellect, which plays out in a priority of ethos over Logos, is antithetical to Catholicism.14 Adoration logically precedes action. If being has priority over doing, then the priority of adoration is a principle that should guide liturgical celebration, for adoration is simply being in the presence of God.

This argument for adoration has practical ramifications. In addition to his vigorous defense of eucharistic adoration, Ratzinger also argues that liturgical celebrations ought to include times of silence. For example, he argues that the

Preparation of the Gifts can be a fruitful time to incorporate silence into the liturgy: “This makes good sense if we see the Preparation, not just as a pragmatic action, but as an essentially interior process. We need to see that we ourselves are…the real gift in the

‘Word-centered sacrifice’ through our sharing in Christ’s act of self-offering to the

13 See Ratzinger’s “Preface” to his Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 7-9. 14 In contemporary European and American culture, “The practical will is everywhere the decisive factor, and the Ethos has complete precedence over the Logos, the active side over the contemplative. …[I]t must be pointed out that an extensive, biased, and lasting predominance of the will over knowledge is profoundly at variance with the Catholic spirit.” Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. Ada Lane (New York: Crossroad, 1998 [1930]), p. 89.

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Father.” He goes on to say that such silence “is an invitation to direct our eyes toward

Christ, to look at him from within, in a gaze that is at once gratitude, adoration, and petition for our own transformation.”15 Thus, active participation requires silence, adoration, and an improper focus on exterior dimensions of worship can serve to diminish participation in the liturgy. The faithful participate in the liturgy by contemplating their own communion with the sacrifice of Christ. Through adoration, an interior transformation takes place in the assembly, whereby those who have gathered to celebrate the “feast of faith” are changed in their very being, as their existence becomes conformed to Christic pro-existence. Active participation refers primarily to participation

– whether internal or external – in communion with Christ, for all are called to be transformed and to personally encounter Christ in the liturgy.

3.1.2. Eschatology

3.1.2.1. Looking toward fullness

The eschatological nature of the liturgy arises from the theandric character of the

Church. The eternal, divine dimension of liturgy is alloyed with the temporal, human dimension. I will discuss the latter dimension first. There is an earthly dimension to liturgy, for the Church has not yet entered into the fullness of union with God:

The Christ-event and the growth of the Church out of all nations, the transition from Temple sacrifice to universal worship ‘in spirit and truth’, is the first important step across the frontier, a step toward the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament. But it is obvious that hope has not yet fully attained its goal.16

15 Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 210-11. 16 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 54

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In other words, the biblical narrative looks toward a time when the kingdom of God will be encountered in fullness, when faith will give way to sight. While Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection mark the decisive turning point in the story, the story has not come to its end. The people of God continue to wait.

Because the Church walks by faith, she requires particular signs that point to the infinite. The Sacraments, particular holy objects, and distinct rituals are all necessary.

Ratzinger notes that some theologians have attempted to claim that the sacramental life is not necessary after the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. These theologians claim that the tearing of the veil in the Temple at the time of the crucifixion indicates that access to the presence of God is no longer limited to a particular location.17 To be sure, the presence of God is not limited to a particular location, for God upholds all of creation.

However, according to Ratzinger, the fullness of God’s presence illuminating the created order occurs when God will be all in all, at the end of time, which is yet to come. Hence, the community of the faithful continues to need visible, tangible, bodily means by which to worship God.18 The God-man has given these means to the world in the sacraments, which are entrusted to the Church. In the liturgy, the people of God encounter the glory of the Lord by bodily, visible means. On the one hand, this people encounters God in fullness. To behold the transubstantiated host is to see God. And yet, this encounter

17 See “Immediacy of the Presence of the Lord,” pp. 99-100. 18 Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 54, 60.

116 with the Lord requires bodily mediation, for the human capacity to know God is limited by its being enmeshed in the not-yet of the present.

In addition to posing an argument for the continuing relevance of the sacraments in the life of the Church, this eschatological focus leads Ratzinger to make a controversial argument, namely, his argument for the normativity of the celebration of the Eucharist ad orientem. Prior to the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, priests celebrated the Eucharist facing east. 19 Facing east, regardless of the positioning of the altar and the assembly, is the main point, for this orientation signifies the expectancy of the Church that the Lord will return:

Christians pray not in the direction of the temple but toward the east. The rising sun, which triumphs over the night, symbolizes the risen Christ and is simultaneously understood to be as sign of his Second Coming. Through their position at prayer Christians show that the direction toward the Risen One is the true point of reference of their life with God.20

Celebration ad orientem connects the return of Christ to the resurrection, since the rising of the sun is understood as symbolic of the rising of Christ. Resurrection and looking toward the goal of creation, that is, the fullness of the kingdom, are bound together.

This orientation toward Resurrection finds further expression in the sacred art. The

Church uses images of Christ and the saints in her worship as a kind of memorial that looks both back to an event in history and forward to the end of history. As Ratzinger puts it, “All sacred images are, without exception, in a certain sense images of the

19 Ratzinger specifically notes that one should say the priest faces east, rather than say he faces the altar. See “Eastward- or Westward- Facing Position? A Correction,” in Feast of Faith, pp. 139-40. 20 “ ‘Built from Living Stones’: The House of God and the Christian Way of Worshiping God,” in A New Song for the Lord, p. 108.

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Resurrection, history read in light of the Resurrection, and for that reason they are images of hope, giving us the assurance of the world to come, of the final coming of Christ.”21 A new epoch has begun with the Resurrection. Post-Resurrection images are appropriate, for the reign of God has begun, even if not in fullness. Celebrating ad orientem makes the spatial orientation of the liturgy itself an icon, which both recalls the resurrection of

Christ, when the End touched human history, while looking toward the parousia of

Christ, which marks the definitive End.

Ratzinger’s argument for celebration ad orientem also reflects his Christocentrism, for the people of God gather and look toward the east in order to look to Christ. As

Ratzinger states, “Orientation is, first and foremost, a simple expression of looking to

Christ as the meeting place between God and man.” 22 He claims that celebration versus populum puts undue emphasis on the priest, as if the priest were performing for the faithful rather than leading the assembly to meet Christ. When priest and assembly face one another, they form a closed circle, and thus the posture of the gathering is not one of openness before Christ.23 The intention of the entire act of the celebration is to meet

Christ. Ratzinger recognizes that Catholics have become accustomed to the celebration versus populum, and his temperament is not such that he would advocate introducing a radical change to custom. Hence, he suggests that a Crucifix be placed on the altar, in

21 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 118. 22 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 68. 23 “The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself.” Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 80.

118 order that both assembly and celebrant may look to the Lord as one body.24 Such a practice represents a concrete way to look toward Christ in the celebration as one body.

3.1.2.2. Heavenly Liturgy

While the Church looks forward to the fullness of communion with God when she celebrates the liturgy, she also enjoys a foretaste of her final end in this life. There are two ways to view this point. First, the liturgy on earth participates in the heavenly liturgy. Ratzinger argues that in the liturgy the temporal touches the eternal. He refers to the liturgy as the worship of an open heaven. “[T]he Eucharist is an entry into the liturgy of heaven; by it we become contemporaries with Jesus Christ’s own act of worship, into which…he takes up worldly time and leads it beyond itself.”25 As I noted in chapter 1, the theme of openness pervades his work. The liturgy is an opening in the midst of the mundane, wherein finite beings touch the infinite, the divine. In the celebration, human persons really touch God.

A second way to understand the eternal dimension of liturgy is to consider its subject. Human persons touch God in the liturgy, because the liturgy is the anamnesis and re-enactment of the pro-existent sacrifice of Christ, which definitively tears open the veil between creature and Creator. Thus, the liturgy is, above all, an action of the whole

Christ, head and members. It is a work of God:

24 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 83. 25 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 70. “Heaven has been opened up by the union of the man Jesus, and thus all human existence, with the living God. But this new openness is only mediated by the signs of salvation. We need mediation. As yet we do not see the Lord ‘as he is’.” See Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 60

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[U]ltimately, the difference between the actio Christi and our own action is done away with. There is only one action, which is at the same time his and ours – ours because we have become ‘one body and one spirit’ with him. The uniqueness of the Eucharistic liturgy lies precisely in the fact that God himself is acting and that we are drawn into that action of God.26

In the liturgy, the worshipper both looks toward the coming of Christ and participates in the very being of Christ. I will elaborate on this further when I discuss Eucharistic sacrifice as participation in Christ’s sacrifice. Here, I note that this is the divine aspect of liturgy. Liturgy is human, relying on the finite, looking toward fullness. But it is also divine, because it is an act of the whole Christ, head and body, who is the Word of God made flesh.

3.1.3. The givenness of liturgy

Since liturgical celebration is a work of God, an ecclesial community cannot invent liturgy. The givenness of the liturgy is a significant aspect of Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy, providing a major reason for his criticisms of the way the post-Conciliar liturgical reforms have been implemented. He criticizes efforts by experts and “creative parishioners” to construct or re-construct liturgy.27 He states that worship “cannot spring from imagination, our own creativity.”28 He acknowledges that the rites in liturgies may

26 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 174. 27 See, for example, “The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Music” in A New Song for the Lord, pp. 142-45. He frequently makes a charge along the following lines: “the Liturgy must not be a terrain for experimenting with theological hypotheses. …The Liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of a community which, in any case, is diffuse and changing. It is revelation received in faith and prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church, in which revelation is received.” “Theology of the Liturgy,” p. 30. 28 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 22.

120 change over time, but he stresses that such changes must be organic rather than imposed.29 The liturgy is a living organism that grows according to its own principles. It must not be subjected to a set of principles for change that are foreign to its inner structure, its own life principle.

Christian liturgy is rooted in the paschal mystery of Christ. And the story of

Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is intimately bound up with Jewish rituals and celebrations. From its beginning in history, Christian liturgy has been received and handed on, not invented. Ratzinger discusses ways that the basic structure of Christian liturgy grows out of Jewish celebration of Passover, as well as worship in the synagogue and Temple. At the Last Supper, Jesus of Nazareth celebrated a meal with his disciples.

This meal was not any meal, for, as J.A. Jungmann argues, “the eucharistia – the prayer of the anamnesis in the shape of a thanksgiving – is more prominent than the meal aspect.”30 Ratzinger thus opposes those theologians who would argue that table fellowship in general is the basis for Christian liturgy. In other words, it is not the case that simply because Jesus ate meals with sinners, the basic nature of the liturgy is that of a meal. It is a meal, but one with roots in the Passover, a memorial to God’s salvation of

Israel in the Exodus. In a discussion of the dating of the Last Supper, Ratzinger notes that

John’s gospel does not present the Last Supper as a Passover meal, because, in its chronology, the slaughtering of the Passover lambs took place at the time of Jesus’ own

29 See, for example, “Change and Permanence in the Liturgy,” in Feast of Faith, pp. 86-87. 30 From Jungmann, Missarum sollemnia: eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe, 2 vols (Freiburg: Herder, 1948), p. I:327ff. Cited in “On the Theological Basis of Prayer and Liturgy,” in Feast of Faith, pp. 35-39.

121 suffering and death. Thus, “Jesus dies as the real lamb.”31 Ratzinger agrees with John

Meier that the Supper likely “was not a Passover meal according to the ritual prescriptions of Judaism,” but he celebrated it as a Passover, because he “knew he was going to die” and would not be able to celebrate the “usual Passover” with the Twelve:32

“[O]ne can see how it was that very early on, Jesus’ Last Supper – which includes not only a prophecy, but a real anticipation of the Cross and Resurrection in the eucharistic gifts – was regarded as a Passover: as his Passover. And so it was.”33 Thus, “the act constituting the Christian reality takes place within the Jewish framework.” At the same time,

Ratzinger goes on to note that “it has not yet attained a form, a structure [Gestalt] of its own as Christian liturgy.”34 Jesus celebrates this meal with his disciples, and he transforms it into the sacramental offering of his body and blood at the Cross. Consequently, the

Christian faith has taken on aspects of the Passover celebration in its liturgy, but the events that followed the Last Supper have transformed the meaning of the Passover: “We might put it like this: the eucharistic actions are taken out of the context of Passover and are placed within the new context of the ‘Lord’s Day’, i.e., the day which marked the first meeting with the Risen Lord.”35 In this sense, the celebration of the Eucharist is the

Christian Passover, because it is the remembrance and representation of the self-offering of Jesus.

31 See Jesus of Nazareth: Volume 2, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), p. 108. 32 Jesus of Nazareth 2, pp. 113-14. 33 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 115. 34 “Form and Content in the Eucharist,” p. 41. 35 “Form and Content in the Eucharist,” p. 45.

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Concerning Christian liturgy and its relationship to the synagogue, Ratzinger follows Louis Bouyer in claiming that “the Christian house of God comes into being in complete continuity with the synagogue.”36 The public reading of Scripture in the gathered assembly of the faithful is a crucial component of worship for Christians, and

Christian worship developed this character from its origins in the synagogue. These origins also point to worship in the Temple. The basic structure of Christian liturgy, hearing God’s word and offering sacrifice, is visible in the relationship between synagogue and Temple. The synagogue enshrines its Torah scrolls with a “kind of Ark of the

Covenant…where the local community reaches out beyond itself to the Temple.”37 In this way, the liturgy of the word points to the sacrificial liturgy. Whereas Temple worship has come to an end for Judaism, it persists in the worship of the Church, which is the action of the whole Christ, head and members, that is, the new Temple:

Christian worship…regards the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem as final and as theological necessary. Its place has been taken by the universal Temple of the risen Christ, whose outstretched arms on the Cross span the world, in order to draw all men into the embrace of eternal love. The new Temple already exists, and so too does the new, the definitive sacrifice: the humanity of Christ opened up in his Cross and Resurrection.38

The Temple is the place of sacrifice, and the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross becomes the sacrifice that Christians offer in their liturgy. In Christ, the worship that occurred in the

Jewish Temple continues in the Church.

36 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 63. 37 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 65. 38 Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 48-49.

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The Jewish roots of Christian liturgy manifests the unity of the Old and New

Testaments,39 a theme that is important for Ratzinger’s theology as a whole. The basic structure of Christian liturgy origination in the rites of Jesus’ Judaism underscores the non-manipulability of Christian worship. The reason that this basic structure is important is not simply because it is ancient or because it is what the Church has always done, but because the unity of the testaments and the consistency of liturgical structure derive from the person of Christ. In and through the liturgy, the faithful are brought into communion with Christ, who celebrated Passover, taught in synagogue, and called the

Temple his Father’s house. The assembly enters the story of Christ, which is the story of eternity coming into contact with history. In other words, that the liturgy is given rather than invented is simply the corollary to the personalist and Christological claims that

Ratzinger makes about Christian faith. The liturgy does not first and foremost build community, although it may do that, nor does it exist to celebrate a culture, although the riches of a particular culture may find their fullest expression through liturgy. Liturgy exists in order to bring a people into communion with Christ, that is, in order to make the

Church. The liturgy simply is the Church in full act.

Finally, this point about givenness might seem to suggest that all liturgy ought to be the same. However, Ratzinger notes that numerous rites have been recognized as licit in the history of Christianity. He points out that there are several “families” of liturgies,

39 In reference to the Old Testament sacrificial system, Ratzinger states, “The New Testament corresponds to the inner drama of the Old. It is the inner mediation of two elements that at first are in conflict with one another and find their unity the form of Jesus Christ, in his Cross and Resurrection.” Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 37.

124 such as Coptic, Byzantine, and Roman, and that, even in the West, the Roman liturgy has stood alongside the Gallican and the Spanish. The thread that has held those rites together was that they were understood to be apostolic in origin.40 This point about origins leads back to the Christological foundation of liturgical celebration, for the apostles are emissaries of Christ. Christian liturgy does not seek new forms in order to celebrate the community or to serve as a way for creative people to express themselves.

Liturgy is an opening, and for this reason, it is to be received as a gift. Ratzinger compares some contemporary attempts to make liturgy “relevant” to the worship of the golden calf at Mt. Sinai.41 He makes this point, not to cast his theological opponents in the worst possible light, but to note that the Israelites at Sinai may have meant well.

They had a proper impulse to worship. However, they could not wait for the Lord to give them the proper form of worship, and so they fashioned an object that they could control.

The notion that liturgical celebrations can be invented in order to encourage active participation is, according to Ratzinger, antithetical to the basic nature of the liturgy, for the focus then becomes the community itself rather than the God whom the community aims to worship. Cultural expressions will inevitably come out in local celebrations. The community need not attempt to insert its cultural norms into the rites. But if a local church would offer true worship to the God of Jesus Christ, then that church must receive as a gift the liturgy that is handed to her in tradition.

40 Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 161-65. He makes note of other more minor traditions, as well, referring to the Dominican rite. See, for example, “Assessment and Future Prospects” in Looking Again at the Liturgy, pp. 149. 41 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 23

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3.2. Participation in Christ’s Sacrifice

3.2.1. Self-offering of the Church, head and members

In Ratzinger’s theology, Jesus opened the way for his followers to participate in his sacrifice when he offered his body and blood at the Last Supper. He transforms his death into an act of self-gift in his offering of bread and wine, stating that this food is his body and blood, given for many: “The Lord could say that his Body was ‘given’ only because he had in fact given it. …[S]acrifice has become gift, for the Body given in love and the blood given in love have entered, through the Resurrection, into the eternity of love, which is stronger than death.”42 Jesus identifies the elements of the meal as his body and blood, which were broken and poured out on the Cross. In this way, the New Testament bears witness to the relationship between the meal and the event at Calvary. The Supper reveals the death of Jesus to be an act of love. The command given to the Twelve to continue to celebrate the new Passover opens the means by which persons participate in this offering of love, which is stronger than death. Ratzinger’s reference to love being stronger than death points to the significance of the Resurrection for a theology of

Eucharistic sacrifice. By celebrating Christ’s sacrifice sacramentally, believers enter into the love that conquers death and opens the path to Resurrection.

When the Church celebrates the new Passover, the members of Christ’s body are joined to the act in which Christ’s pro-existence is most fully manifest. Thus, “The ephapax (‘once for all’) is bound up with the aiōnios (‘everlasting’). ‘Today’ embraces the whole time of the Church. And so in the Christian liturgy we not only receive something

42 See Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 55.

126 from the past but become contemporaries with what lies at the foundation of the liturgy.”43 That is, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which brings sacrifice to its end, continues in history, “the time of the Church,” by means of the Church’s celebration of the liturgy. Thus, the rite in which the Last Supper is presented becomes, through

Christ’s self-offering, the gateway to the participation of the faithful in the sacrifice of the

Cross. “Christ’s Sacrifice was accepted long ago…but in the form of representation it has not come to an end. …This sacrifice is only complete when the world has become the place of love, as St. Augustine saw in his City of God.”44 In other words, the sacrifice of

Christ has not, in a sense, come to an end, and the Church participates in the event as present when she celebrates the liturgy whose form she has received from Christ through his Apostles. Thus, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is the sacrifice of the Cross.

In the introduction to this dissertation, I argued that, in normal usage, the term

‘sacrifice’ refers to an act that includes immolation, yet some contemporary theologians, such as Robert Daly, argue that sacrifice is simply total self-gift, oblative but not immolationist. Discussing Eucharistic sacrifice and its relationship to Christ’s sacrifice,

Ratzinger also claims that immolation is not the goal of sacrifice, but he nuances his understanding:

Belonging to God has nothing to do with destruction or non-being: it is rather a way of being. …It means losing oneself as the only possible way of finding oneself (cf. Mk 8:35; Mt 10:39). That is why St. Augustine could say that the true “sacrifice” is the civitas Dei, that is, love-transformed mankind, the divinization of creation

43 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 57. 44 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 58.

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and the surrender of all things to God: God all in all (cf. I Cor 15:28). That is the purpose of the world. That is the essence of sacrifice and worship.45

Destruction of the victim is not the goal of sacrifice. At the same time, one must lose oneself in order to find life. The language of loss alludes to a kind of destruction or immolation, but the goal of the loss is to come into one’s own, to realize one’s true identity in God. I note that this understanding of sacrifice vis-à-vis “destruction,” which

Ratzinger sets forward in Spirit of the Liturgy, is consistent with his discussions of the same theme in his Introduction to Christianity and Eschatology, which I discussed in chapter 1. As Ratzinger describes it, pro-existence entails that the one who offers oneself to God will, in a world marked by sin, undergo something like death:

But now sacrifice takes the form of the Cross of Christ, of the love that in dying makes a gift of itself. Such sacrifice has nothing to do with destruction. It is an act of new creation, the restoration of creation to its true identity. All worship is now a participation in this “Pasch” of Christ, in his “passing over” from divine to human, from death to life, to the unity of God and man.46

Again, immolation is the means to a greater end, but immolationist language does not drop out of Ratzinger’s account of sacrifice altogether. Christian sacrifice is an act by which the agent passes through death to life. The immolationist aspect of sacrifice, that is, the death, cannot be eluded. Furthermore, I note that sacrifice leads to communion between God and man. Indeed, this communion is the goal of sacrifice. The sacrifice that the Church offers in the liturgy is, in the first place, a ‘vertical’ sacrifice, that is, constitutive of her pro-existence vis-à-vis God.

45 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 28. See also “Theology of the Liturgy,” p. 25. 46 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 34.

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As I noted in the introduction of this dissertation, theologians and liturgical scholars since the Council of Trent have asked the question of how the Eucharist is a sacrifice, or what is immolated in the celebration? Unlike scholastic theologians and liturgical specialists, Ratzinger does not engage this question directly, but his discussion of destruction and losing one’s life to save it suggest that the Church in her members is the victim, for it is the ecclesial person who undergoes conversion, a death to self, and thus who changes in the act of offering. The victim that is immolated on the Cross is

Christ, while in the Eucharist, it is Christ, head and members. The Church becomes what she is by offering herself completely to God.

The establishment of this understanding of liturgy as the means by which the

Church offers herself up to God and becomes conformed to Christ-shaped being, that is, pro-existence, provides a foundation for Ratzinger’s understanding of liturgy and life. In

Daly’s understanding of sacrifice, the whole of Christian life becomes a matter of ethics, that is, of doing, rather than simply being with Lord, offering praise, and receiving grace in the sacraments. On this view, the liturgy seems to provide motivation or instruction for living generously, but since it is the living generously that is the real goal, one could potentially jettison the liturgy, live an ethical life, and still fulfill one’s Christian vocation.

While Daly might not want to claim explicitly that liturgy is basically disposable, it is difficult to see how he could rebut the charge that he reduces liturgy to ethics.

Ratzinger’s priority of adoration means that doing follows being, and truly being for the world derives from communion with God established in worship. Ratzinger states,

“Worship, that is, the right kind of cult, of relationship with God, is essential for the right

129 kind of existence in the world. …Worship gives us a share in heaven’s mode of existence, in the world of God, and allows light to fall from that divine world into ours.”47 In this sense, the liturgy can be understood as the inner principle of ecclesial action in the world.

Hence, he claims that “the Eucharist is the true motive power for all social transformation in the world.”48 In this way, the Church conforms to Christ’s form, that is, to the pattern that emerges in Ratzinger’s Christology. Jesus, in his outward ministry, is for others. At the same time, he shows that he is for others as the one who is completely for the Father and whose human will is completely conformed to the divine will. Jesus’ heart is opened up on the Cross,49 drawing others to him, and this open heart becomes the heart for members of the Church in their celebration of his life-giving sacrifice.50 By drawing together Ratzinger’s priority of adoration, his theology of Christic pro-existence, and his understanding of the Eucharist as participation in Christ’s sacrifice – which culminates in the Last Supper, crucifixion, and resurrection – I conclude that in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Church exemplifies pro-existence vis-à-vis God. It is the vertical dimension of pro-existence, analogous to Jesus’ relationship with his Father, from which his mission of being for the world derives.

47 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 21. Similarly, reflecting on St. Irenaeus famous statement about the glory of God being man fully alive, Ratzinger states, “Ultimately, it is the very life of man, man himself as living righteously, that is the true worship of God, but life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking toward God.” See Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 18. 48 “The Church Subsists as Liturgy and in the Liturgy,” in God is Near Us, p. 127. 49 “From his side, that side which has been opened up in loving sacrifice, comes a spring of water that brings to fruition the whole of history.” See “Wellspring of Life,” p. 43. 50 Christians “cooperate and join in the sacrifice with him, participating in the mystery ourselves. Thus our own life and suffering, our own hoping and loving, can also become fruitful, in the new heart he has given us. “Wellspring of Life,” p. 50.

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While Ratzinger prioritizes adoration in his understanding of liturgy, liturgy is incomplete without mission. I discuss outward mission in the following chapter. Here, I simply note this basic point:

[The Lord] has opened a way that we ourselves could not have pioneered, because our powers do not extend to building a bridge to God. He himself became that bridge. And now the challenge is to allow ourselves to be taken up into his being ‘for’ mankind, to let ourselves be embraced by his opened arms, which draw us to himself.51

In other words, if the Church participates in Christ’s sacrifice, she too must open her arms to embrace the world. The Church will be for the world, because she offers herself to God in the Eucharist. Jesus Christ reveals a pattern of communion with God overflowing into being for the world. By entering into and offering the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist, the Church becomes what she is, because her true being is formed by Christ, that is, her true being is pro-existence.52 Just as Jesus’ outward mission flows from his being for the

Father, so the interior life of the Church is formed in her liturgy, her being in the Son and for the Father, and her outward mission emanates from this center. The core of her being is being-for, and it is in liturgy that the essence of her being is realized.

51 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 59. 52 Thomas Rausch suggests that, with his focus on sacrifice, Ratzinger lacks the mission aspect in his theology of liturgy. See Rausch, Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to His Theological Vision (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2009), pp. 137-39. However, even if one were to depart from Ratzinger on theology of mission, the theme of pro-existence in Christology and the theology of Eucharistic sacrifice form an important foundation for mission, and so this criticism strikes me as misplaced.

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3.2.2. Worship in accordance with reason

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul exhorts Christians to offer up their bodies to

God, which is their logikē latreia, i.e., worship according to logos (Rom 12:1). The term logos is usually rendered as “word” in English translations of New Testament, but it also denotes wisdom and order. Logikē latreia then might be translated as in accordance with reason, or, reasonable worship. This text of St. Paul brings together three important aspects of Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice.53 First, true sacrifice involves “the whole of man’s existence.” He states:

The sacrifice is the ‘word’, the word of prayer, which goes up from man to God, embodying the whole of man’s existence, enabling him to become ‘word’ (logos) in himself. It is man, conforming himself to logos and becoming logos through faith, who is the true sacrifice, the true glory of God in the world. …[The Fathers of the Church] saw the Eucharist as essentially oratio, sacrifice in the Word, and in this way, they also showed how Christian worship stood in relation to the spiritual struggle of antiquity, to its quest for man’s true path and for his encounter with God.54

I have noted a distinction between sacrifice as self-offering to God and for others, that is, a distinction between vertical and horizontal. This text underscores that this is a distinction within a single sacrifice. Worship according to reason is sacrifice offered to

God in prayer, and this prayer forms the worshipper for mission. In other words, the worshipper who truly offers herself to God in liturgy will be for others in life. Sacrifice entails conformity of the entire self to “the word made love,” i.e., to Christ.

53 For further reflection on worship as logikē latreia, see Josip Gregur, “Fleischwerdung des Wortes – Wortwerdung des Fleisches. Liturgie als logike latreia bei Joseph Ratzinger,” in Der Logos-gemäße Gottesdienst, pp. 46-77. 54 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 46.

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Although sacrifice as logikē latreia developed partly from spiritualizing tendencies in the history of Israel and of the Church, human persons worship with their whole selves, body and spirit. Bodily action is a key dimension of the worship that is reasonable.

Ratzinger thus notes that worship includes such gestures as the sign of the Cross, which is a public declaration of Christian faith that the way to life is through the Cross.55 He argues for necessity of kneeling and prostration in worship. According to Ratzinger, the origins of these gestures in Christian worship are strictly biblical and did not arise in order to meet the demands of inculturation.56 Kneeling is a Christological posture, recalling the posture of Christ in his prayer in Gethsemane. In this prayer, one sees the human will as truly free when it is conformed to the will of God.57 In other words, by praying in this way, the Christian comports herself to the Son who lives completely from and for his Father. In this sense, by kneeling, the human person enacts the worship that is in accord with reason, for the body of the one kneeling shows in symbolic fashion the true order of creation.58 This posture embodies adoration.

Second, Ratzinger’s discussion of logikē latreia shows his understanding of the unity of faith and reason. He sees in Christian sacrifice “the confluence of several different streams: the spiritual movement of the Old Testament, the process of inner purification within the history of religion, human quest, and divine response.”59

55 See Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 177-84. 56 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 185. 57 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 187. 58 See Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 193. 59 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 50.

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Mythological religion seeks its own reasons, that is, it seeks to purify itself by turning to reason. In this sense, a human desire to know by way of reason and a human desire to worship mutually assist each other. This relationship between myth and reason, poetry and philosophy, is the “struggle of antiquity,” that is, the “quest for man’s true path.”

Mythological religion, reason, and Hebraic faith all find their one goal in Christ, and thus the purification of religion through engagement with reason is synthesized with the faith of Israel, whose understanding of sacrifice developed over time, becoming more interiorized and spiritual. Christ fulfills Israel’s faith, and he is also the word, that is, reason, incarnate. Hence, worship according to reason is to be conformed to Christ.

Ratzinger claims that St. Paul views worship as the action of Christ, which takes up and fulfills human nature and the promises of God to Israel.

The claims that Ratzinger makes about logikē latreia take concrete shape in his discussions of music. Because Christians offer sacrifice according to logos, not according to the flesh, there is a sobriety to Christian worship.60 As Romano Guardini argues,

Catholic liturgy recognizes the primacy of the intellect with respect to the will; truth rather than affection thus gives the liturgy its character.61 Ratzinger affirms the erotic, intoxicating effect that beautiful art can have on the human person. Music can move the soul in a way that unadorned speech cannot. At the same time, in liturgy, the word takes priority:

60 See, for example, “The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Church Music,” in A New Song for the Lord, p. 152. 61 Guardini, Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 85. Ratzinger refers to this section of Guardini in Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 155.

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It is above all in the Church that the “sober inebriation” of faith takes place – an inebriation surpassing all the possibilities of mere rationality. But this intoxication remains sober, because Christ and the Holy Spirit belong together, because this drunken speech stays totally within the discipline of the Logos, in a new rationality that, beyond all words, serves the primordial Word, the ground of all reason.62

While a single style of music for liturgy does not exist, acceptable music serves to enhance rather than detract from the word. Rather than celebrate the personal creativity of the composer, liturgical music must conform to the music of the cosmos, joining the earthly liturgy to the praise of the angels.63 This point is not a mere matter of personal taste. When the erotic takes precedence in celebration, there can be a tendency to “sink

… beneath the elemental force of the universe,”64 to become closed to reason. Music in the liturgy is open to truth, which is communicated by the beauty of the music and preeminently in the words. God has communicated to his people through real stories, and the fathers of the Christian faith have taken up the texts of Scripture and tradition into the words of the liturgy. This aspect of liturgy must guide liturgical music. For the ultimate aim of liturgical actions is to join worshippers to Christ, so that the members of the body of Christ may be conformed to their head, the Word of God, whose very being is true worship of the Father.

Third, worship according to logos is necessarily communal – that is, relational – because worship in conformity to Christ entails communion with all members of the body of Christ. The liturgy is an act of the entire people of God, which is the body of Christ.

62 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 140. In this sense, Ratzinger affirms the priority of Apollos to Dionysius. See Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 150. 63 See Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 152-54. 64 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 148.

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Ratzinger argues that the Word gives meaning to the individual, to history, and to the entire cosmos: “That is why this Word leads us out of individualism into the communion of saints spanning all times and places.”65 In other words, the individual does not find meaning as a self-enclosed monad, but in communion with others and in relation to history and the cosmos. The offering of one’s body as an acceptable sacrifice entails entrance into communion with a people, a body, which offers itself for the world and joins in the eternal, heavenly liturgy. I note that this point does not entail that a person praying alone as hermit, does not offer up true sacrifice. Rather, even in his solitude, the hermit who offers his life to God for others is worshipping communally, because by this act, he enters into the communion of saints, including hermits, cloistered religious, and intercessors.

Ratzinger’s undertanding of logikē latreia points to his understanding of mission by establishing that worship requires the offering of one’s entire self, both to God and for others. Furthermore, his discussion of reason and worship begins to suggest how

Christian faith and the pursuit of truth can enter into dialogue with and ultimately elevate culture. As I discuss in chapter 4, on interculturality and creative minorities, this conformity of life to reason – a conformity which begins, in a sense, in liturgy – is itself a service to the world and, thus, part of Christian mission. Finally, this communal dimension of Christian sacrifice reflects Ratzinger’s understanding of the person as relation, a topic to which I return in the conclusion to this dissertation.

65 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 151.

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3.3. The Erotic-Agapic Structure of Eucharistic Sacrifice

As I argued in the first chapter of this dissertation, Ratzinger’s understanding of love includes eros and agape. He uses these terms most explicitly in his first encyclical as pope, but the basic understanding of love as ascending and descending appears in his early work, Introduction to Christianity. In the person of Jesus Christ, the desire of humanity to ascend to God is met by God’s descending love. Christ unites eros and agape. In chapter 1, I also argued that sacrifice embodies love, that is, sacrifice can be understood as love in action. Since Ratzinger argues that the Church’s sacrifice is a participation in the sacrifice of Christ, then one would expect the pattern of eros-agape, or, ascent-descent, to appear in his theology of liturgy, and indeed it does.66

3.3.1. Liturgical ascent, descent

The erotic dimension of sacrifice refers to what one might call natural sacrifice. It is the sacrifice by which persons reach for the divine. In a discussion of cosmic liturgy and natural religion, Ratzinger refers to the concept of the exitus-reditus pattern, according to which cult provides a means of returning to a divine origin.67 In this understanding, cult

66 In this chapter, I do not spend much space addressing critiques of Ratzinger’s liturgical theology, but I would note that those liturgical theologies and programs at cross-purposes to Ratzinger’s must contend with his Christological foundations if they are to be adequate. On the issue of sacrifice in Ratzinger, Baldovin notes, “A good deal of what is written about eucharistic sacrifice will depend on the outcome of conversations about the meaning of Christ’s atonement and sacrifice on the cross.” See his Reforming the Liturgy, p. 72. However, since his study concerns only the liturgy, Baldovin limits his treatment of Ratzinger to those texts that explicitly discuss liturgy. To be sure, Baldovin’s engagement with Ratzinger is limited, because of the nature of the work. Even so, Ratzinger’s Christocentrism and comprehensiveness make engagement with his Christology an imperative for providing an adequate critique of his work. 67 Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 28-31.

137 in natural religion aims at ascent, because it provides the means by which persons return to the divine source whence they came into being. Although Ratzinger denies the

Gnostic tendencies that this desire for return can entail, he affirms that “exitus, or rather

God’s free act of creation, is ordered toward the reditus.”68 In other words, humankind is created by and in the image of God, and human nature is structured such that human persons and cultures seek to enter into communion with God.

Christian liturgy is sacrificial is because it is human. The desire to ascend to union with God by means of cult is part of human nature and thus natural religion. Christian faith brings this “quest” to its goal, affirming the desire to ascend. Ratzinger alludes to this natural desire:

In all ages, and among all peoples, the ultimate aim of men in their festivals has been to open the door of death. …The Christian feast, the Eucharist, plumbs the depths of death. It is not just a matter of pious discourse and entertainment, of some kind of religious beautification, spreading a pious gloss on the world; it plumbs the very depths of existence, which it calls death, and strikes out an upward path to life, the life that overcomes death.69

Ratzinger writes here of ascent and descent. The aim “to open the door of death” is an aim to ascend, for to be mired in death is to be brought low, to remain in “depths.”

Christian liturgy fulfills the aim of natural religion by means of descent, by plumbing “the depths of death.” At the same time, the desire to ascend is affirmed. Cult in natural religion reaches upward to the gods. It is erotic. Ratzinger also notes that this desire to

68 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 32. 69 “The Wellspring of Life from the Side of the Lord, Opened in Loving Sacrifice: The Eucharist: Heart of the Church,” in God Is Near Us, p. 44.

138 reach up is bound up with the notion that human beings are indebted to God.70 The existential need to offer a propitiatory sacrifice is natural. In this way, Ratzinger affirms human nature in his understanding of sacrifice. Human persons need to offer up sacrifices, and they will find liturgical expressions to do so.71

Although there is a basic human desire to make an offering to God, “we cannot construct the way to God.”72 Therefore, divine love descends. In the first place, the descent is the love of God: “The initiative in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ comes from God.

In the first place it is he himself who comes down to us.”73 This descent is agapic love, which the man who would offer true sacrifice must become.74 Sacrifice is life in union with God, and thus it includes love for others. Whereas the natural desire to sacrifice led to replacement [ersatz] sacrifices, the true sacrifice that Jesus offers, and to which he invites others, is the offering of self for others. Erotic sacrifice would be a sacrifice for my sins. Agapic sacrifice is a sacrifice for others. Thus, the Christic pattern of sacrifice appears in liturgy, because liturgy is the action of the whole Christ, head and members.

70 See “Wellspring of Life,” p. 45. 71 The removal of sacrifice from the Church does not remove the practice of sacrifice altogether; rather, it migrates to the state. See, for example, Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 72 “Theology of Liturgy,” p. 30. 73 “Wellspring of Life,” p. 45. 74 “Theology of Liturgy,” p. 25

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3.3.2. Beauty, eros, and sacrifice

Ratzinger, like his co-founder of Communio, Hans Urs von Balthasar, understands beauty to be essential to Christian liturgy and to Christian life in general.75 Ratzinger’s affirmation of erotic sacrifice gives rise to his insistence on the importance of beauty in liturgy. Beauty is integral to liturgy, not something that one can add to it. He staunchly opposes phenomena such as “utility music,” that is, music used merely and extraneously to elicit a certain feeling in the hearer.76

In “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” Ratzinger provides a succinct description of his aesthetic theology, and he does so with reference to sacrifice. The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross frames his reflection on the particular Christian understanding of beauty.

He begins this essay by noting that during Lent, for Evening Prayer on Monday of Week

2, the antiphon for Psalm 45 says, “You are the fairest of the children of men and graciousness is poured upon your lips.” According to Ratzinger, “It is clear that the

Church reads this psalm as a prophetic and poetic depiction of the spousal relationship of

Christ and Church. She thus acknowledges Christ as the fairest of men.”77 However, on

Monday of Holy Week, the antiphon for the same psalm changes, inviting the Church “to

75 George Pell provides a general discussion of Ratzinger’s understanding of beauty in “The Concept of Beauty in the Writing of Joseph Ratzinger,” in Benedict XVI and Beauty in Sacred Art and Architecture, pp. 24-36. 76 See “On the Theological Basis of Church Music,” in Feast of Faith, pp. 100-01. I note that while the priority of the word in liturgical music reflects the heritage of the synagogue (Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 143-45), instrumental music in Christian liturgy represents an area where the Church is continuous with the Temple, that is, the place of sacrifice (“Theological Basis of Church Music,” p. 105). In this sense, music is a vehicle for the erotic-sacrificial aspect of liturgy. 77 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty: The Cross and the New ‘Aesthetics’ of Faith,” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005 [2004]), p. 32.

140 interpret the psalm in light of Isaiah 52:2, ‘He had neither beauty nor majesty, nothing to attract our eyes.’ …The appearance of the ‘fairest of men’ is so unsightly that no one wants to look at him.”78 Christ is beautiful, and he is beautiful even in the un-comeliness of his visage, wounded in his self-offering. Here is a paradox, which Ratzinger does not seek to relieve by simply emphasizing one pole over another. As he brings the essay to a close, he returns to Christ and the Cross, the Suffering Servant: “Yet precisely in this Face that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, the ultimate beauty: the beauty of love that goes “to the very end” and thus proves to be mightier than falsehood and violence.”79

The sacrifice of Christ provides the foundation for Ratzinger’s understanding of beauty.80

Beauty acts on the one who beholds it in two ways: it wounds, and it elicits eros.

Ratzinger states that “the beauty of truth appears in [the Redeemer], the beauty of God himself, who powerfully draws us and inflicts on us the wound of Love, as it were, the holy Eros that enables us to go forth, with and in the Church, his Bride, to meet the Love who calls us.”81 While Ratzinger’s essay is comprehensible in itself, the reader who is familiar with his other discussions of openness, woundedness, and eros, can see how the theme of sacrifice surfaces in his references to the sacrifice of Christ. After noting that the question of beauty is also a question about truth, Ratzinger turns to Plato, according to whom beauty draws the human person out of the mundane and toward the search for

78 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” p. 33. 79 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” p. 39. 80 See Joseph Murphy, “The Fairest and the Formless: The Face of Christ as Criterion for Christian Beauty according to Joseph Ratzinger,” in Benedict XVI and Beauty in Sacred Art and Architecture, pp. 37-53. 81 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” p. 33.

141 the primordial form, and thus “the arrow of longing pierces man, wounds him, and in this very way gives him wings, drawing him upward.”82 In other words, the wound that beauty inflicts on the person initiates an ascent. This point comports well with the erotic-agapic pattern of sacrifice. Beauty opens up the human person, and thus stokes the desire to offer sacrifice. At the heart of sacrifice is the person opened out to others and to the Wholly Other. While the worshipper is free to respond (or not) to the wound of beauty, beauty helps to create the opening through which God acts on the person.

Furthermore, beauty intoxicates the person who receives it. The experience of the beautiful elicits eros in the person, and, as Ratzinger has argued in multiple contexts, erotic love is part and parcel of human love. Beautiful worship is authentically human worship, for it is both erotic and open, reaching for the divine and ready to sacrifice for others.

Liturgy requires eros. Beauty in the liturgy aims at fulfilling this erotic dimension by reaching up to bring heaven to earth. At the same time, as Ratzinger states, the beautiful is not mere aestheticism. The disfigured face of Jesus reminds the Church that she worships the Crucified One. The paradox of the beautiful Cross raises the issue of the mystery of God. Where liturgy is spare, it is because it must be silent in the face of this mystery. Ratzinger refers to the Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov, who argues that the beauty of the icon requires an asceticism of the eyes to be perceptible.83 There is an

82 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” p. 34. Similarly, he states that, for Plato, “Through the appearance of the beautiful we are wounded in our innermost being, and that wound grips us and takes us beyond ourselves; it stirs longing into flight and moves us toward the truly Beautiful, to the Good in itself.” Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 126. 83 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” p. 37.

142 asceticism required in Christian beauty, for it requires that the person “transition from what is merely external to the depth of reality.”84 Ratzinger also alludes to this necessity of asceticism when he draws a contrast between properly Christian art and certain

Renaissance art, the latter of which expresses “nostalgia for the gods” and “a world without fear of sin and without the pain of the Cross,” and thus “does not enter into the humility of the sacraments and their time-transcending dynamism.”85 While the

Suffering Christ may appear to be uncomely, those with eyes to see encounter in him the depth of God’s love. The arrow of beauty may draw the person by afflicting her with eros, but she will attain the desires of her heart only through the descent of self-sacrifice. One ascends by descending. By affirming that beauty is intrinsic to the Christian faith, and thus to Christian liturgy, Ratzinger refuses to relieve the paradox of the fair king, whose countenance is marred. This paradox gives the Christian understanding of beauty in the liturgy its unique character, as upholding the polarity of the king and the crucified one.

Ratzinger’s theology of sacrifice holds this understanding together, because it is in the liturgy of the Church where the beauty of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is perpetuated.

3.3.3. Liturgy and culture

The points that I have made about natural sacrifice and beauty can be synthesized to address the issue of liturgy and culture. I will discuss this issue further in the following

84 “Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty,” p. 38. 85 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 129.

143 chapter. Here I restrict my comments to the relationship of liturgy and inculturation.

Some theologians read Ratzinger as presenting a Eurocentric understanding of liturgy.86

An example of this charge appears in a critique by Daniel Pilario. Pilario opens his essay by describing the plight of some of the poorest persons in the world, and thus his essay also raises the issue of the liturgy and justice. Many of his parishioners in the Philippines must scavenge for food and items to sell at a dump.87 Pilario asks, “What does the

Eucharist do for the flock that God has entrusted to me?” To answer this question, he looks to recent magisterial teaching, and he identifies Ratzinger, who influenced St. John

Paul II and his encyclical on the Eucharist, as a significant advocate for emphasizing the sacrificical dimension of the Eucharist. Pilario raises a pair of important concerns, both of which Tracey Rowland identifies in her reply to some of the responses to her book,

Ratzinger’s Faith.88 Both of these concerns have to do with aspects of inculturation, and they stem from Ratzinger’s understanding of beauty as a constitutive aspect of liturgy.

First, the liturgy seems to be reserved for aesthetes and elites. Second, the beautiful is limited to what is European. Both of these problems can be addressed by looking at sacrifice.

Pilario rightly acknowledges that sacrifice constitutes an important aspect of

Ratzinger’s Eucharistic theology, and rather than dismiss Ratzinger’s understanding of

86 Mariusz Biliniewicz, The Liturgical Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, pp. 256-58.

87 Daniel Franklin M. Pilario, C.M., “Eucharist and Human Suffering: Retrieving ‘Sacrifice’ in the Contemporary Magisterium,” Modern Theology 30:2 (April 2014): 340-56, p. 340. 88 Tracey Rowland, “The Wax Nose of Reason: Responses to Ratzinger’s Faith” in The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism, ed. Peter Candler, Jr., & Conor Cunningham (London: SCM, 2010), pp. 353-54.

144 beauty and liturgy, Pilario recognizes that his aesthetic concerns are connected to his retrieval of sacrifice. He argues that Ratzinger aims to recover the vertical dimension of liturgy by recovering sacrifice, and thus liturgy requires a sense of awe and wonder in order to properly bring the worshipper into communion with God.89 However, Pilario levels his criticisms almost exclusively at the aesthetic aspect of Ratzinger’s theology and fails to engage his theology of sacrifice in depth. Pilario compares Daly to Ratzinger, stating that Daly’s understanding of sacrifice is more active, gives more weight to human initiative, and avoids turning the Mass into an idol.90 Pilario prefers Daly’s understanding of sacrifice, because it opens the possibility of understanding a shared meal and fellowship as a site for authentic sacrifice.91 Pilario wants to see the liturgy look more horizontal, focused on building community within the congregation. In this view, a focus on the transcendent leads to a disconnect between liturgy and life. However, shifting the focus of worship from sacrifice to community-building is problematic, since, by its nature, sacrifice is an action directed primarily towards God. As Ratzinger’s understanding of pro-existence makes clear, prioritizing the vertical dimension of sacrifice need not come at the expense of the horizontal dimension. Indeed, rightly understood, a focus on communion with God should enhance mission and community life.

Furthermore, as I have noted, Daly describes a view of sacrifice that suggests

Christian sacrifice is something wholly other than natural sacrifice. He unintentionally

89 See Pilario, “Eucharist and Human Suffering,” pp. 349-51. 90 Pilario, “Eucharist and Human Suffering,” p. 354. 91 Pilario, “Eucharist and Human Suffering,” pp. 355-56.

145 denies the natural human desire to sacrifice. Ratzinger, on the other hand, argues that the sacrifice of the Cross, in which Christians participate, fulfills natural sacrifice. It would seem that Ratzinger’s view of sacrifice would contribute to Pilario’s pastoral approach. Any human culture naturally desires to offer something up to God, to perform an act of sacrifice in order to be in right relationship with God. Simple and spare can be beautiful. The poor congregation can celebrate the liturgy with solemnity and dignity, bringing its suffering to the Christ who is immolated on the Cross. Many people from poor communities across the centuries and of different faiths have offered sacrifices to deities, performing the act with utmost seriousness. This is the basic point that Ratzinger makes when he affirms eros, and it is fitting that communities who understand liturgy as a sacrifice to God offer up the best of their talent and treasure. Thus, rather than denying the sacrificial nature of Christian liturgy, perhaps it would make more sense to try to present the Eucharistic sacrifice as an authentically Filipino sacrifice. The fact of poverty does not pose a major challenge to Ratzinger’s basic understanding of sacrifice, as Pilario supposes.

In response to the charge of Eurocentrism, I would note the language that

Ratzinger uses to talk about culture. He talks about the Gospel as a cut, which opens up a culture.92 This type of language is the same kind he uses for sacrifice. I discuss this topic further in the following chapter on mission. Here, I simply note where this point touches on the issue of liturgy and aesthetics. Acceptance of the Gospel at the cultural level

92 “Communication and Culture: New Methods of Evangelization in the Third Millennium,” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, pp. 46-48.

146 entails being opened up and sacrificed, not for the sake of destruction, but for the sake of bearing fruit. Concerning art, Ratzinger states, “There must, of course, be no rigid norms.

Freshly received intuitions and the ever-new experiences of piety must find a place in the

Church.”93 The key, though, is that the impulse to create artistic works must arise out of a prior receptivity. The purpose of art is not self-expression, but expression of the mystery of Christ. Discussing the challenges that Christians face when attempting to adopt music into liturgy, he explicitly opposes elitist conceptions of music, while at the same time arguing that the Church must avoid incorporating banal pop music into liturgy. Hence, he claims that those involved in the task of creating liturgical music must adopt “the courage of asceticism, …the courage to contradict.”94 This claim would apply to his theological aesthetics in general, and it opens up a way for thinking about inculturation in the liturgy. He claims that “the Church has had to be critical of all ethnic music; it could not be allowed untransformed into the sanctuary.”95 Presumably, though, this ethnic music includes the musical cultures of pre-Christian Europe, which were transformed when they encountered the Christian faith, a faith culture that had developed Jewish liturgical culture in the light of Christ.96 In other words, every culture must be opened to a liturgy that it receives from outside. At the same time, grace does not destroy what is beautiful in that culture. For an artist to offer herself to God entails

93 Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 134. 94 “ ‘Sing Artistically for God’,” pp. 136-37. 95 “Theological Basis of Church Music,” p. 118. 96 Ratzinger himself notes that Christian music cannot be equated with European music. See “Theological Basis of Church Music,” pp. 125-26.

147 that she open herself up to the Gospel rather than attempt to impose her own influence on her work. Even so, such opening up does not entail that she will not put her own stamp on the work. An Irish liturgy will differ from a Mexican liturgy even if there is no ethnic music per se, because each cultural group will bring something different to the service. It is also worth noting that the charge of a uniform, European standard of beauty misses the mark for the simple fact that the Church has known no such standard. For example, Gothic and Baroque architectural styles differ profoundly, and yet each is beautiful. Non-Western cultures will make unique contributions to the patrimony of ecclesial art and liturgical music, but even then, there is, for example, no static African or

Asian standard of beauty. Ratzinger’s point, rooted in his understanding of sacrifice, is that any culture, including European cultures, must be opened up, and must remain open to the God who comes from outside. Thus, liturgy must always be open rather than self- absorbed.

4. Conclusion

According to Ratzinger, the Eucharist is the Church’s participation in Christ’s sacrificial self-offering to the Father on the Cross, in which Christ’s pro-existence is most fully manifest, revealing the love that is stronger than death. Jesus lives by the offering of his life. The Church becomes what she is, as pro-existence, when she offers herself as a living sacrifice in the liturgy. She offers herself with the Son to the Father for the glory of God and the salvation of the world. Given Ratzinger’s understanding of the priority of adoration, I have argued that sacrifice in liturgy is primarily self-offering to God, and thus

148 sacrifice as an offering of self for others is enacted primarily in life beyond the walls of the

Church. In this sense, liturgy is not complete without mission. A theme that I have discussed in this dissertation is the meaning of sacrifice as the enactment of love. Thus, the erotic-agapic pattern of sacrifice appears in his theology of liturgy. By analyzing his thought on sacrifice, other areas of his liturgical theology become clearer. Ratzinger’s aesthetic theology, for instance, cannot be taken in isolation from his theology of sacrifice.

Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy naturally opens out into his theology of mission, for the mission of the Church and her worship are two dimensions of a common life. As he notes:

This liturgy is…not about replacement, but about representation, vicarious sacrifice [Stellvertretung]. Now we can see what this distinction means. The liturgy is not about the sacrificing of animals, of a ‘something’ that is ultimately alien to me. The liturgy is founded on the Passion, by a man who with his ‘I’ reaches into the mystery of the living God himself, by the man who is the Son. …Its origin also bears within its future in the sense that representation, vicarious sacrifice, takes up into itself those whom it represents; it is not external to them, but a shaping influence on them.97

A question follows: if the Church as the body of Christ represents the world in her liturgy, in what way is her representation “a shaping influence” on others? The following chapter provides an analysis of Ratzinger’s theology of mission, the work of the Church ad extra.

97 Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 57-58.

Chapter 4: Mission as Sacrifice

Christian sacrifice embodies pro-existence, which Jesus Christ reveals most fully in his sacrifice on the Cross. The mission of the Church is to participate in this sacrifice and to offer herself to God for the sake of the world. An examination of Ratzinger’s liturgical theology reveals that cultic sacrifice concerns primarily the vertical dimension of pro- existence. This chapter explores the mission of the Church as the horizontal, ad extra dimension of pro-existence, for Christian mission begins with the Eucharist, but “the

Eucharist must ever and again press out beyond that sphere [that is, the cultic sphere], precisely in order that it may wholly become what it is and remain what it is.”1

Ratzinger’s theology of mission may be summarized as follows: the Church offers herself as a sacrifice for the world, a mission that she carries out by liturgical and diaconal acts of embodied pro-existence in the world, which aim to mediate an encounter, and ultimately communion, with God. This chapter explicates the meaning of this statement by analyzing key texts that discuss the mission of the Church in the theology of Ratzinger.2

1 “Eucharist and Mission,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, trans. Henry Taylor, ed. Stephan Otto Horn & Vinzenz Pfnür (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005 [2002]), p. 98. 2 Ratzinger discusses the mission of the Church in What it Means to Be a Christian: Three Sermons, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006 [1965]); “Communion: Eucharist—Fellowship—Mission,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, pp. 60-89; “Eucharist and Mission,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, pp. 90-122. He discusses the theme of the Church’s work in the world in The Unity of the Nations: A Vision of the Church Fathers, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Washington: Catholic University, 2015 [2005]); Faith and the Future (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2009); (with Marcello Pera) Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, trans. Michael F. Moore (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006); Values in a Time of 149

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This chapter explores in two main parts the sacrificial mission of the Church in the theology of Ratzinger. The first part discusses the Church as a community that manifests

Christ’s pro-existence. It attends primarily to his early work, The Meaning of Christian

Brotherhood. The second part focuses on the Church’s mission to bear witness to truth.

This part examines Ratzinger’s use of sacrificial language to speak about the Gospel as opening the subject to truth., and it explores the culmination of his understanding of mission, the most perfect form of Christian mission, namely, martyrdom. Martyrdom brings together key themes of Ratzinger’s theology of mission, including his understanding of the witness of the Church to the state, by showing that the mission of the Church aims at conformity to Christ, who himself undergoes the death of a martyr.

4.1. The Pro-Existent Community

The Church fulfills her mission when she manifests Christ’s pro-existence in her communal life and in her life for the world. I discuss ecclesial pro-existence under three

Upheaval, trans. Brian McNeil (New York: Crossroad, 2005 [2004]); Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004 [2003]); The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, trans. W.A. Glen-Doeple (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966 [1960]). On communion ecclesiology and the mission of the Church in Ratzinger, see Joshua Brumfield, “Communion and Mission in the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger” (Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 2015); on the Church’s mission and salvation as authentic freedom, see Seán Corkery, A Liberation Ecclesiology? The Quest for Authentic Freedom in Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology of the Church (Bern: Peter Lang, 2015); on Ratzinger’s/Benedict’s political and legal thought, see the collection of essays Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought: A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law, ed. Cartabia, Marta and Andrea Simoncini (New York: Cambridge University, 2015); on vicarious representation and the role of the “small Church” in the world, see Christopher Ruddy, “ ‘Smaller But Purer’?: Joseph Ratzinger on the ‘Little Flock’ and Vicarious Representation,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition 13 (2015): 713-41. For a discussion of the ecclesio-cultural context in which The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood was written, and how that context has changed in the past 50 years, see Walter Kasper, “Christliche Brüderlichkeit,” in Kirche – Sakrament und Gemeinschaft: Zu Ekklesiologie und Ökumene bei Joseph Ratzinger, ed. Christian Schaller (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2011), pp. 55-66.

151 aspects: distinction from the world in order to be for the others; bearing member’s burdens as an expression of intra-ecclesial pro-existence; and vicarious representation.

Thus, the life of the Church expresses the life of Christ, who is totally for others.

4.1.1. Christian brotherhood: distinct from the world to be for the world

A reading of the Meaning of Christian Brotherhood bears much fruit for revealing

Ratzinger’s understanding of the Church’s pro-existence. One of the key questions that he seeks to answer in that book pertains to the openness of brotherhood. Is the Christian community a closed community, or is it essentially an open community? In the United

States today, one might ask if the Church is exclusive or inclusive. Ratzinger examines conceptions of brotherhood from pre- and non-Christian perspectives to present contrasting ideas of brotherhood and the development of Christian brotherhood.

Brotherhood concerns persons’ relationships to each other, and so it is closely connected to the question of God the Creator and God’s relationship to humankind.

Regarding this set of questions, the Old Testament presents a tension. On the one hand, humankind is one, descended from Adam, who has been created by the one God. There is a single human race, not multiple races that relate to the Creator in different ways by virtue of a hierarchy in the creation itself. However, from among the nations, God has elected a single nation, Israel, to be his own people, the particular people of God.

Whereas pagan nations may have worshipped particular gods as national gods, the people of Israel recognize their God to be the one God over the whole of humankind. This brotherhood is a defined people, distinct from the other nations. This understanding

152 differs from, for example, the Stoic understanding of brotherhood, which sees all of humankind united as a single brotherhood.3 Ratzinger raises this point, because the idea of a universal or open brotherhood has exercised the Western imagination since the

Enlightenment.4 On the other hand, Ratzinger notes that the idea of a closed brotherhood, of an elite inner circle, persists, as is the case, for example, in Marxist practice.5

Jesus Christ inaugurates a particular kind of brotherhood. First, and most important, as son of God, he makes a new brotherhood by inviting persons to share his filial relationship to the Father. Ratzinger notes that, in Scripture, the term “son of God” does not refer to the metaphysical characteristics of Christ, the God-man. Rather, he is the Son of God, because in his person, he represents and epitomizes the whole people of

God, Israel, whom God identifies as his son in the covenant with Israel. Here, the crucial theme of corporate personality comes to the fore. Within the Old Testament, the king stands as the whole people of Israel before God. Similarly, Jesus stands in as the head of a

New Israel.6 In this sense, the new brotherhood is introduced in the new understanding of the fatherhood of God. Jesus is the man who rightly calls God “Father,” and those who become disciples of Jesus are invited to call God “Father” as well, and thus these persons become sons of God through baptism. By calling the Twelve, a clear reference to the New

3 The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, pp. 12-14. 4 For example, Ratzinger notes the relationship between equal rights and brotherhood in the French Revolution. Brotherhood, pp. 14-15. 5 Brotherhood, pp. 15-18. 6 Brotherhood, pp. 47-48. See also Brotherhood, pp. 23-25.

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Israel, and offering to them his body in a ritual meal, Jesus inaugurates Christian brotherhood. Furthermore, Jesus is the new Adam. In Jesus, a new and renewed humanity is coming into being.7 The Christian brotherhood is made up of those persons who are made sons of God by sharing in the sonship of Jesus, and thus the Christian brotherhood consists of women and men who belong to Christ.8

Ratzinger argues that the Christian brotherhood is a defined brotherhood, and this defined brotherhood stands in contrast to Stoic and Enlightenment understandings of brotherhood. The fatherhood of God is mediated to human persons by the Son. To be incorporated into Christ is to become a son of God with and in Christ. This incorporation is initiated by baptism and constantly built in Eucharistic communion. Hence, the

Christian brotherhood consists of those women and men who receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist: “[T]his brotherliness is founded on our being incorporated in

Christ Jesus, in the uniqueness of the new man. …The celebration of the Eucharist is the constant reestablishment of our bodily unity with the Lord and with one another.”9 In this sense, Christian brotherhood is profoundly sacramental. It is a brotherhood of communion with Christ, mediated by the sacraments, which makes the members of the

Christian brotherhood sons of God. Given this sacramental dimension, the Christian

7 Brotherhood, pp. 32-33. See also Unity of the Nations, pp. 23-30. 8 In his survey of the topic in Scripture, Ratzinger notes that Jesus also includes as brothers those who suffer. Hence, the Christian brotherhood must count “the least of these.” However, he does not further explore the implications of this point. See Brotherhood, pp. 26-29. 9 Brotherhood, p. 50. See also Brotherhood, p. 69: “The Eucharist must again become visibly the sacrament of brotherhood in order to be able to achieve its full, community-creating power.”

154 community is a defined, and to some extent, closed, brotherhood. A people is marked as distinct on the basis of worship.

An ethical imperative follows from the Christological-sacramental nature of

Christian brotherhood. Members of the community must seek to overcome the barriers that may impede communion with one another. For example, Ratzinger identifies the problem of nationalism, stating that “overcoming nationalism is a task that every generation sets itself anew.” He continues, “It is equally apparent that our age no longer regards differences of class as ultimate, but seeks to remove them in a spirit of Christian brotherhood.”10 He also notes that Christians should do all that is possible to avoid close association with non-Christians.11 The point here is not to withdraw from the world, but to avoid occasion for division to be sown in the Christian community. One can easily imagine a parish whose ability to serve its neighbors is compromised because it is riven by class or ethnic divisions. Ratzinger’s suggestion that Christians not unneccessarily associate with non-Christians entails that the Christian community, rather than some other community, is preeminent in shaping the identity of Christians. Ratzinger envisions a tightly-knit community of persons, sharing life both within and beyond liturgical celebrations. The liturgy forms the lifeblood of this community, but it does not constitute the sole meeting point of Christian bretheren.12 Christians must seek

10 Brotherhood, p. 59. Concerning nationalism, see Thomas G. Weinandy, “Henri de Lubac: The Church as the Body of Christ and the Challenge of Ethnic Nationalism” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition 8:1 (2010): 161-83. 11 Brotherhood, p. 72. 12 In fact, Ratzinger notes that one problem with liturgy is that, with the decline of para-liturgical devotions and other pious practices, the Mass bears too much weight and is expected to build community.

155 opportunities to build up fellowship within the community. The picture that emerges from Ratzinger’s account of the sacramental and ethical dimensions of the Christian community is restricted in a certain sense, because the members of the brotherhood are distinguishable from those who are not members. However, he holds that this distinct community participates in the universal mission of the one God.

The two key biblical titles for Jesus, new Adam and son of God, that Ratzinger mentions in connection to brotherhood allude to a universal mission. Christ as the second Adam points to Christ’s inauguration of a new humanity. Adam signifies the beginning of all of humankind, not the head of a particular community. Hence, the one people of God begun in Christ is intended to include all of humanity; it is not limited to a particular set of persons within the whole of humanity. The title, son of God, identifies

Jesus as the beginning of a restored Israel. In his discussion of biblical texts on brotherhood, Ratzinger argues that while Israel is a particular community or nation, it is a people that has been chosen for the salvation of all humankind. This universal mission of an individual nation derives from a key principle of biblical theology, namely, the salvation of the whole begins with the salvation of the part. In the New Testament, St.

Paul refers to “first fruits,” which indicate salvation that has begun but has yet to work its way through the whole. The salvation of the whole of humanity begins with the salvation of the few, of the “little flock.”13 In this understanding, the universal begins with, is

See, with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), p. 134. 13 See Ruddy, “Smaller But Purer,” pp. 713-41.

156 included in, and is mediated by the particular. “This healing of the whole takes place, according to the will of God, in the dialectical antithesis of the few and the many, in which the few are the starting point from which God seeks to save the many.”14 Thus, while the Christian brotherhood involves well-defined limits – as it must be if the Gospel requires concrete human encounter for its communication – this delimited community exists to serve all of humanity: “This community is far more public than a mystery group.

It sees itself…in analogy with the people of Israel – indeed, with humanity. It claims to be the true Israel and the germ cell of the new mankind. Its new brotherhood is to be understood from this claim.”15 In other words, the community exists for others. At this point in his writing, Ratzinger does not use the term “pro-existence,” but, in his discussion of Christian brotherhood and the relationship of the Church to the world, it is clear that the idea has begun to germinate in his thinking.16

14 Brotherhood, p. 75. 15 Brotherhood, p. 34. 16 The idea also appears clearly in a sermon preached during Advent, 1964: “...one does not become a Christian for oneself at all; rather, one does so for the sake of the whole, for others, for everyone. The movement of becoming a Christian, which begins at baptism and which we pursue through the rest of our lives, means being ready to engage in a particular service that God requires from us in history. We cannot of course always think through in detail why this service has to be done by me, now, in this way. That would contradict the mystery of history, which is woven together from the inscrutability of man’s freedom and God’s freedom. It should be enough for us to know in faith that we, by becoming Christians, are making ourselves available for a service to the whole. Thus, becoming a Christian does not mean grabbing something for oneself alone; on the contrary, it means moving out of that selfishness which only knows about itself and only refers to itself and passing into the new form of existence of someone who lives for others.” What it Means to Be a Christian, pp. 54-55.

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4.1.2. Bearing burdens

The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood is an extended meditation on Christian community and on the meaning of that community as a distinct people with a mission to serve the whole world. A key theme throughout Ratzinger’s texts that relates to this work is the necessity of bearing one another’s burdens. I alluded to this theme in chapter 1, which discusses communion ecclesiology and the problem of the holiness of the Church whose members commit sins. Ratzinger argues that the Church is holy similar to the way that her Lord is holy. Christ is holy, not simply because he was sinless, but because he took on the sins of others. The Church, too, is holy, because she bears sins, both the sins of the world and the sins of her own members.

The members of the Christian community build brotherhood by bearing each other’s burdens, that is, by living and worshipping in solidarity with one another.17 This idea of bearing up each other’s sins brings to the fore the idea of vicarious sacrifice as the embodiment of charity. As Ratzinger discusses in Introduction to Christianity, Christian sacrifice consists of offering oneself as a sacrificial victim on behalf of another.18 The bearing of burdens, then, is not simply putting up with others or being patient with others in a limited sense. Rather, it is taking the struggles and pains of the other brother as one’s own. This understanding of bearing up the other brother follows the logic of sacrifice that Ratzinger has presented in other texts. The sacramental and ethical

17 Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2004 [1968]), pp. 343- 45. 18 Introduction to Christianity, pp. 286-87.

158 dimensions of brotherhood interpenetrate, being held together by the concept of self- sacrifice for the other. The sacramental dimension of brotherhood is celebrated in the liturgy, which binds the members of the community to one another by joining its members to Christ and Christ’s sacrifice. This sacramental participation in the sacrifice of

Christ entails an ethical dimension, in which brothers live for one another, taking on each other’s burdens and struggles. In other words, the sacramental dimension of brotherhood forms the interior life of the community, while the exterior dimension appears in the bodily life of the community. Life among the Christian brothers and sisters is sacrificial, because it is founded on participation in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Ratzinger offers a tangible way that Christians might bear one another’s burdens for the purpose of building fellowship in his discussion of “fasting” from the Eucharist.

He notes the difficult situation faced by persons, particularly the divorced and remarried, who are unable to receive the Eucharist. These women and men long to participate in the sacramental life of the community, but the canonical discipline of the Church, following

Jesus’ teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, requires that the divorced and remarried refrain from receiving communion. He argues that theologians in the Middle

Ages, including St. Bonaventure, understood that the assembled body of persons receiving the Eucharist was not necessarily identical with the body of those in communion with Christ. Furthermore, the celebration of communion is, at its core, a celebration of, and participation in, love. Hence, the discipline of excommunication does not necessarily cut a person off from Christ, because it does not cut her off from love. A

159 person can participate in the celebration of communion with Christ without receiving communion.

Despite this argument for communion with Christ in love, he notes that the experience of being unable to receive the sacramental body of Christ in the liturgy is still painful. He claims that the pain may be exacerbated by the reality that, today, many people present themselves for communion without having properly examined their consciences and received absolution when necessary. Receiving the Eucharist without regard to one’s state has become the de facto norm within Catholic practice, and thus it feels as if one is not participating by not receiving. In response to this situation, he suggests that other members of the community consider refraining on occasion from receiving communion in order to be in solidarity with those unable to receive. This embodiment of solidarity is a kind of self-sacrifice, and the one who performs the act plays a role in building a communion of love in which the excommunicant participates:

The ‘excommunicated’ person is in fact being supported by the love of the living body of Christ, by the suffering of the saints, who join themselves to his suffering as they do to his spiritual hunger, while both of them are surrounded by the suffering, by the hunger and the thirst of Jesus Christ, who bears with us all and supports us.19

This act of solidarity represents a profound form of communion, for it is a participation in the sacrifice of Christ. As Ratzinger claims, “Thus here too, the ‘healing of love’, the ultimate purpose of the Cross, of the sacraments, of the Church, is being effected.”20 In a concrete way, the person who fasts from the Eucharist for the sake of the other is

19 “Communion: Eucharist—Fellowship—Mission,” p. 85. 20 “Communion: Eucharist—Fellowship—Mission,” p. 86.

160 following the Christ who allows himself to be “excommunicated” for the sake of his brothers. Fasting pre-supposes that eating is the norm, and thus such fasting should not replace receiving as the norm. Ratzinger suggests, however, that this practice might be one way that believers can bear the burdens of other members of the community. This suggestion fits perfectly with his sacrificial logic, because the one who fasts is literally offering herself to be put outside the camp, as it were.21 She undergoes a type of immolation for the sake of another.

4.1.3. The “royal way” of vicarious representation

While the members of the Church bear up one another, the Church as a body, a single subject, bears the sins of the world:

The last and highest mission of the Christian in relation to nonbelievers is to suffer for them and in their place as the Master did. …The disciples of Christ will always be ‘few’, as the Lord said, and as such stand before the mass, the ‘many’, as Jesus, the one, stands before the many (that is, the whole of mankind).22

In other words, the most perfect way that the Christian community serves the world is by being joined to the sacrifice of Christ, in which he gives himself as a vicarious offering for sinners. The Church participates in the mission of Christ by bearing the sins of the world.

Because self-sacrifice to God for the others – that is, for the purpose of bringing others into communion with God – is the heart of Christian mission, suffering for others is the

Church’s “highest mission.” This sacrificial understanding of mission coheres with

21 Hence, he refers to this fasting as a form of “solidarity.” See “Communion: Eucharist— Fellowship—Mission,” p. 87. 22 Brotherhood, p. 83.

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Ratzinger’s understanding of the mission of Christ and the mission of the Church as the prolongation of the mission of Christ. He closes The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood with a provocative claim:

The disciples of Jesus are few, but as Jesus himself was one ‘for the many’, so it will always be their mission to be not against but ‘for the many.’ When all other ways fail, there will always remain the royal way of vicarious suffering by the side of the Lord. …It is when she is called to suffer for others that she achieves her highest mission: the exchange of fate with the wayward brother and thus his secret restoration to full sonship and full brotherhood. …In her suffering and love…she will always stand for the ‘many’, for all. In her love and her suffering she surmounts all frontiers and is truly ‘catholic’.23

Ratzinger states that in all she does, the Church is, like her Lord, for others. Yet, how her

“pro-existence” finds expression may differ from one epoch to the next. In some historical contexts, she may enjoy great freedom to communicate the message of the

Gospel. She may own the capital to build important institutions, such as schools and hospitals, which contribute to the good of those around her. On the other hand, the

Church may find herself in a place where she lacks freedom, power, and influence, appearing to be small. In all circumstances, the Church loves the “other,” which, in the theology of Ratzinger, takes the form of offering oneself up for the other, the form of sacrifice. In those contexts where the world constricts the freedom of the Church to speak and act publicly, that is, when “all other ways fail,” the Church cannot fail to love.

Rather, she offers her suffering as a vicarious sacrifice for the world, and in this way, she carries out her mission most fully, just as Jesus did on the Cross.

23 Brotherhood, p. 84.

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In The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, Ratzinger refers to vicarious representation [Stellvertretung] as the highest manifestation of the mission of the Church, but he does not discuss the concept itself. For this reason, the book needs to be read alongside his essay on vicarious representation [Stellvertretung], which was written sometime between 1959 and 1963.24 Here, Ratzinger states that the rediscovery of this concept “in the present hour of world-history can contribute decisively to renewing and deepening the self-understanding of Christians.”25 Although, vicarious representation receives relatively little attention in theology because it “lacks a corresponding philosophical model,”26 it plays a significant role in the faith of Israel, as well as ancient religious practice in general. For example, some Hebrew prophets, such as Moses and

Jeremiah, understand themselves to represent the people of Israel and to suffer on their behalf before God. St. Paul stands in this tradition when he, as Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, wishes that he himself could be cursed and separated from Christ if that would lead to the salvation of Israel (Rom 9:3).27 However, Israel differed from her contemporaries in that, for Israel, the one who serves as the vicarious representative does not identify with the entity that he represents in a purely objective or “magical” way. In this sense, “Israelite piety was even in its cultic expressions thoroughly personalistic.”28 In other words, a person can suffer on behalf of the people of God, but the people must

24 See “Vicarious Representation,” trans. Jared Wicks, Letter & Spirit 7 (2011): 209-20 25 “Vicarious Representation,” p. 219. 26 “Vicarious Representation,” p. 209. 27 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? with a Short Discourse on Hell, trans. David Kipp & Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988 [1986, 1987]), p. 204. 28 “Vicarious Representation,” p. 210.

163 somehow participate in the transaction; they do not stand justified before God without coming to conversion.29

This notion of suffering on behalf of another dovetails with the spirituality of martyrdom that Ratzinger discusses in “Vicarious Representation,” as well as in

Eschatology. Hence, he puts the suffering of Christ, in which the Church participates, within this understanding of vicarious representation. In his crucifixion, Christ willingly takes on the injustice of the world and suffers on its behalf. Even so, the world does not automatically receive salvation, as if the benefits of Christ’s accomplishments would magically be conferred on humanity. All persons must undergo conversion in order to enter into the life that Christ has wrought for the world through his sacrificial death.

Therefore, the act that Christ performs on the Cross persists through history in the community that bears the burdens of others, particularly the members of the Church.30

Alexandrian theology enlarges this concept by understanding the Church to serve as the representative of the entire world before God: “The church…does not stand simply for itself, but ‘can know herself (in the humble awareness of her election), as representative for mankind before God, in faith, prayer, and sacrifice, in hope for all, and still more in love for all’.”31 Thus, vicarious representation identifies the mediatorial role of the Church

29 “Vicarious Representation,” p. 212. 30 “Vicarious Representation,” pp. 214-15. 31 “Vicarious Representation,” p. 217, quoting Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Who Is the Church?,” in Spouse of the Word, trans. A.V. Littledale with Alexander Dru, in Explorations in Theology, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991 [1961]), p. 183.

164 as a whole. In making an offering of herself, the Church is embodying the pro-existent love that is the heart of Christian identity and mission.

Ratzinger’s understanding of vicarious sacrifice as mission is built primarily on his

Christology and ecclesiology. He also draws from Balthasar’s exposition of Karl Barth’s thought on the purpose of election in Scripture. Following Barth, Ratzinger notes that in a series of stories in Scripture featuring two brothers, whenever one brother is chosen by

God to be set apart, that is, holy, that brother is chosen for the purpose of saving the other brother. The notion of election is presented in terms of brotherhood. The elect one is the brother of the non-elect.32 Most importantly, the elect is rejected for the salvation of the non-elect. Ratzinger claims that the Church must offer herself to suffer for the sake of the other: “The Church, as such and as a whole, is the bearer of this vicarious election, the highest mission of which is to become vicarious rejection.”33 This point is worth noting, because it highlights a contrast between Daly and Ratzinger. Daly may agree with Ratzinger about destruction not being the end of sacrifice. However, Daly seems to take that to mean that any sense of loss drops out of sacrifice, and thus that the

Church would offer herself as a sacrifice simply by being ethical. Ratzinger does not deny the ethical dimension of mission, but his allusions to representation, election, and

32 See Brotherhood, pp. 78, 80-81. Barth himself argues that the continual reversal of expectations in the stories of election is meant to communicate that God’s will in electing whom he will elect is inscrutable. See, for example, Church Dogmatics II: The Doctrine of God, Part 2, trans. G.W. Bromiley, J.C. Campbell, I. Wilson, J.S. McNab, H. Knight, & R.A. Steward and ed. G.W. Bromiley & T.F. Torrance (Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 2004 [1957]), pp. 364. In addition to the stories of actual elections, Barth also notes that in the case of the cult in Leviticus, a dynamic is at work in which the victim that is chosen and holy must undergo immolation, whereas the other victim is freed. See Church Dogmatics II.2, pp. 360-62. This dynamic underscores that the elect one is chosen to be holy in order to allow the non-elect to receive a share in salvation. 33 Brotherhood, p. 79.

165 rejection reveal that Ratzinger assumes that a death will be involved, although the purpose of the death is for life to be brought out. Furthermore, this point reveals a sacramental dimension to Ratzinger’s thinking about mission. That is, by offering herself to suffer for “the other brother,” the Church is performing an act that is understood strictly from the perspective of theology rather than sociology or philosophy. I explore this understanding in my concluding chapter, but I note this point here to hightlight that in Daly’s view, the mission of the Church could be perceived and understood from a non- theological point of view; it appears likewise that theology falls out of the picture when the mystery of suffering and death falls out of Daly’s picture of sacrifice. Ratzinger retains these biblical and theological themes of representation, even if he only gestures towards an account of how vicarious sacrifice works.

This understanding of election and brotherhood raises two related points. First,

Israel, the chosen people of God, is never simply cut off or separate from the world.

Rather, Israel, as chosen, has a special relationship with the world, indeed, bears a certain responsibility for the world. The Church, likewise, is not a society that stands on its own.

Rather, the Church always exists in relation to the others. Second, this relation is one of being for the world. Ecclesial existence is existence for the other. In The Meaning of

Christian Brotherhood, as I have noted, Ratzinger does not use the term “pro-existence.”

However, he clearly refers to the idea of pro-existence through his reflections on election and mission. The elect, that is, the Church, achieves her mission by being for the non- elect world. He refers to this theme in other texts. For example in the Advent sermons collected under the title What It Means to Be a Christian, he notes:

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The question that really troubles us is not in the least concerned with whether and how God manages to save others. The question that torments us is, much rather, that of why it is still actually necessary for us to carry out the whole ministry of the Christian faith—why, if there are so many other ways to heaven and to salvation, should it still be demanded of us that we bear, day by day, the whole burden of ecclesiastical dogma and ecclesiastical ethics?34

In other words, in a contemporary, pluralistic society, many Christians may assume that their non-Catholic neighors of goodwill will be saved in some way. If others are saved without having to fulfill the obligations and adhere to the moral code of Christianity, then the Christian might wonder why undergoing those rigors are necessary. Ratzinger argues that this attitude misses a larger point about Christian faith. Christian faith is not merely a burden to be borne. Rather, it is a privilege to be able to participate in the salvation of others. The point for my argument is Ratzinger’s insistence that Christians are called out of the world in order to participate in the salvation of the world.35 In fact, the very nature of authentic Christian love entails a willingness to offer oneself on behalf of the other.

The people of God are called to be holy in order to be a sacrifice for the salvation of the world. Rather than use the term “pro-existence,” Ratzinger refers to the “royal way of vicarious representation.” The vicarious sacrifice is the sacrifice of oneself for the other.

The Church, in Christ, is this sacrifice.

In a talk on the contribution of the Church to peace in the contemporary world,

Ratzinger alludes to the concept of vicarious representation, of the salvation of the many

34 What It Means to Be a Christian, pp. 46-47. 35 What It Means to Be a Christian, pp. 48-49.

167 through the few, and suggests a practical consequence flows from this understanding of the mission of the Church:

The commission that we receive from the graves of the Second World War is to strengthen the forces of good and to plead, work, live, and suffer for those values and truths that hold the world together under God. God promised to Abraham that he would not destroy the city of Sodom if ten righteous men were found there (Gen. 18:32). We ought to do all we can to ensure that the ten righteous ones who can save a city are never lacking.36

He notes that God has, according to Scripture, made the promise that sinners would be spared punishment if a small number from the whole were righteous. If this truly represents the way God relates to the world, then the Church, as the people which has been called out from the world in order to serve the world, must nourish the souls of those “ten righteous ones.” In this sense, an interior renewal of the Church, a resurgence in the vitality of the prayer life of the Church, is part of her exterior service to the world, because in the order of grace, the many are saved through the few.

In summary, I would note three levels of participation in Christ’s sacrifice, because attending to these levels, or sets of relationships, helps to bring into view the deep connection between liturgy, ecclesiology, and mission. First, the Church unites herself to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross when she celebrates the Eucharist. The interior life of the Church is thus sacrificial. Second, the communion of sacrifice permeates the

Christian brotherhood in the relationships between Christians. Christians bear each other’s burdens and practice acts of fraternal solidarity. Third, the Church as a whole offers herself to God on behalf of the world. In this way, there is a brotherhood between

36 “What Must We Do? Christians’ Responsibility for Peace,” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, trans. Brian McNeil (New York: Crossroad, 2005 [2004]), p. 121.

168 the Church and the world, in which the Church bears the burdens of the world. Thus, the sacramental life of the Church informs her mission. She becomes what she is in liturgy, and she realizes her identity in mission.

4.2. Witness to Truth

In addition to service in the world, Ratzinger also emphasizes the role of the

Church in making the Gospel known in cultures where Christianity has either not taken root or is still in infancy. Furthermore, he discusses the service that the Church renders to the world, particularly in the sphere of politics, when she undertakes the healing and purification of reason:

We [Christians] must help reason to function in a comprehensive manner, not only in spheres of technology and the material development of the world, but above all with regard to the capacity to receive truth, the capacity to recognize the good, since the good is the precondition of law and thus also the presupposition of peace in the world. Our task as Christians today is to contribute our concept of God to the debate about man. …Christian faith in God also affirms that God, the eternal reason, is love.37

Ratzinger’s understanding of truth and reason is at work in these related discussions, for whether the Church speaks and acts in a pre-Christian or post-Christian context, her mission of evangelization requires her to testify to truth.

4.2.1. To pre-Christian culture: interculturality

The task of evangelization in pre-Christian contexts raises an important question about language and culture: how does the missionary preach the Gospel to non-Christian

37 “Searching for Peace: Tensions and Dangers” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 112.

169 cultures in a way that it can be understood? Ratzinger addresses this topic when he discusses “interculturality.” The logic of sacrifice, which he develops in his Christology and his theology of liturgy, shapes his discussions of culture and evangelization.

Ratzinger argues against the idea of inculturation because it assumes that religion and culture can be radically distinguished. In some Protestant and Catholic theology, kernel-and-husk language suggests that cultural features of Christianity can be stripped away in order to communicate the truth that the Christian religion contains. In this way of thinking, the kernel is what matters, and the husk can be discarded. Ratzinger argues, however, that cultures are themselves religious. A culture, by its very nature, aims to bring persons into contact with the divine. “Indeed, the very heart of the great cultures is that they interpret the world by setting in order their relationship to the Divinity.”38

Cultures feature stories that provide an understanding of the world, and they often include cultic practices. Cultures are, at the core, religious. “We can see...that their historical nature, their movement with time and in time, includes an openness.”39 In other words, cultures encounter other cultures, and Ratzinger observes that, in history, when culture A encounters aspects of culture B that help culture A to achieve its own aims of entering into divine communion, culture A is open to and absorbs those helpful aspects of culture B. Cultures are open to other cultures because the end of culture is transcendent. Rather than attempt to discard the cultural husk within which one practices the Christian faith, missionaries must be agents of cultural encounter. “With

38 Truth and Tolerance, p. 61. 39 Truth and Tolerance, p. 63.

170 this in mind, we should talk, no longer about ‘inculturation’, but about a meeting of cultures, or - if we have to use a technical term - about ‘interculturality’.”40 With this understanding of culture and mission, Ratzinger maintains two necessary poles: the particularity of a people and the universality of the Gospel. The one Church takes root within a multiplicity of cultures. The Christian missionary can be confident, because all cultures, as human means of reaching out to the divine, aim to know universal truths and to live in accordance with these truths. Christianity preserves these cultural instincts.

Thus, “Christian faith has proved to be the most universal and rational religious culture.”41

This emphasis on cultural encounter represents an area where Ratzinger’s organicism is especially visible. He claims that the Gospel must take root in a culture in a way that is consistent with the logic of that particular culture. At the same time, those who bring the Gospel will inevitably bring with them the culture in which they practice the Gospel. He does not argue that one should look for correlations between one’s own expression and the culture in which one preaches. Rather, interculturality means that the evangelist will present the Gospel as she understands it and allow it to take root. This organicism is itself rooted in his understanding of culture as a means reaching out to the divine. A community seeks contact with Divinity through culture. Thus, Ratzinger is arguing that, on the one hand, to a certain extent, non-Christian cultures and religions

40 Truth and Tolerance, p. 64. He also states, “It seems to me that interculturality is an indispensable condition today for the discussion of the fundamental questions of human existence.” “To Change or to Preserve? Political Visions and Political Praxis,” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 20. 41 “What is Truth? The Significance of Religious and Ethical Values in a Pluralistic Society” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 69.

171 need to be taken on their own terms. He states, “Christian mission will doubtless have to understand other religions far more profoundly and accept them at a deeper level than has been the case hitherto….”, yet they should be taken on their own terms precisely because they are seeking God, whom they will find in Christ. Therefore, Ratzinger continues, “…but these religions, on the other hand, in order for their best elements to survive, need to recognize their own adventual character, the way they point forward to

Christ.”42 Evangelization as interculturality entails that a pre-Christian culture find God through personal encounter with Christians. When a particular culture encounters the

God of Jesus Christ through its encounter with the Church, which bears her own cultural heritage and story, then the leaven of the Gospel can work in a way that is fitting for the people of that culture.

Ratzinger notes explicitly that evangelization involves sacrifice, “because it helps the world of the pagans to change so as to be a renewal of mankind and, as such, a cosmic liturgy in which mankind shall become adoration, become the radiance of the glory of

God.”43 His theology of sacrifice is deeply embedded in his understanding of mission and culture. Peter Casarella rightly emphasizes that Ratzinger’s theology of “advent dynamic” plays an important role in this understanding of culture: “advent also refers to the capacity of any culture – Christian or non-Christian – to remain open to an encounter with another culture without sacrificing either its religious foundation or the necessary

42 Truth and Tolerance, p. 79. 43 “Eucharist and Mission,” p. 119.

172 stance of openness.”44 The language of “openness” draws from the language for sacrifice.

A culture naturally reaches out to the divine. In this sense, one might say that human culture is an aspect of the erotic dimension of human being. At the same time, the erotic cannot be complete in itself. Hence, a properly ordered culture must be open to receiving from the other. This openness, or, receptivity, makes intercultural encounter possible.

However, in this openness a culture, like an individual, is challenged to die in some sense.

One must lose one’s life in order to gain it. However, this ‘conversion’ does not destroy the culture. On the contrary, a culture comes fully into its own when it is wounded by the Gospel. The drive to ascent requires a conversion, a kind of death, in order to achieve fulfillment. For example, Ratzinger refers to intercultural encounter as a “healing Pasch,” a site at which Christian sacrifice, a death and re-birth, takes place: “A process of this kind can in fact lead to a breaking open of the silent alienation of man from the truth and from himself that exists within that culture. This can represent the healing Pasch for a culture, which through an apparent death comes to new life and become then for the first time truly itself.”45 Furthermore, when he discusses the idea of exodus vis-à-vis culture, he alludes to this concept of a healing Pasch: “Exodus, making a cultural break, with its

44 Peter Casarella, “Culture and Conscience in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI,” in Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, ed. John Cavadini (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2012), p. 67. On the same page, Casarella defines the “advent dynamic” as “the progression of cultures ‘toward the Logos of God, who became flesh in Jesus Christ’.” For this definition, Casarella is quoting Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, pp. 194-97. Indeed, a series of Ratzinger’s Advent sermons have been collected under the title, What it Means to be a Christian. “...the borderline between ‘before Christ’ and ‘after Christ’ does not run through historical time, in an outward sense, and cannot be drawn on any map; it runs through our own hearts.” See What It Means to Be a Christian, p. 40 45 Truth and Tolerance, p. 63.

173 death and regrowth, is a basic pattern in Christianity.”46 Just as the aim of sacrifice is not destruction, Christianity “does no violence to any culture.”47 Agape brings eros to fulfillment.

Ratzinger also uses sacrificial language when he talks about the Gospel as a cut or a wound, which opens up a culture. He refers to the image of the fruit of the sycamore, drawing upon St. Basil’s commentaries on the Septuagint:

The sycamore is a tree that bears very plentiful fruit. But it is tasteless unless one carefully slits it and allows its sap to run out, whereby it becomes flavorful. That is why, we believe, the sycamore is a symbol for the pagan world: it offers a surplus, yet at the same time is insipid. This comes from living according to pagan customs. When one manages to slit them by means of the Logos, it [the pagan world] is transformed, becomes tasty and useful [Basil In Is 9, 228 (commentary on Isaiah 9:10), PG 30 516D/517A].48

Acceptance of the Gospel at the cultural level entails being opened up and sacrificed, not for the sake of destruction, but for the sake of bearing fruit and for the sake of communion with God. As Ratzinger notes, “an intervention of the dresser…is necessary,”49 and he goes on to say that the Gospel itself is the slit, for the opening up of the culture results from encounter with the Logos himself.50 This issue is especially pertinent for liturgy. As I note in chapter 3, he argues that no ethnic group should

46 Truth and Tolerance, p. 87 (emphasis added). Similarly, he notes that “The sacrifice of Christ becomes a breakthrough, a setting out into a new life…” See “Eucharist and Mission,” p. 100. 47 Truth and Tolerance, p. 67. 48 “Communication and Culture: New Methods of Evangelization in the Third Millennium” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005 [2004]), p. 46. He notes that some scholars dispute that Basil is the author: “The attribution of this commentary on Isaiah to Basil has been disputed. This passage is cited in Christian Gnilka, Chrêsis: Die Méthòde der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur, vol. 2 of Kultur und Conversion (Basel, 1993), p. 84.” Ibid., n. 1. 49 “Communication and Culture,” p. 47. 50 “Communication and Culture,” p. 48.

174 impose its music on the liturgy. In other words, a culture must be opened to a liturgy that it receives from outside itself. Ratzinger’s point, rooted in his understanding of sacrifice, is that any culture, including European culture, must always remain open to the

God who comes from outside, and thus liturgy must always issue from openness to God and the conversion that attends such openness rather than from self-expression.

Christopher Ruddy has raised the question of the direction of influence in the encounter between the Church and the world: Does Ratzinger see the Church as offering something to the world, whereas the world offers nothing to the Church?51 Ruddy’s essay deals with the theme of the Church and world more generally, but the issue in the encounter between evangelists and a pre-Christian culture is analogous. It seems to be the case that Ratzinger suggests little that dialogue, or, “the other,” can offer the Church.

He emphasizes the Church’s role as an agent that aims to share what she has received rather than as a potential recipient, who intends to listen. However, this is a matter of emphasis, and his own theology of sacrifice and mission allows for the development of further thought on this matter. Ratzinger refers to the cut as the site of opening.

According to the unidirectional interpretation of this image, the Church, or the representative of the Church, would be the one that causes the cut and inflicts the wound. However, one could also read these texts, in a manner consistent with

Ratzinger’s thought, as claiming that the wounding occurs at the site of encounter, and that both parties are open to transformation. For all cultures, including “Christian”

51 See Ruddy, “‘For the Many’: The Vicarious-Representative Heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology,” in Theological Studies 75 (September 2014): 564-84, at 584.

175 cultures, must be open. Ultimately, the Lord himself is the agent of the wounding and transformation, even if this in-breaking of the Gospel takes place when each culture is open to another culture. In this sense, the Church and the world, or, the missionary and the pre-Christian society, serve each other precisely by being the other which each subject must approach in love.

This understanding of interculturality and mutual openness coheres with

Ratzinger’s theology. In his discussion of Christian brotherhood, it is clear that such brotherhood and the world are always related. In Barth’s discussion of election, on which

Ratzinger relies, God’s election implies a shadow dimension that falls on both the elect and non-elect. For example, Barth argues that, while it appears that Saul is not elect and

David is, the narrative makes clear that there is some David in Saul and some Saul in

David.52 In other words, even if the Church represents the elect, who go to the nations to preach the Gospel, there remains an aspect of Saul within the Church. This point is consistent with the theme of Advent, which Casarella identifies. Ratzinger argues that

Advent “runs right through our own hearts. Insofar as we are living on a basis of selfishness, of egoism, the even today we are ‘before Christ’.”53 In other words, the

Church remains a pilgrim people on earth and continues to require conversion. The elect reach salvation through relationship to the non-elect. The chosen brother’s salvation is bound up with his relationship to the brother who has not been chosen. A unidirectional understanding of the transmission of the Gospel does not work. The missionary, surely,

52 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2, p. 372. 53 What It Means to Be a Christian, p. 40.

176 must preach the Gospel as she understands it to a pagan people, but her own heart must always be open to the transforming power of that Gospel in her encounter with the people to whom she preaches. It is not necessarily the case that one or both sides transmit culture to the other, although such transmission may happen, but that in the encounter, both preacher and hearer are open to being wounded. Salvation is reached only by way of death to egocentrism, and this holds true for both parties.

4.2.2. To post-Christian culture

Ratzinger’s theology of Christ’s pro-existent mission undergirds his understanding of Christian mission to secular culture. In order to bring persons into communion with

God, Jesus bore witness to the truth of God in service to others, leading to his death on the Cross. Likewise, in Ratzinger’s discussions of Christian mission in the post-Christian west, two themes come to fore: the Church must bear witness to the truth in a secularist context in which reason has been degraded; and despite her minority status, the Church can answer the call to serve the world. This commitment to truth may lead to martrydom in some circumstances. In Ratzinger’s Christology and ecclesiology, “when all other ways fail,”54 pro-existence entails a willingness to offer oneself for the others. In this sense, devotion to the truth is ordered to sacrifice. In the final section of this chapter, I discuss these themes of truth, service, and martyrdom by presenting his understanding of the

Church as a “creative minority” and as a witness to truth in the political sphere.

54 Brotherhood, p. 84.

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4.2.2.1. Creative minorities

Ratzinger presents an aspect of his understanding of the contemporary mission of the Christian community when he discusses creative minorities, which, despite their small size, contribute to the broader culture in which they find themselves, particularly through their search for truth and their commitment to living the demands that such truth makes on us. These groups prove to be especially important when the dominant culture faces a crisis, for they can point to paths forward that are invisible to the larger society, and, in this sense, be considered creative.55 In these discussions, Ratzinger addresses a problem that exists in the European segment of the global Church, but which affects the entire world:56 the mission of the Church to bear witness to the positive relationship between faith and reason in a culture that has become hostile to both.

In his address to the Italian Senate in 2004 on “The Spiritual Roots of Europe,”

Joseph Ratzinger used the term “creative minority” to identify the role that Christians can play in the renewal of post-Christian European society.57 The Christian community in

Europe is a minority Church in the sense that she has simply become smaller. In Europe, practicing Catholics belong to a minority.58 As its title suggests, the address considers the

55 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks helpfully draws attention to the roots of creative minorities in the prophet Jeremiah: “What Jeremiah was saying was that it was possible to survive in exile with your identity intact, your appetite for life undiminished, while contributing to the wider society and praying to God on its behalf. Jeremiah was introducing into history a highly consequential idea: the idea of the creative minority.” Sacks, “On Creative Minorities,” First Things 239 (January 2014): 33-39, at 34. 56 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Subiaco Address,” in Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 158. 57 See “The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” in Without Roots, p. 80. 58 “After the phase of indiscriminate ‘openness’ it is time that the Christian reacquire the consciousness of belonging to a minority and of being in opposition to what is obvious, plausible [logico],

178 roots of Europe and European culture. Much of the essay recounts the history of Europe and its inextricable ties to Christianity. He argues that many basic European values, which seem self-evident to Westerners since the Enlightenment,59 have their roots in

Christianity.60 In other words, it is not accidental that concepts such as human personhood, as well as the notions of dignity and basic rights that are built on that concept, grew up in a particular time and place: the land where Greek philosophy, Judaic faith, and Roman law came together, namely, Christian Europe. Hence, as reference to

God on this continent recedes, so do these rights, for God, not the state, is the origin of these rights. However, ideas about reason that the Enlightenment has engendered have led European culture to adopt these humanistic values apart from their roots, that is, without the overall rational and theological framework in which they belong. The connection of fruit and roots comes to head in the development of the European

Constitution, which Ratzinger argues must refer to God and the Christian history of

Europe if it is to represent European identity truly.61

Ratzinger also addresses the issue of multiculturalism. He states that Europeans rightly wish to show respect for other religious traditions and cultures, particularly

and natural for that mentality wich the New Testament calls – certainly not in a positive sense – ‘the spirit of the world’.” See The Ratzinger Report, pp. 36-37. Quoted in Ruddy, “Smaller But Purer,” p. 717. 59 In the “Subiaco Address,” pp. 162-64, Ratzinger notes that the Enlightenment grew out of the soil of a religious culture that features a robust faith in reason, for Christian faith is faith in the God who is Logos. 60 “The value of human dignity, which takes precedence over all political action and all political decision-making, refers to the Creator only: only He can establish values that are grounded in the essence of humankind and that are inviolable. The existence of values that cannot be modified by anyone is the true guarantee of our freedom and of human greatness; in this fact, the Christian faith sees the mystery of the Creator and the condition of man, who is made in God’s image.” See “Spiritual Roots,” p. 75. 61 “Spiritual Roots,” pp. 74-77.

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Judaism and Islam, but, in contradiction to this basic desire, they believe that freedom entails that they be permitted to disrespect Christianity. However, openness to cultures is possible only for those who love their own culture and show proper respect for the sacred.62 In other words, if the Christian heritage of Europe is whitewashed, there can be no true multiculturalism. Instead, an a-religious ideal of secularist politics will be advocated as the common ground on which cultures can interact. This secularist agenda fails, however, to respect the concerns of Muslims and Jews, whose own values are informed by their religious traditions. Thus, secularist means for addressing pluralism undercut themselves by failing to respect the inextricability of faith and values.

Ratzinger is not concerned that multiculturalism itself poses a problem to the

Church. For example, he does not raise concerns about the issue of Muslims becoming integrated into European society, nor does he seem to be concerned that European culture will be lost because of an influx of immigrants, whose religious and cultural traditions differ from those of Christian Europe. Rather, he is concerned that Europe will lose her identity because she voluntarily chooses to cut herself off from her past. A subject is partially constituted by its past, its narrative, and to deny this narrative in a kind of willful amnesia would be tantamount to denying one’s self. Hence, he calls this phenomenon a self-hatred and recalls the specter – raised by the historian Arnold

Toynbee – of European civilization coming to an end.63 The problems that Europe faces

62 “Spiritual Roots,” pp. 78-79.

63 “Spiritual Roots,” p. 65. The same point appears in Values in a Time of Upheaval: “Toynbee was correct to maintain that the fate of a society always depends on creative minorities. Believing Christians ought to understand themselves as just such a creative minority and help Europe regain the best elements

180 stem from secularism, according to Toynbee, and so he claims that Europe needs the reintroduction of her religious heritage, which will require the work of creative minorities.64 Ratzinger thus agrees with Toynbee, using the term “creative minorities” in the final paragraph of the essay, wherein he suggests that the future of European

Christian civilization may require that Christians see themselves as a creative minority.

By referring to the Christian community as a creative minority, Ratzinger is both acknowledging that the Church has become small and suggesting a way that the Church might be a source of life in a post-Christian context. In pointing the Church in this direction, Ratzinger sees the Church as fundamentally oriented toward others in her mission. That is, when the Church experiences an interior vitality, her own life will spill out into the world around her. Despite its minority status, the Christian community can breath life into European culture by helping Europe to recover an inheritance it has lost, namely, the positive relationship between faith and reason. Secularism has severed reason from faith, and the result, according to Ratzinger, is that reason itself has become moribund. Christians can help to heal this relationship and, in this way, contribute to post-Christian culture. Ratzinger discusses the theme of faith and reason further in his

“Subiaco Address.”

On April 1, 2005, the day before Pope John Paul II died, Ratzinger spoke to the

Convent of St. Scholastica in Subiaco, Italy. In this talk, Ratzinger did not use the term

of its inheritance. This will allow Europe to serve the whole of mankind.” “Europe’s Identity: Its Intellectual Foundations Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” p. 150. 64 “Spiritual Roots,” p. 68.

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“creative minority,” but he addressed the same concerns as he did in “The Spiritual Roots of Europe.” He referred to a “new moralism,” according to which participants in

European society develop political positions that aim to change others rather than themselves.65 In this view, the political actor must possess the freedom to express any opinion, except opinions that call into question the values of secular society itself.

According to Ratzinger, “the prohibition of discrimination can be increasingly transformed into a limitation of the freedom of opinion and religious liberty. Very soon it will not be possible to state that homosexuality, as the Catholic Church teaches, is an objective disorder in the structure of human existence.”66 The new moralism and its

“confused ideology of freedom” do not tolerate any perceived intolerance:

“Relativism…becomes a dogmatism which believes itself to be in possession of the definitive scope of reason, and with the right to regard all the rest only as a stage of humanity, in the end surmounted, and that can be appropriately relativized.”67 The new moralism alarms Ratzinger, because the “rationality” that underlies it abandons the quest for truth in its fullness, and one aim of his theological and ecclesial vocation has been to inspire confidence in the search for truth, and to understand the truth as a gift that people receive rather than make.68 Furthermore, the relativist, constructivist framework ultimately leads to humans treating humanity itself as a kind of malleable material; seeming to offer freedom on the front end, it turns out instead to be degrading and

65 “Subiaco Address,” pp. 157-58. 66 “Subiaco Address,” pp. 159-60. 67 “Subiaco Address,” p. 163. 68 “Subiaco Address,” p. 162. See also, for example, Introduction to Christianity, pp. 59-61.

182 destructive. It degrades precisely because it does not treat the human person as a rational creature, who is able to ascend to truth in its fullness.

Such degraded reason separates the true from the good, suggesting that the good is simply irrational. It not only constricts the possibilities for human flourishing but may give rise to the perception that the world is utterly meaningless, leading to despair.

Morality must instead be rooted in an understanding that supersedes mere “calculation of consequences.”69 In other words, post-Enlightenment European culture has embraced an anemic version of reason even as it has sought to proscribe religious discourse in public life. Ratzinger argues for an enlarged understanding of reason that includes reference to

God in order to establish a robust and credible moral framework. He claims that in the

Christian tradition, as in the classical philosophical tradition, reason aims to know the truth of being and the meaning of a given reality, rather than merely what can be proven through repeatable experiments.70 Ratzinger discusses this issue at some length in

Introduction to Christianity. In this text, he argues that modern thinking begins with

Giambattista Vico, who “coined the typical formula of the modern spirit” when, “[a]gainst the Scholastic equation verum est ens (being is truth) he advances his own formula, verum quia factum. That is to say, all that we can truly know is what we have made ourselves.”71

This development in philosophy would lead to the displacement of metaphysics by

69 “Subiaco Address,” p. 158. 70 See “Subiaco Address,” pp. 162-64. 71 Introduction to Christianity, p. 59. Following Aristotle, Vico “asserts that real knowledge is the knowledge of causes, I am familiar with a thing if I can know the cause of it. …But from this old thought something completely new is deduced: If part of real knowledge is knowledge of causes, then we can only know what we have made ourselves, for is only ourselves that we are familiar with.” Introduction to Christianity, p. 61.

183 history and to a “radical anthrocentrism,” since one could only turn inward, toward what humanity itself could create, rather than outward, toward the world as it is.72 According to Ratzinger, Karl Marx would take this development a step further by emphasizing the ability of human beings to act upon the world, that is, to change the world. Thus, the human person can “make himself into whatever he wishes.”73 Ratzinger argues against this understanding of reason, because, by overemphasizing the human person as a maker, it fails to see that the human person is also a receiver, who responds to meaning in the world, a meaning that he cannot make: “Meaning is the bread on which man, in the intrinsically human part of his being, subsists. …Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”74 By encouraging openness to the world, preparedness to respond to logos, the Christian religion turns out to be a better friend to reason than the secularism that seeks freedom from religion. Ratzinger does not refer explicitly to creative minorities in the Subiaco Address, but he does mention St.

Benedict, hinting at his role in European culture by calling him “the father of many nations,” and he claims that the world needs to see people who possess an “enlightened and lived faith.”75 He focuses in the address on the role that Christians as a creative

72 See Introduction to Christianity, pp. 62-63. 73 Introduction to Christiantiy, p. 66. 74 Introduction to Christianity, p. 73. 75 “Subiaco Address,” p. 165. His invocation of St. Benedict bears resemblance to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, particularly in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Second Edition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), ch. 18, “After Virtue: Nietzsche or Aristotle, Trotsky and St. Benedict”.

184 minority could play in Europe by being a people who pursue the truth in its fullness, thereby preserving the heritage of the marriage between faith and reason for both Europe and the world.

By nurturing true reason, that is, by opening up the space for vigorously seeking the fullness of truth, the Church contributes to the healing of the political sphere. A politics that is not open to truth, which is received rather than made, degrades the human person, and, in Augustinian terms, turns humanity back in upon itself, thus frustrating the inclination to be open to the transcendent and constricting the possibility for conversion and true freedom. A Europe that tries to maintain a moralism without recourse to religion destroys the moral life itself and with it the human person. This view is bound up with Ratzinger’s statements about technology. Technology for him does not refer merely to machines and electronic devices; it also encompasses the idea of method or process.76 In other words, Ratzinger sees a tendency to suppose that, simply by implementing the right method or political process or system, a society can rise toward the good. However, technology can serve only as an instrument, not function as an agent, and so the political processes that have emerged in the post-Enlightenment secular age cannot attain a humanizing goal without human persons whose political telos takes its bearings from the transcendent. The loss of transcendence in human politics and culture thus leads to, in the words of C.S. Lewis, the “abolition” of humanity.

76 This theme remains constant throughout his work, but one can see an example of it in Spe salvi, §§25-26. Acta Apostolicae Sedis 99 (2007): 985-1027; translated as Saved in Hope (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008).

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Europe differs from other missionary contexts because the roots of Europe are already Christian. On this continent, Christianity hellenized its Judaic heritage and effected a magnificent cultural achievement that brought the blessings of God to the whole world. While the problems of secularism and the loss of transcendence in Europe may cause Ratzinger concern because of his own European heritage,77 the mission of the

Church is his ultimate concern. By addressing Europe, he addresses the cultural degradation that occurs when both faith and reason lose their power to shape a people.

Hence, Ratzinger looks to those movements in the Church that have sought, and continue to seek, to live on the the solid ground of truth in the midst of a deracinated culture.78 These movements, such as the monasticism of St. Benedict, as well as new ecclesial movements today,79 have preserved a heritage and in some cases engendered real cultural progress, even though they have often been undertaken by small groups of faithful believers. In this sense, they were and are the work of creative minorities.

4.2.2.2. Witness to the state

Christian creative minorities seek to know and live the truth in all its fullness. By bearing witness to the truth, the Church performs a service for the society in which she

77 See “Pope’s Discourse to Czech Authorities,” 26 September 2008, www.zenit.org/article- 26969?l=english. 78 See Faith and the Future (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2009), pp. 103-04.

79 See “Church Movements and Their Place in Theology,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005). See also Amelia J. Uelmen, “Caritas in Veritate and Chiara Lubich: Human Development from the Vantage Point of Unity,” Theological Studies 71(2010): 29-45. See also, Brendan Leahy, Ecclesial Movements and Communities: Origins, Significance, and Issues (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2011), ch. 7: “Pope Benedict XVI and Movements.”

186 finds herself. A major point that Ratzinger makes in his writings on politics is that the state, as an institution within society responsible for making and keeping law, must be bound by the truth. A technocratic politics, in which human doing takes precedence over being, ultimately destroys human persons. In the case of democracy, truth cannot be whatever the majority decides it will be. Nor can truth simply be determined by what is most useful or pragmatic for certain classes of persons. Truth and its pursuit must underlie an authentically human politics. “Politics is the realm of reason,”80 according to

Ratzinger, and the Church serves a society by bearing witness to the truth of the human person.

The relationship between truth and politics comes to the fore when Ratzinger discusses conscience. Conscience is the capacity for human persons to comport themselves to the truth as best as they understand it. 81 It is not a matter of mere feeling or sentiment, for its right exercise requires that it be properly formed. Conscience allows the person to grasp the truth and to act in accordance with the truth. Ratzinger discusses

“two levels” of conscience. The first is anamnesis, which he calls a “primal remembrance of the good and the true” and “inherent existential tendency of man…to tend toward that which is in keeping with God.”82 In other words, as a creature, who has been created in the image of God and thus endowed with reason and will, the human person seeks to know the truth, particularly the truth about God. This general sense of the divine

80 “To Change or to Preserve?” p. 24. Also, see “What Is Truth?” pp. 53-58. 81 “If You Want Peace…: Conscience and Truth” in Values in a Time of Upheaval, pp. 92-93. See also Corkery, Liberation Ecclesiology, pp. 429-38. 82 “If You Want Peace,” p. 92.

187 certainly does not entail that every individual will reason well or respond rightly to found truth. It does entail that the Church has a duty to preach the Gospel, because non-

Christians have a fundamental desire for truth. The second level for Ratzinger is conscience, and he follows Thomas Aquinas in claiming that conscience is an act, in which a person “applies this basic knowledge [of the good] in specific situations.”83

Ratzinger argues that the freedom to act in accordance with one’s conscience is necessary for a properly functioning political order. In other words, if the state is bound by the truth, then the state cannot coerce persons to act against their consciences, for to do so would be to destroy the truth and thus demolish the foundations for a properly functioning political order. According to Ratzinger:

The destruction of the conscience is the real precondition for totalitarian obedience and totalitarian domination. Where conscience prevails there is a barrier against the domination of human orders and human whim, something sacred that must remain inviolable and that in an ultimate sovereignty evades control not only by oneself but by every external agency. Only the absoluteness of conscience is the complete antithesis to tyranny; only the recognition of its inviolability protects human beings from each other and from themselves; only its rule guarantees freedom.84

To act against one’s conscience is to reject the truth. According to Ratzinger, the state cannot compel persons to act in this way. When it does so, it has overstepped its bounds.

The Church bears witness to truth, and Christians must act in accordance with their consciences. At the same time, the state is a necessary, natural dimension of human self-organization for the pursuit of the common good. Ratzinger approves of the view

83 “If You Want Peace,” p. 96. 84 Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Robert Nowell (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2008 [1987]), p. 165.

188 that “the source of truth for politics is not Christianity as revealed religion but

Christianity as leaven and a form of life which has proved its worth in the course of history.”85 Christians should participate in political life in appropriate ways in order to bear witness to truth in the life of the body politic. The Church contributes to the body politic, in part, as a public fellowship of persons committed to discipleship to truth. By living in fidelity to the truth of the Christian faith, the Church shows the world a communal life that submits to truth: “Faith does not make reason superfluous, but it can contribute evidence of essential values. Through the experiment of a life in faith, these values acquire a credibility that also illuminates and heals reason.”86 However, if the state attempts to coerce Christians to violate their consciences, then Christians must resist.

This is what it means to obey one’s conscience, that is, to conform one’s life to truth: “A man of conscience is one who never purchases comfort, well-being, success, public prestige, or approval by prevalent opinion if the price is the renunciation of truth.”87

When Christians conform their lives to the truth in the face of state resistance, they offer up their lives as martyrs for the sake of truth: “Indeed, this is the core of the testimony of all the martyrs. They pay with their lives for their conviction that man is capable of perceiving truth and that this ability both sets a limit to all power and guarantees his resemblance to God.”88 Christians do not resist by engaging in violent uprisings that compromise the authority of the state. The state is necessary for political

85 “What is Truth?” p. 64. 86 “To Change or to Preserve?” p. 29. 87 “If You Want Peace,” p 87. 88 “If You Want Peace,” p. 90.

189 order. But an unjustly ordered state sets itself in opposition to truth, and the martyr reveals the injustice and witnesses to the dignity of a politics rightly ordered by truth:

The crucified Christ indicates the boundaries to the power of the state and shows where its rights terminate and resistance in the form of suffering becomes a necessity. The faith of the New Testament acknowledges not the revolutionary but the martyr who recognizes both the authority of the state and its limits. His resistance consists in doing everything that serves to promote law and an ordered life in society...but he will not obey when he is commanded to do what is evil, that is, to oppose the will of God.89

Ratzinger claims that Christians uphold the necessity of the state, while testifying to the truth, when they choose to die for their convictions rather than to obey unjust, false laws:

“By both demanding loyal cooperation with the state and respect for its specific nature and its limitations, the Church provides an education in those virtues that allow a state to become good.”90 In this sense, martyrdom represents a form of service to the people that the state should serve. Martyrdom testifies to the dignity of the human person, and thus to the goodness of God, who has created persons with a capacity to respond to the truth in love and freedom.91

89 “To Change or to Preserve?” p. 21. In a similar vein: “To this extent this saying [i.e., “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caeisar’s and to God the things that are God’s”] sets limits to every earthly power, and proclaims the freedom of the person that transcends all political systems. For this limitation Jesus went to this death; he bore witness to the limitation of power in his suffering. Christianity begins not with a revolutionary but with a martyr. The growth of freedom that mankind owes to the martyrs is infintely greater than that which it could be given by revolutionaries.” Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, p. 174. On this topic, see also C.C. Pecknold, “The End of Martyrdom: Religious Liberty in Liberal Orders,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 415-43. 90 “What Is Truth?” p. 71. 91 “Man as man is characterized by the fact that he asks not what he can do but what he ought to do, and that he is open to the voice of truth and to the claim it makes upon him. I believe that Socrates’ philosophical endeavors are ultimately concerned with this point. Indeed, this is the core of the testimony of all the martyrs. They pay with their lives for their conviction that man is capable of perceiving truth and that this ability both sets a limit to all power and guarantees his resemblance to God. It is precisely in this way that martyrs are the great witness to conscience, to the capacity bestowed on man to go beyond the

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In his theology of liturgy, Ratzinger emphasizes St. Paul’s admonition to the

Romans, that Christians must offer themselves as a living sacrifice, which is worship according to reason. In the Eucharist, the Church joins herself to the sacrifice of Christ, offering herself as a sacrifice to the Father. This act of self-offering informs Christian life as lived in service to truth. In other words, worship according to Logos is simply conformity to Christ.92 To die as a martyr, that is, to die in service to the truth for the sake of conscience, represents the fullest participation in the sacrifice of Christ that the

Christian can achieve, and, thus, it also represents the deepest meaning of the Eucharist that the Christian receives in Holy Communion: “...we are being urged to present our bodies as a form of worship consistent with Logos, that is to say, to be drawn into the fellowship of love with God in our entire bodily existence, in bodily fellowship with

Christ.”93 Martyrdom is conformity to Christ. Christ’s death on Cross “represents the inner presupposition of all eucharistic theology.”94 By dying as a martyr, one conforms in a most perfect way to Christ, and thus becomes a Eucharist offered for others.95

Ratzinger’s theology of martyrdom provides a fitting final example of the relationship between sacrifice and mission in his ecclesiology, for martyrdom is a participation in the sacrifice of Christ and is a service to the world. It serves the world by

question of what he can do and to perceive what he ought to do. For it is this that makes possible genuine progress and genuine ascent.” “If You Want Peace,” p. 90. 92 “Eucharist and Mission,” pp. 116-17. 93 “Eucharist and Mission,” p. 117. 94 “Eucharist and Mission,” p. 94.

95 “Eucharist and Mission,” pp. 112-14. See also Erik Peterson, “Witness to Truth” in Theological Tractates, edited & translated by M.J. Hollerich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 158-59.

191 pointing to the necessity of truth as the foundation of a good society, while the willingness to die, rather than to violently resist, shows the necessity of order, even when governmental powers fail to perform their proper duties. In this sense, martyrdom is mission and sacrifice. It enacts pro-existence. To die as a martyr is to offer one’s life to

God for for the sake of one’s polis.96 The right to obey the dictates of one’s conscience must be upheld for all. By dying, rather than acting against one’s own conscience, the martyr is also taking a stand for the conscience rights of others. In other words, she is giving her life for the sake of truth and for a people to be able to live in accordance with truth rather than according to the logic of power and domination. The martyr dies for others. Thus, martyrdom is an act of sacrifice, entrusting oneself to the Father for both the Church and those outside of the Church. By pointing to the power of truth, the martyr reveals the way of openness to truth, which is the way to communion with God.

In this way, the servant follows in the footsteps of her Master all the way to the Cross.

4.3. Conclusion

In the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, the mission of the Church is to embody in the world the Eucharistic sacrifice that informs her being: “Thus the three dimensions, of

96 See Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, Second Edition, trans. Michael Waldstein & ed. Aidan Nichols (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, [1977] 1988), pp. 78-79. In his Eschatology, Joseph Ratzinger describes a “spirituality of martyrdom,” which develops in Israel in the face of exile and persecution. In the context of trials and suffering, the OT presents a view of death eternal life in which “[h]e who dies into the righteousness of God does not die into nothingness, but enters upon authentic reality, life itself.” Hence, “[i]n the path that followed by the men who wrote the Old Testament, it was suffering, endured and spiritually borne, which became the hermeneutical vantage point where real and unreal could be distinguished, and communion with God came to light as the locus of true life,” and so, “communion with God means a life stronger than death.” See Eschatology, pp. 80-92.

192 theology of the Cross, theology of the Eucharist as a sacrament, and also theology of martyrdom and preaching, belong together inseparably. Only in their interplay and interconnection can we learn to understand what the Eucharist means.”97 The Church is

Church insofar as she embodies pro-existence, which is Christic existence. Like her Lord, the Church aims, above all, to bring persons into communion with God. When Ratzinger presents Jesus’s mission as bringing God rather than as primarily solving the problem of world hunger or other humanitarian concerns, he speaks also of the Church, for her mission is coextensive with that of Christ. The Church fulfills her mission in two basic ways: by her members serving one another and the world as a community of love and by bearing witness to the truth in the world. In his discussions of truth and conscience,

Ratzinger puts martyrdom at the fore. To bear witness to the truth as a martyr is to participate in the sacrifice of Christ and thereby to accomplish Christian mission in the fullest way. Ratzinger concludes “Eucharist and Mission” by discussing St. Thérèse of

Lisieux, who is the co-patroness saint of the missions, although she never set foot in missionary territory:

Yet she did grasp that the Church has a heart, and she grasped that love is this heart. She understood that the apostles can no longer preach and the martyrs no longer shed their blood if this heart is no longer burning. She grasped that love is all, that it reaches beyond times and places. And she understood that she herself...could be present everywhere, because as a loving person she was there with Christ in the heart of the Church. (...)This center, which Thérèse calls simply ‘heart’ and ‘love’, is the Eucharist. (...)The heart must remain the heart, that through the heart the other organs may serve aright. It is at that point, when the Eucharist is being celebrated aright ‘in the upper room’, in the inner sphere of reverent faith, and without any aim or purpose beyond that of pleasing God, that faith springs forth from it: that faith which is the dynamic origin of mission, in which the world becomes a living sacrificial gift, a holy city in which there is no

97 “Eucharist and Mission,” p.99.

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longer any temple, because God the ruler of all is himself her temple, as is the Lamb.98

The mission of the Church embodies her sacrificial existence, for true Christian sacrifice embodies love, and when the Church fulfills her mission, she actively loves God and the world that God has created, a world to which God sent his Son, who is the head of the

Church. The heart of mission, then, is the heart of ecclesial being, the Eucharist. In this sense, the interior dimension of the Church’s sacrifice is the liturgy, while its exterior dimension is mission. Mission and liturgy are dimensions of a whole life, and sacrifice is a common thread that runs through both dimensions of that life.

One point Ratzinger makes when he discusses Christian brotherhood is that in her loving service, the Church must opt for the way of vicarious representation. In his essay on vicarious representation as the heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s theology, Christopher

Ruddy concludes: “The Church, participating in Christ’s own vicarious-representative life and ministry, exists for the salvific, sacramental service of the ‘many.’ Its identity and mission coincide in this pro-existence.”99 In other words, the Church serves the world by offering herself for the world. The discussion of vicarious representation raises an important question: how does vicarious sacrifice work? How is it possible that offering my life for an other can have an effect on that other? I have attempted elsewhere to show how the basic concept might work in a Thomistic theology, in which the Christian can

98 “Eucharist and Mission,” pp. 121-22. 99 Christopher Ruddy, “ ‘For the Many’: The Vicarious-Representative Heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology,” Theological Studies 75 (September 2014): 564-84, at 578.

194 perform meritorious acts for others.100 I should note that Hans Urs von Balthasar, who exerted some influence on Ratzinger, explicitly rejects the theology of merit as a way of understanding grace, the work of Christ, and the cooperation of human persons in that work.101 In any event, it may be surprising that Ratzinger himself does not provide an extended account of how vicarious representation works. In the conclusion to this dissertation, I propose such an account.

100 See my article, “Ad Totius Mundi Pacem atque Salutem: Merit for Others and the Divine Plan in Thomistic Thought,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition 13 (2015): 1125-148. 101 See, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume V: The Final Act, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1998 [1983]), p. 285.

In Conclusion: A Note on Stellvertretung

In the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, the sacrifice of Christ gives the mission of the

Church its form, for the mission of the Church is the mission of the Christ. In this dissertation, I have shown how the theology of sacrifice that Ratzinger develops in his

Christology and theology of liturgy informs his understanding of the mission of the

Church. I have made this basic argument: according to Ratzinger, the Church prolongs the mission of her head, Jesus Christ, whose own mission of pro-existence achieves its apex in the offering of his very self as a sacrifice for the world; and the mission of the

Church is thus to offer herself as a sacrifice to the glory of God and for the salvation of the world, interiorly in her worship and exteriorly in her mission. This focus on sacrifice shows the coherence of Ratzinger’s understanding of mission, for his understanding of sacrifice appears in his discussions of Christian brotherhood, the Church’s encounter with pre-Christian culture, and the Church’s encounter with secular, or, post-Christian, culture. The interior life of the Church, her heartbeat, is the Eucharist sacrifice, which gives life to a people who manifest the love of God and bear witness to the truth of Christ in the midst of “the others,” that is, those who do not yet belong to the Church. The

Eucharist gives life to the Church as she serves others in the world. Diaconal sacrifice expresses liturgical sacrifice. At the same time, Ratzinger also opens the possibility that

195

196 liturgical sacrifice might itself be a form of diaconal sacrifice, since the Church offers herself as a vicarious sacrifice for the world in the liturgy of the Eucharist.

The idea of vicarious representation is a crucial aspect of Christian faith. Karl-

Heinz Menke’s Stellvertretung refers to the concept as a foundational one for Christianity.

His study documents the use of the concept in major representatives of German theology and philosophy, including Immanuel Kant, Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and

Joseph Ratzinger.1 The study is helpful, because it amasses a copious amount of material.

I would also note that it is an ecclesial work, as he states in the foreword that he has encountered the question in his pastoral ministry. Questions about vicarious representation arise from the concrete experience of the Church, e.g., parents profess willingness to suffer for, or even in the place of, their children.2 His exposition of

Ratzinger draws primarily from Das neue Volk Gottes, and The Meaning of Christian

Brotherhood, and he draws attention to vicarious representation as the major thread that holds together Ratzinger’s communion ecclesiology.3 Menke’s analysis helps to show the prevalence of the concept in Ratzinger’s theology, and it places him within the broader context of German theology. Even so, his treatment of Ratzinger does not begin to suggest an answer to the question of how Stellvertretung works, nor does it enter into an in-depth discussion of the mission of the Church.

1 See Karl-Heinz Menke, Stellvertretung: Schlüsselbegriff christlichen Lebens und theologische Grundkategorie (Freiburg: Johannes, 1991). 2 See Menke, Stellvertretung, p. 7. 3 Menke, Stellvertretung, pp. 321-39.

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In recent lectures, particularly her 2012 Gifford Lectures, Anglican theologian

Sarah Coakley has added a new dimension to the topic of vicarious sacrifice. Her discussions have two related aims that are relevant for my own project: to recover a more robust natural theology, which can enter into conversation with contemporary science; and to respond in an appropriately theological way to the recent hypotheses in evolutionary theory regarding “cooperation,” which is the term that evolutionary theorists use for something like self-sacrifice.4 She explains the work of Harvard biologist Martin

Nowak, who argues “that mathematical accounts of evolutionary processes can now probe and clarify the way that cooperation, alongside mutation and selection, is vital for ongoing productivity and evolutionary change.”5 It is important to note here that

“cooperation” does not mean simply “working together toward a goal,” but “a form of working together in an evolutionary population, in which one individual pays a cost (in terms of fitness, whether genetic or cultural) and another gains a benefit.”6 In other words, cooperation refers to a form of self-sacrifice, in which members of a population sacrifice themselves for others. Coakley’s argument is complex and nuanced. A full review of her claims lies beyond the scope of this dissertation, but her argument suggests that sacrifice for others might be embedded in nature. Thus, a theology of sacrifice that does not shy away from the Christian tradition on this point may actually cohere with

4 She addresses these twin concerns throughout her first Gifford lecture, “Stories of Evolution, Stories of Sacrifice,” Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God, Lecture 1, April 17, 2012 (University of Aberdeen: Gifford Lectures, 2012). Video recording available at http://www.giffordlectures.org/lectures/sacrifice-regained-evolution-cooperation-and-god. 5 See Coakley, “Cooperation, alias Altruism: Game Theory and Evolution Reconsidered,” Sacrifice Regained, Lecture 2, April 19, 2012. 6 Coakley, “Cooperation.”

198 what scientists are learning about the natural order.7 Coakley notes that modern theology seems to be abandoning sacrifice just as the natural sciences are recovering it.8

This observation compounds the problem that I have identified with Robert Daly, who seems to undermine the integrity of nature in his theology of sacrifice, claiming that

Christian sacrifice is wholly other and unrelated to natural sacrifice,9 because Coakley suggests that by draining Christianity of sacrifice, an anti-sacrificial theology such as

Daly’s abandons the classic catholic commitment to nature.

The theology of sacrifice that emerges from Ratzinger consists of three basic elements. First, he affirms that the desire to offer sacrifice in order to ascend to the divine is natural. It expresses the erotic nature of human being. Although Ratzinger does not enter into contemporary debates concerning the relationship between nature and grace,10 he affirms the integrity of nature when he argues that there is a human desire to ascend, to make an offering to the deity. Second, he argues that, in the sacrifice of Christ, the aim of erotic sacrifice is achieved when the worshipper offers herself as a sacrifice for others. In other words, the one who offers true sacrifice offers himself as a vicarious representative of an other. In this sense, vicarious representation, Stellvertretung, is

7 I am not suggesting that Christian theologians look to scientists to provide an account of nature qua nature. The point here is simply to note a coherence, not necessarily a correlation, between scientific discovery and theology. Coakley presents her own proposals for recovering a natural theology by reflecting on sacrifice in “Reconceiving ‘Natural Theology’: Meaning, Sacrifice and God,” Sacrifice Regained, Lecture 3, May 3, 2012. 8 See Coakley, “Stories of Sacrifice.”

9 See Daly, Sacrifice Unveiled: The True Meaning of Christian Sacrifice (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009), pp. 155-56. 10 At this point, Lawrence Feingold provides the most comprehensive exposition of the issues in the debate. See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas and His Interpreters, Second Edition (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010), pp. 317-428.

199 crucial for his understanding of sacrifice. Third, he notes that the purpose of sacrifice is communion, not destruction. In a fallen world, however, self-offering will entail something like death. He thus affirms that a sacrifice will include an immolation. The worshipper makes an oblation, but the oblation requires an immolation, that is, it involves a kind of suffering, a being broken open for others. The heart of the mission of the Church is to offer herself, to be broken open, for the glory of the Lord and the life of the world.

Ratzinger discusses Stellvertretung explicitly in a few texts, and it is an important dimension of his theology of sacrifice and mission, as this dissertation has shown. In this conclusion, I set forth four theses, which, understood in the context of his theology of sacrifice as analyzed in this dissertation, provide the building blocks from which to construct a proposal for how vicarious sacrifice works in Ratzinger. The decisive building blocks are his undertanding of the person as relation and his understanding of atonement, that is, of how he describes Christ’s redemptive work. The four theses I propose are rooted firmly in Ratzinger’s thought. The synthesis of these theses, that is, my proposal, departs from an analysis of Ratzinger’s work and engages in a speculative task. In my proposal, I argue that the Church’s vicarious sacrifice draws persons into the gravitational pull of Christ’s sacrifice. Vicarious sacrifice opens up a channel through which God’s grace flows to act on others, to draw them into communion with himself, and in this sense, the Church participates in Christ’s work of drawing others into communion with God by way of sacrifice. Catholic spirituality expresses this concept, for instance, in its practice of intercessory prayer for the souls in Purgatory, and so this

200 chapter considers how Ratzinger’s claims about intercession for the souls in Purgatory might apply to the mission of the Church as she offers up sacrifice for the entire world.

This idea entails that service is not limited to the exterior life of the Church, because in her worship, the Church participates in Christ’s activity of drawing the world into communion with God, an activity which belongs to the order of grace and, thus, whose workings are mysterious.11

Thesis 1: The human person is constituted by relation, and so for the person being represented, to be represented, that is, to be the recipient of the gift of being represented, is fundamental to one’s personal identity.

This dissertation has not directly addressed the topic of theological anthropology, although it has gestured toward claims that would be part of an anthropology. For example, the claim that eros belongs to nature is a claim about human persons. I claim that Ratzinger’s understanding of the person as constituted by relation is a foundational thesis for speculation about representation. Ratzinger advances this position most clearly

11 The Lutheran pastor and Nazi resister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, provides a striking contrast to Ratzinger in that his discussions of Stellvertretung, like those of Ratzinger, rely on a Christocentric vision, but understand the concept primarily in ethical terms. In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer discusses vicariously representative-action as responsible action. In this sense, the Stellvertreter is like a kind of deputy, like a parent speaking on behalf of a child, or, for most Americans, representatives in Congress passing laws on behalf of their constituents. Bonhoeffer is an important theologian in his own right, and an analysis of his work exceeds the scope of this dissertation. I note him, because this basic understanding of vicarious representative action as an ethical concept differs substantially from Ratzinger’s view, whose liturgically- oriented vision understands the concept in ontological, as well as ethical, terms. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 6: Ethics, trans. R. Krauss, C.C. West & D. W. Stott, ed. Clifford Green (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005 [1949]), pp.257-58. Clifford Green also notes that vicarious representative action, which Bonhoeffer first addressed first addressed in Communio Sanctorum, is one of the main organizing themes in Ethics. See “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” p. 12. See also Adam Kotsko, The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation (New York: T&T Clark, 2010).

201 in his essay, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” and some implications for this position appear in Eschatology. These texts are my touchstones in this section.12

In his theology of last things, Ratzinger describes the human person, his end, and his life as what one might call a “narrative unity.”13 At death, the narrative arc of a person’s life takes its final shape, for the meaning of events in the first chapters of a narrative does not come into full view until the narrative comes to a close. The

“fundamental option” is made permanent in death, that is, the actions and choices of the person can be placed in the context of a whole when the soul separates from the body at death.14 At the same time, the full meaning of an individual narrative does not appear until history itself comes to an end. The cup of cold water that the typically parsimonious man gives to a beggar on a summer day in Houston tells us something about the giver when he dies, but its full meaning, and hence the place of that man within the whole of history, cannot be understood until the meaning of the narrative of the beggar comes into view. As Ratzinger claims, “Even though the definitive truth of an individual is fixed in the moment of death, something new is contributed when the world’s guilt has been suffered through to the bitter end.”15 He makes this claim, because the person is being-

12 For an extensive analysis of Ratzinger’s relational anthropology, see Anne Devlin, “The Theology of Human Personhood According to Joseph Ratzinger” (Ph.D. diss., John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC, 2011). 13 I am borrowing the terminology from Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Second Edition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 206-08. 14 See Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd Edition, trans. by Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988 [1977]), p. 227. 15Eschatology, p. 207.

202 in-relation, and the narrative of a person’s life is a story of the relationships through which the personal subject is constituted.

In “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Ratzinger makes this relational argument explicit. He argues that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity reveals the nature of a person as constituted by relation. “According to Augustine and late patristic theology, the three persons that exist in God are in their nature relations. They are not substances that stand next to each other, but are real existing relations and nothing besides.”16 In other words, relation is not contingent or super-added to an individuated substance. The relation of the Father to the Son is part and parcel of the Father’s identity. The person of the Father cannot be abstracted from his relationship to the Son. Ratzinger claims that this notion of person develops in the theology of God, but Chalcedonian Christology entails that it is true of human persons as well. Jesus is not a divine person who simply inhabits a human body. Such a proposal approaches Apollinarianism.17 Rather, Jesus is one person in two natures, and his personhood is constituted by his relation to the

Father. Ratzinger argues that Jesus cannot be seen as the exception to the rule regarding the human person:18

This is the meaning of Christology from its origin: what is disclosed in Christ, whom faith certainly presents as unique, is not only a speculative exception; what is disclosed in truth is what the riddle of the human person really intends.

16 “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17.3 (1990), p. 444. In a similar vein, Gilles Emery argues that the apogee of the theology of God in St. Thomas Aquinas is his teaching on subsistent relation. See The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 48. 17 “Concerning the Notion of Person,” p. 448. 18 “Concerning the Notion of Person,” p. 449.

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Scripture expresses this point by calling Christ the last Adam or ‘the second Adam’.19

A human person is thus not merely an individual substance of a rational nature with relationships subsequently added. The relationships constitute the person as that person:

“[R]elativity toward the other constitutes the human person. The human person is the event or being of relativity.”20

Ratzinger alludes to the concept of Stellvertretung in his discussion of the person as relation, noting, “John picks up the theology of mission found in the Synoptics and in the Judaism of antiquity in which the idea is already formulated that the emissary, inasmuch as he is an emissary, is not important in himself, but stands for the sender and is one with the sender.”21 Two points from this sentence are key here. First, in stating that the emissary “is not important in himself,” Ratzinger underscores that the heart of

Christian being is pro-existence. Christian pro-existence may lead to an actual death, as in the death of Christ on the Cross or in that of a martyr, or it may entail a life of slow, painful death to self, taking place over the course of a lifetime of service, in which one places one’s gifts at the disposal of others. This point about pro-existence coheres with the theology of sacrifice that Ratzinger develops throughout his corpus, as well as with his reference to Matthew 10:36 in the same essay, where he states that “being with the other is [the spirit’s] form being with itself. One is reminded of a fundamental theological axiom this is applicable here in a peculiar manner, namely Christ’s saying, ‘Only the one

19 “Concerning the Notion of Person,” p. 450. 20 “Concerning the Notion of Person,” p. 452. 21 “Concerning the Notion of Person,” p. 446.

204 who loses himself can find himself (cf. Mt. 10:36)’.”22 Second, he states that the emissary

“is one with the sender.” Christ comes from the Father, and so to see him is to see the

Father. Likewise, the apostle goes out from Christ, and thus to see the apostle is to see

Christ. The one who is represented is present in the representative. Ratzinger makes this claim, because he understands the person to be constituted by relation. To be represented is to be in relation to a representative, and thus to be constituted by relation to that representative.

As I discussed in chapter 3, on Ratzinger’s communion ecclesiology, a human person becomes an ecclesial person in baptism, and the person is an ecclesial person to the extent that she is conformed to Christ, that is, that her being becomes being-for.

Thus, the person is an ecclesial person through this particular relationship to Jesus Christ, through participation in Christ’s very being by way of sacrifice. Furthermore, persons are related to Christ through relationships to other persons:

Since Christ’s body truly belongs to him, encounter with Christ takes place in encounter with those who are Christ’s, because they are his body. And so our destiny, our truth, if it is really constituted theologically, christologically, depends upon our relation to Christ’s body and notably to its suffering members.23

A Christian enjoys a relationship with Christ through participation in the Church, the sacramentally constituted Christian brotherhood. Personal identity is rooted in relationship to Christ, which requires relationship with other human persons. According to Ratzinger, the ecclesial person bears the burdens of his brothers, as well as those

22 “Concerning the Notion of Person,” p. 451. 23 Eschatology, p. 207.

205 outside the brotherhood. The others are related to Christ through relation to the Church.

In other words, the person who does not belong to the sacramentally defined brotherhood of Christians is related vicariously to Christ by means of his relation to that brotherhood. By being represented, then, there is a sense in which the pagan stands in a potentially saving relation to Christ.

Here, it is necessary to point to a distinction between the person as agent and the person as patient. The person as agent is the person who actively participates in her salvation. She responds to the call from the Lord and co-operates with the grace working in her life. In theology after the Enlightenment, in view of the understanding of freedom that has become dominant,24 it may be almost instinctive to see the person primarily, or even strictly, as an agent. On this view, the person does not exercise the freedom that is integral to her nature as a rational being when other persons become involved in her relationship to God. However, Ratzinger’s understanding of persons as constituted by relation entails that persons are also patients. Persons are acted upon, and these sufferings also make up the identity of the person. To take an obvious example, a person does not choose to be born into her family. This is an aspect of identity that is suffered rather than willed. Yet, being a member of a particular family is a fundamental aspect of one’s identity. In a similar vein, to be represented by a Christian, to be the object of the pro-existent Church’s “for”, is an aspect of personal identity that is suffered. The person

24 On negative freedom, or, “freedom of indifference,” see, for example, Servais Pinckaers, “Aquinas and Agency: Beyond Autonomy and Heteronomy?” in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus, trans. by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2005 [1978]), pp. 168-72.

206 who is represented does not necessarily will to be brought before God in prayer. Yet, like familial identity, to be in relation to Christ by means of ecclesial vicarious sacrifice constitutes an aspect of personal identity for those outside the Church.

Ratzinger challenges the view that persons are strictly agents when he discusses the practice of praying for the souls in purgatory, claiming that these souls are affected by the prayers of others. If we assume that these prayers are efficacious, then it does seem strange to the modern mind that, for example, a person who knew many pious Catholics could be, hypothetically, purged of sin more quickly, because she had more persons to pray for her. Ratzinger admits that how these prayers for the souls in purgatory work is a mystery – asking “how can a third party enter into that most highly personal process of encounter with Christ, where the ‘I’ is transformed in the flame of closeness?”25 – but he clearly affirms that we are not autonomous individuals, for even after death, “human beings can still carry each other and bear each others’ burdens.”26 These prayers do achieve something, because the person for whom the living are praying is constituted by relationships to those who pray for him.

[T]he being of man is not, in fact, that of a closed monad. It is related to others by love or hate, and, in these ways, has its colonies within them. My own being is present in others as guilt or as grace. We are not just ourselves; or, more correctly, we are ourselves only as being in other, with others and through others. Whether others curse us or bless us, forgive us and turn our guilt into love – this is part of our destiny.27

25 Eschatology, p. 231. 26 Eschatology, p. 227. In fact he agrees with “the opinion that the essential elements of the doctrine of Purgatory crystallized out of the traditional materials offered by all three sources: Late Antique sensibility, Judaism and Christianity. The central feature of all is the idea of a suffering on the part of the dead capable of being alleviated by prayer.” See Eschatology, pp. 222-3. 27 Eschatology, p. 232.

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If, as Ratzinger argues, it is the case that purgatory is like a fire, removing the impermanent things with which we have built our lives, while leaving what persists into eternity,28 then one might say that the relation to ecclesial persons constitutes a permanent aspect of a person, which might pass through the purging fire. I suggest that the situation for a non-Christian who shares relationships with Christians operates according to the same logic. To be represented by the faithful is a constitutive aspect of the non-Christian other. Such a suggestion does not entail a kind of universalism, wherein all must be saved, because the Church prays for all. As I discuss in Thesis 3, persons may exercise their powers as free human agents who reject Christ and the grace offered to them through the vicarious representation of the Church. Even so, a free person does not exercise her intellect and will in a vacuum. She is always a person who is in relation, and thus who is a patient, that is, who is being acted on by other persons. In this sense, the exercise of freedom as an agent is often a response to an anterior suffering.

For example, I suffer sonship, since I did not choose to be the son of my father and mother, yet in my freedom, I exercise the responsibilities and enjoy the fruits of sonship.

I cooperate, so to speak, with this aspect of my identity. For the person represented by the Church, the choice to refuse or receive the gift of God’s grace follows upon having been represented in vicarious sacrifice, but the fact of having been represented will always be an aspect of personal identity.

28 Eschatology, pp. 229-31.

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Thesis 2: The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross exerts a gravitational pull on persons, drawing them into communion with the Lord, and the Church participates in this action of drawing others by offering up vicarious sacrifice.

A Christian understanding of representation will take its bearings from atonement theology insofar as a theology of redemption understands Christ as saving because he, in some way, represents humanity. In other words, Jesus is the representative par excellence. As I have discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation, Ratzinger understands Jesus’ redemptive work to be inextricable from his person. Jesus offers himself to God for humanity and thus opens the way for human beings to enter into communion with God. A difficulty here for my purposes is that Ratzinger does not present a theory that takes up the question of the individual’s appropriation of Christ’s self-gift. Although he enters into a critical engagement with Anselm’s satisfaction theory,29 Ratzinger does not argue for any particular “model” of atonement.30 His emphasis on Christ’s acting on behalf of humanity would suggest something along the lines of satisfaction theory, whereas his insistence on Christian imitation of Christ’s pro- existence might suggest some version of Abelard’s moral influence model. However, neither of these possibilities, nor others, are worked through in a thorough and systematic way (as one finds, for example, in his discussion of different interpretations of the biblical understanding of the last things).31 According to Ratzinger, Christ represents

29 See Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004 [1968]), pp. 231- 33. 30 For a recent summary and assesment of the major models of atonement, concluding with an argument for the Devil’s Ransom understanding, see Nicholas Lombardo, The Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God (New York: Oxford, 2013), pp. 145-239. 31 See Eschatology, pp. 46-66.

209 all of humanity in his self-offering on the Cross, he “bears us all within himself, and in this way he gives what we ourselves would not be able to give.”32 It is not clear, though, in Ratzinger’s writings how a person receives what Christ gives or, indeed, how Christ’s act redeems persons from sin. Since Ratzinger does not explicate the mechanics of

Christ’s representation, the data available for speculating on the Church’s representation is limited.

A theology of atonement relies heavily on metaphors,33 and in his discussion of the work of Christ on the Cross in the second Jesus of Nazareth volume, Ratzinger provides language for thinking about salvation through vicarious representation:

What does this mean for me? What does it mean for my path as a human being? The incarnate obedience of Christ is presented as an open space into which we are admitted and through which our own lives find a new context. The mystery of the Cross does not simply confront us; rather, it draws [einbezieht] us in and gives a new value to our life.34

First, Ratzinger shows his concern with the existential question: “What does this mean for me?”35 Indeed, when he raises the concept of vicarious representation and the mission of

32 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 235. 33 On metaphor and theological language in atonement theology, see Lombardo, Father’s Will, pp. 209-12; Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), pp. 99-114; Colin Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989). 34 Jesus of Nazareth 2, p. 236. 35 On the distinction between existential and sapiental theology, see Otto Herman Pesch, “Existential and Sapiential Theology—The Theological Confrontation Between Luther and Thomas Aquinas,” in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther, ed. Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1997, pp. 61-81. Michael Root quotes Pesch’s summary of the distinction: “Existential theology is the way of doing theology from within the self-actuation of our existence in faith, as we submit to God in the obedience of faith. Its affirmations are so formulated that the actual faith and confession of the speaker are not merely necessary presuppositions but are reflexively thematized. Sapiential theology is the way of doing theology from outside one’s self-actuation in the existence in faith, in the sense that in its doctrinal statements the faith and confession of the speaker is the enduring presupposition, but is not thematic within this theology. This theology strives to mirror and recapitulate God’s own thoughts about the world,

210 the Church in The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, his discussion is more parenetic than indicative. In other words, he is not stepping back to describe how vicarious representation works but suggesting to Christians that this is a path to take.

Second, Ratzinger describes the relationship between the individual and the person and work of Christ in two ways. First, he refers to the “incarnate obedience of

Christ” as “an open space.” Here, his understanding of the immolationist dimension of sacrifice is relevant. As I discussed in chapter 4, Ratzinger makes clear that the aim of a sacrifice is not the destruction of the victim. However, he does note that offering oneself for others will, in a sinful world, entail suffering, undergoing death, being opened up.

Hence, sacrifice requires an immolation, a loss, but this immolation is an external aspect

(or embodiment) of an act, whose inner aim is the offering of oneself. If the mission of the Church is to prolong the mission of her head by offering herself up in self-sacrifice, then her members, ecclesial persons, share in Christ’s own pro-existence to the extent that they are conformed to Christ in the Church and, thus, opened up for others. To be an ecclesial person is to be opened to God and to neighbor. Thus, the pro-existent

Church continues to serve the world as the “open space,” which gives life a new context.

Second, Ratzinger says that the Cross “draws us in.” This terminology merely hints at how persons are brought into communion, but it suggests the idea of the work of

men, and history, insofar as God has disclosed them.” See Michael Root, “Aquinas, Merit, and Reformation Theology after the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” in Aquinas in Dialogue: Thomas for the Twenty-First Century, eds., Jim Fodor & Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), p. 4. Original quote, Pesch, “Existential and Sapiential,” pp. 76ff. This distinction is used to explain differences between Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. I am not suggesting that Ratzinger’s theology as a whole would be considered “existential,” but this distinction is useful for clarifying the way Ratzinger talks about atonement. What I am doing in inquiring about how vicarious sacrifice works could be considered sapiential theology, and in this way, I am departing from Ratzinger’s style on this particular issue.

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Christ as a kind of weight, exerting a gravitational pull on persons. In her dissertation on

“The Theology of Human Personhood according to Joseph Ratzinger,” Anne Devlin discusses sin as a disruption of relationships. In arguing that the human person is constitutively oriented toward others (or, the Other), she notes that “Ratzinger borrows an image from modern physics: …his ‘center of gravity’…at once ‘lies outside itself’

[Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 171].”36 In other words, while the individual person is an integral whole, she achieves fullness as a person when she is in relationship with other persons and ultimately with God. In using the term “gravity” for how persons are oriented toward communion with others, Ratzinger provides a clue for how the Cross

“draws” people. The work of Christ on the Cross might be understood as exerting an especially intense gravitational pull on persons, and in this way, it draws them to Christ.

Thus, rather than describing a clear process of redemption, Ratzinger identifies the vicarious sacrifice of Christ as a weight that constantly pulls people ever closer to himself.

The language of Christ’s redemptive work as “drawing in” appears in a text that discusses the Church’s participation in Christ’s saving activity for others. James Corkery quotes from Das neue Volk Gottes:

Christ alone saves, but he never saves alone. His saving activity has its peculiarity precisely in the fact that he does not simply turn the other into a passive receiver of a gift that is all locked up in itself, but rather draws [einbezieht] the other into his own activity: the human being is saved by sharing in the work of saving others. One is saved, so to speak, for the others, and inasmuch as this is the case, also through the others.37

36 Devlin, “Theology of Human Personhood,” p. 132. 37 James Corkery, “The Relationship between Human Existence and Christian Salvation in the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger” (S.T.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1991), p. 174. Original quote from Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969), p. 358: “Christus allein rettet, ja; aber dieser allein rettende Christus ist nie allein, und sein rettendes Tun hat seine

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In this passage, Ratzinger claims that Christ’s saving work draws in, and he goes on to say that those who are drawn in, who receive his gift, will in turn participate in his drawing in. Indeed, one receives the gift of salvation by “sharing in the work of saving others.” In this dissertation, I have discussed how one participates in Christ’s work by sharing in his sacrifice, both in liturgy and in Christian life. These passages suggest that the act of offering oneself as a living sacrifice to God serves to draw the others in, that is, the act functions as a kind of weight or “center of gravity,” which attracts others.

Thesis 3: Grace does not violate personal integrity, and so persons may exercise their freedom by choosing to reject the grace offered through the Church’s vicarious sacrifice.

In his article on Stellvertretung, Ratzinger notes that representation does not work magically, as if a person could reject God but be saved by the action of another. Although human persons are patients, who may be drawn closer to Christ by the sacrifices of

Christians, a Ratzingerian theology of vicarious representation cannot violate the freedom of persons. The magical view would see the represented person strictly as a patient, as one who exercises no agency with regard to her relationship to God. The pure patient does not participate in salvation. According to Ratzinger:

[T]he idea of freedom is the characteristic mark of the Christian belief in God as opposed to any kind of monism. …For Christianity, the explanation of a reality as a whole is not an all-embracing consciousness or one single materiality; on the contrary, at the summit stands a freedom that thinks and, by thinking, creates freedoms, thus making freedom the structural form of all being.38

Eigentümlichkeit gerade darin, daß er den anderen nicht enfach zum passiven Empfänger einer in sich abgeschlossenen Gabe macht, sondern ihn einbezieht in seine eigene Aktivität: Der Mensch wird gerettet, indem er daran mitwirkt, andere zu retten. Gerettet wird man gleichsam immer für die anderen und insofern auch durch die anderen.” 38 Introduction to Christianity, pp. 157-58.

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Thus, while God in Christ calls people into communion with God, to true worship, the gravitational pull of the Cross does not violate the integrity of persons, who may respond in freedom to God’s love. Seán Corkery discusses Ratzinger’s ecclesiology as a “liberation ecclesiology,” and he states in his conclusion:

Ratzinger’s position is that the free creature can orient itself towards God through the maturation of believing affectivity. He considers the whole-hearted human ‘yes’ to God as the relational analogue of God’s categorical ‘Yes’ to creation. In this lies the human person’s authentic freedom.39

The human person is free to respond with a “whole-hearted” Yes to God’s call, because she is formed in the image of God, who says Yes to his creation. As Devlin puts it, “In his freedom, man recapitulates his being: that man exists in an intelligible nature, which expresses and realizes itself in the non-deducible freedom of the one who subsists in it, is central for how Ratzinger understands the human person.”40 By “intelligible nature,”

Devlin refers to the fact the human person, as a creature with its own “specific nature,” is endowed with its own “principles of movement and growth.”41 Thus, the human person is intelligible as a being with will and intellect, because in her very being she reflects the

God who is Logos and Love. In her free response, the human person manifests her specific nature. In the relationship between God and human persons, God initiates, but persons may make a free response.

39 Seán Corkery, A Liberation Ecclesiology? The Quest for Authentic Freedom in Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology of the Church (Bern: Peter Lang, 2015), p. 490. 40 Devlin, “Theology of Human Personhood,” p. 94. 41 Devlin, “Theology of Human Personhood,” p. 79.

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Thesis 4: The effect of the Church’s vicarious sacrifice on others is an activity in the order of grace and therefore mysterious.

Concerning how persons outside the Church might come into a saving relationship with God through the Church’s ministry of vicarious sacrifice, the theologian must admit an element of mystery.42 Ratzinger is careful to point out that Christians may not judge the others.43 The idea here is not that Christians do not make judgements regarding, for example, actions that are in accordance with reason, or natural law. Certainly, Christians are called to exercise discernment, which is a form of judging. However, concerning the soul of the other and her relationship to God, the Christian does not judge. The Christian brotherhood ought to offer prayers and sacrifices for the soul of the other, but how that person enters into relationship with God may never be known in this life. Hence,

Ratzinger claims:

There is … among individuals a great and interwoven pattern: what happens in the invisible order of grace is known ultimately to God alone who calls everyone by name, a name which he alone knows who receives it (cf. Rev 2:17). It is the objective presentation of this vicarious work of Christ that is reserved for the one Church that, because of this continuation of the saving act of the Lord, can alone be called the “true” Church.44

42 See, for example, a discussion of Ratzinger’s thought salvation for non-Christians and the Matthean pericope on the sheep and the goats in Lothar Wehr, “Die Werke der Barmherzigheit in Mt 25,31- 46 und die Frage nach dem Heil für die Nichtchristen,” in Kirche – Sakrament: Zu Ekklesiologie und Ökumene bei Joseph Ratzinger, ed. Christian Schaller (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2011), p. 43: “Ratzinger bezeichnet das „votum ecclesiae“, als „Dienst der Vorbereitung“, in den auch der nicht an Christus glaubende Mensch deshalb eintreten könne, weil die ganze Geschicht auf Christus hinstrebe und der Mensch sich in diese Bewegung hineinnehmen lassen (oder sich auch ihr verweigern) könne. Wie genau dieser „Dienst der Vorbereitung“ im Einzelfall aussehe, könne man sinnvollerweise nicht beanworten. „Das ist die Frage, die der richtende und gnädige Gott seinem ganz persönlichen Dialog mit jedem Einzelnen vorbehalten hat“ [See Joseph Ratzinger, Zeichen unter den Völkern, in Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften 8/2, p. 1033].” 43 The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, trans. W.A. Glen-Doeple (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966 [1960]), p. 71. 44 Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, p. 90.

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In other words, as I claimed in Thesis 2, in his discussion of vicarious sacrifice and

Christian mission, Ratzinger aims to exhort rather than to develop a theory. And, as this quote makes clear, the reason he does not seek to construct a complete theory is because, how God chooses to offer grace to others can finally be known only to God. The theologian can labor to explore the deep things of God, but she must acknowledge that there will be limits to what she can find.

Synthesis: The Church as a sacrifice draws others into the gravitational field of Christ and opens channels for the flow of grace as a saving wound in the world.

Ratzinger argues that a person is constituted by relation, and so it follows that a person in relation to an ecclesial person is in relation to the Church, the body of Christ.

In vicarious sacrifice, the Church offers an oblation to the Lord on behalf of another person. Thus, the represented person has been brought into the Church’s liturgy, that is, has been drawn into the field in which true worship is offered. Furthermore, the vicarious immolation opens up a means by which grace flows to the other. The life of the other, the non-Christian, intersects with the Church at the point of relation with the ecclesial person. Or, to use the language of narrative, the narrative shape of the other’s life includes the Church. Since the narrative of the other includes the Church, which as sacrifice is openness, then the narrative of that person is opened to God. In the sacrifice of the Cross, Christ was torn open so that the world could receive the gift of God’s self, and this sacrifice persists in the mission of the Church. Thus, the Church is the privileged locus of openness between God and the world, and she is so regardless of whether or not the world recognizes her role or even acknowledges the Church. The Church herself is

216 the wound through which the Son’s life flows. The Church is an opening, and she is opening because she is sacrifice.

I am relying on Ratzinger’s language of “drawing in” and “open space” for this account, which is to say that the metaphors at work in a Ratzingerian theology of vicarious sacrifice will be kinetic and spatial. Paul Griffiths provides helpful spatial language. In his recent work on the Last Things, Decreation, he mentions in a discussion of the “sacramental principle” the “particular arrangements and concatenations of corporeal things,” which “ show with a particular and intense perfection what the world would be like were it healed.” 45 In other words, grace may be communicated more powerfully in particular places and by contact with particular things. A shrine commemorating the death of a martyr, or a relic of a saint, is a material body, or concatenation of bodies, that mediates grace with an intensity in proportion to the object’s “intimacy with the passion of Christ; the more intimate a particular concatenation of corporeal things is with that crucial set of events…the more capable it is of showing and effecting the world’s healing.”46 Griffiths refers to life in a fallen world, which he calls “the devastation,” as “rough ground,” that is, as a place in which traces of the devastation and glimpses of the true form of things are intermingled. His description of “rough ground” is apt for my proposal:

Systolic timespace is not uniform. That is to say, it is unevenly distributed. It is a matter of rough ground. The passion, around which systolic timespace is folded, has a particular timespace location, and those places and times enfolded most intimately by it are likewise particular; they are not everywhere and everywhen

45 Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Waco: Baylor, 2014), p. 256. 46 Griffiths, Decreation, p. 256.

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alike. …A Christian map of the spatial world would be nodal rather than grid-like, and its prominent nodes would be sites where the Eucharist is celebrated, where relics of martyrs and saints are found, where works of love are done, and in general where Christ is most fully present.47

This language of nodal space offers a way to imagine how vicarious sacrifice attracts others to the Christ in the order of grace. Those places where Christian sacrifice is offered might be considered as places where the pull of grace operates with particular force. As Griffiths notes, there are wide swaths where the traces of “the devastation” predominate, and, in these swaths, the presence of the Lord lacks intensity. However, the space between a peak and valley in this topography does not consist of sheer cliffs. There is not simply grace and not-grace. A person’s proximity to nodal points will depend on relations to others, and thus that person will be relationally constituted by proximity to

Christian sacrifice. In other words, the non-Christian, an embodied human person, is brought into the field of gravity of these nodal points by virtue of his relation to

Christians who offer sacrifice for him, both in liturgy and in life. As Anne Devlin notes, the center of gravity for a person lies outside the self. By offering vicarious sacrifice, the

Church adds weight, so to speak, to that eccentric pull in the order of grace. This understanding of the draw of sacrifice does not obviate the need for conversion on the part of non-Christians, but it begins to suggest how representation is a means by which the Church participates in God’s salvific activity in the world.

As I have noted, vicarious sacrifice does not work by magic. Neither Ratzinger’s theology, nor the proposal that I am making, entail that a human person, an agent,

47 Griffiths, Decreation, pp. 256-57.

218 receives satisfaction for sins and the reward of eternal life merely because he is represented by the Church. Ratzinger emphatically denies that representation works this way. All persons who have been born into a world marked by sin require conversion.

While vicarious sacrifice may merit grace for the other, the other must undergo a conversion, as must we all if we hope to enjoy the vision of God. Nevertheless, apart from the sense in which ecclesial actions bear witness, which any sociologist of religion could observe, Christian acts of sacrifice for others do serve as openings through which grace flows to others. The Church acts as a kind of stent, which, by being open, can re-open the passageways that have become hardened, blocked, and closed by sin. The world is saved by the grace of God; and the Church participates in God’s giving of grace when she offers herself in sacrifice, allowing herself to be opened up, and thus serving as an opening in the world through which God’s grace flows.

A concrete example of vicarious sacrifice provides a fitting conclusion to this proposal. Stories from Church history, particularly Carmelite stories, reveal how

Ratzinger might be thinking of vicarious sacrifice as mission. For example, Balthasar, another prominent theologian of represention,48 recalls the story of a Carmelite community that prayed for bombs to hit it “so that the people in the surrounding area may be spared.”49 The community offered itself as a sacrifice for others, and “this prayer

48 See Michele M. Schumacher, “The Concept of Representation in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Theological Studies 60 (1999): 53-71. 49 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Razing the Bastions: On the Church in this Age, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993 [1952]), p. 23.

219 was heard.”50 This story is similar to that of the Blessed Martyrs of Compiègne. During the French Revolution, the Carmel of Compiègne made an act of consecration, offering themselves as a sacrifice for their nation. The nuns were eventually apprehended and beheaded. Perhaps in answer to their prayer, the Reign of Terror ended shortly after their martyrdom. Their story is told in Gertrud von le Fort’s novel Die Letzte am Schafott,51 which was adapted into a screenplay by George Bernanos.52 Both of these authors influenced the young Ratzinger: “We wanted not only to do theology in the narrower sense but to listen to the voices of man today. We devoured the novels of Gertrud von Le

Fort, Elisabeth Langgässer, and Ernst Wiechert. Dostoevsky was one of the authors everyone read, and likewise the great Frenchmen: Claudel, Bernanos, Mauriac.”53 In these

Carmelite stories, God responds in history to the intercessory prayers of these communities, that is, to the self-offering on behalf of others. When historical circumstances make it difficult for the Church to engage her public ministry – for example, when religious liberty constrictions mean that her charitable organizations must close, or when speech restrictions criminalize public preaching – then the Church may

50 Balthasar, Razing the Bastions, p. 23. 51 Translated into English as The Song of the Scaffold, trans. Olga Marx (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011 [1931]). 52 Dialogue des Carmélites (Paris: Seuil, 1949). 53 Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), p. 42. Helena M. Saward has shown that the concept serves as a “thematic, structural principle” in the writing of the Catholic novelist, Gertrud von Le Fort. See “ ‘A Literature of Substitution’: Vicarious Sacrifice in the Writings of Gertrud von le Fort,” German Life and Letters 53:2 (April 2000): 178-200. Furthermore, Saward, relying on the work of Richard Griffiths in The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature 1876-1914 (London, 1966, pp. 149-222), notes that “the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, or substitution, provided considerable scope for literary innovation among the writers of the renouveau catholique in France.” See, “Literature of Substitution,” p. 179.

220 need to return to the source of her deepest strength, her being joined to Christ in his self- offering to God for the world. These stories, along with his theological reflection, seem to have given Ratzinger an intellectual resource for thinking about the mission of the

Church.

Conclusion

Sarah Coakley is certainly right when she notes that some theologians have unhappily abandoned sacrifice. It is natural to offer sacrifice. As William Cavanaugh and others have ably shown, for instance, secular institutions require sacrifice,54 and so when

Christian theologians neologize sacrifice or jettison it altogether, they simply deliver

Christians over to those institutions. Human persons cannot not sacrifice.

Joseph Ratzinger offers a holistic, comprehensive theological vision, one which is rooted in Scripture and the Augustinian tradition, as well as personalist philosophy.

Above all, he is committed to the Word made flesh, who has made the Church his body.

From this framework emerges a theology of sacrifice and of the Church’s mission that affirms the integrity of human nature by highlighting the erotic aspect of human love.

From this point, he argues that erotic desire achieves its aim when the subject offers herself for others. Thus, while the concept of sacrifice might have become problematic for some Christians in the twentieth century, Ratzinger presents a vision that is both more

54 See William Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011); Stanley Hauerwas, War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011); Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

221 faithful to the Christian tradition and more humane. Human beings desire to offer sacrifice, to offer worship to a deity. The Church is the site where true sacrifice and worship are offered. Indeed, she is this sacrifice, and her sacrificial existence informs all of those actions that most properly belong to her authentic nature as the body of Christ.

Although Ratzinger is clear about the nature of sacrifice and its connection to the mission of the Church, he is not clear about how vicarious sacrifice works. I have attempted to show how the picture might be completed by drawing attention to his theological anthropology, which understands relation to be a constitutive aspect of the human person. This important theological point can serve as the framework for a theology of vicarious sacrifice that goes beyond Ratzinger, even while being deeply informed by him. And it is fitting that a next step be taken that goes beyond what

Ratzinger has explicitly said, for he has made it clear that his service as bishop and prefect and pope has entailed that he never had the chance to fully develop his own theology.

After Eschatology, he opened paths whose implications he could not fully explore. He may very well be a future doctor of the Church, whose theology is comprehensive and substantial, but areas of his work, such as his theology of vicarious sacrifice, will profit from further development by others. For a student of Ratzinger to be faithful to his master, his study will faithfully attend to his ultimate Master, the Word of God, Jesus

Christ, who is worshipped in the divine liturgy of the Church, that simple people of God who bear each other’s burdens and serve their neighbors with humility and love.

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