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The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI the Theology of Pope Benedict XVI The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI The Christocentric Shift Emery de Gaál Palgrave macmillan THE THEOLOGY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI Copyright © Emery de Gaál, 2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-10540-9 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28983-7 ISBN 978-0-230-11476-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230114760 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gaál Gyulai, Emery de. The theology of Pope Benedict XVI : the christocentric shift / Emery de Gaál. p. cm. 1. Benedict XVI, Pope, 1927– I. Title. BX1378.6.G33 2010 230′.2092—dc22 2010013068 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November 2010 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2011 In gratitude Leo Cardinal Scheffczyk (1920–2005) “Evangelizare investigabiles divitias Christi” (Eph 3:8) Preach the unsearchable riches of Christ If we draw near to him [ Jesus Christ] with humble trust, we encoun- ter in his gaze the response to the deepest longings of our heart: to know God and establish a living relationship with him in an authen- tic communion of love that can fill our lives and our interpersonal and social relations with the same love. For this reason, humanity needs Christ: In him, our hope, “we have been saved.” (cf. Rom 8:24)1 —Benedict XVI, Easter Homily, 2008 Christ . is truly the origin of our harmony, the true David who has restored the lyre of our body which had long lain idle, its frame crumbling. The Lord has restored it, making it His own. God our Master Himself sought to renew this lyre, and so He hung His own lyre, nailed to the wood of His tree, and gave it fresh life when the cross destroyed all sins. Thus He ordered mortal man from the different nations into a single lyre, and tuned it for heavenly music, drawing peoples of all races into a single body. Then he struck the cords with the pelcrum of the Word, and the sound of the Gospel fills all creation with the praise of God. —St. Paulinus of Nola (355–431), Poema XX CONTENTS Foreword ix Acknowledgments xvii Abbreviations xix Introduction: The Christocentric Shift 1 Part I Establishing the Christocentric Vision 1 Highlights of a Lifelong Ministry 9 2 Personality and Temperament 13 3 Formative Early Encounters as a Seminarian: Personal Existentialism Grounded in Jesus Christ 21 4 Graduate Studies in Munich 33 5 His Language and Style 45 6 Academic Teacher: Truth as Person 49 7 Pastor to “Radical Christians”: The Catholic Integrated Community 53 Part II Jesus Christ: God’s Self-Disclosure 8 The Beginnings of His Theology 61 9 The Inaugural Lecture in 1959 73 10 Jesus Christ, the Sovereign, Unsurpassable Revealer of Revelation 79 11 The Question of Faith in the World 107 12 The Unity of the Old and New Testaments 111 13 The Biblical Basis of Christology 119 14 A Twentieth-Century Classic: Introduction to Christianity 129 viii Contents 15 Christ and the Pursuit of Happiness: Safeguarding the Nondisponibility of Christ 145 Part III The Church: The Christ-Filled Realm 16 Communio: Christian Brotherhood and the Church as One Reality 165 17 Christ and the Church 175 18 Christ and Ecumenical Dialogue 189 19 An Ecclesiological Dispute at the Turn of the Millennium 199 20 Jesus Christ as the Unifying Ecclesial Reality 209 Part IV Being Christ to Others 21 Christ and Freedom: Evangelization 217 22 Christian Brotherhood: Entering into Jesus Christ’s Earthly Ineffability 231 Part V The Liturgy: Christ-Filled Worship 23 The Transparency of Christ and Christians: The Liturgy 239 24 Regensburg: Provocation or Jesus Christ as the Basis for Civilized Discourse? Jesus Christ as the Reconciler of Faith and Reason 269 25 Jesus Christ, the Definer and Personification of the Eschaton 275 26 Mary: In Christ, the First Free Human Being 287 Epilogue: Jesus Christ Offering the World Identity and Meaning 297 Notes 303 Bibliography 345 Index 357 Illustrations appear between 187 and 188 FOREWORD The calling of a Christian is not, first and foremost, to be justified (Reformation), or to be a morally good citizen (Enlightenment), or even to enjoy heavenly bliss one day. Our beautiful vocation on earth is to partake sacramentally in Christ’s eternal life and to make God visible to this world. By leading a holy life, Christians enable others to receive life’s profound meaning, which they could never discover or produce on their own: “we should be holy and blameless before him . his sons through Jesus Christ . to the praise of his glorious grace . .” so that others may know the hope to which he has called all (Eph 1). Through the fragility of human existence, may others behold the Divine. What a wonderful cause for which to exist! In his homily at the mass inaugurating his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI observed: “And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know him and to speak to others of our friendship with him.”2 Establishing the identity and mission of Jesus Christ is of overriding, crucial importance for such a positively intrepid enterprise. Regarding this endeavor, it is of no small significance to exam- ine Pope Benedict XVI’s understanding of Jesus as he is one of the most outstanding theologians the Catholic Church has recently produced. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, he served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for twenty-three years, and he is now Supreme Pontiff of a church numbering some 1.2 billion members worldwide. In a sense one can state that Pope Benedict XVI is the “anti-Nietzsche,” as the German author Botho Strauß formulated in the German daily news- paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 20, 1994. Nietzsche’s fate- ful “Umwertung aller Werte”3 (revaluation of all values) is being reversed. Benedict XVI is challenging modernity to a revision of the suppositions and assumptions Nietzsche had instilled in such a sustained and lasting manner. A loss of purpose and of values has become the norm for many people. Nihilism has become the practical worldview, altering all areas of life. Nietzsche claimed, “Christianity is the greatest misfortune that x Foreword had befallen humankind.” Benedict XVI’s response is, “Jesus Christ is the greatest fortune imaginable for humankind!” As Christians and as disciples of Christ, human beings experience the fact that they are not the product of a faceless law of nature, but rather they are personally willed by God. In Jesus Christ, God receives a face, a living vis-à-vis, who enters our history and never tires of turning the numerous peoples into the one chosen people. The author’s intention is to convey an appreciation for the understand- ing Pope Benedict XVI, as a believer and theologian, has for the person of Christ. In order to better illuminate the pope’s supremely Christocentric motivation, this study will briefly present, as a background to his own sig- nificant theological contributions, the thought and concepts of the think- ers who formed and informed Pope Benedict XVI’s own mind. Therefore, less attention will be given to his official work as prefect and pontiff and the documents and decrees that bear his signature. By a fortunate coin- cidence, this present work offers a background for Pope Benedict XVI’s book on Jesus Christ Jesus of Nazareth. The threefold intention of this study is to demonstrate that Pope Benedict’s theology can only be understood if one grasps: 1. its overriding Christological concern; 2. its unification with the greater intellectual current within which it operates, namely, that of the Ressourcement movement (a return to patristic sources in order to live in the spirit of early Christianity); and, 3. its consonance with Christian faith, that is, with the testimony of scripture, the teaching of the councils, and the living faith of all the Catholic faithful throughout the Church’s history. While he is in general agreement with Ressourcement theology, Pope Benedict is not part of a movement or school of theology, but rather he is committed to the whole of the faith as expressed in scripture, the liturgy, the Church fathers, the saints, and the teaching office of the Church. An often used Thomistic axiom states “omnia quae recipiuntur recepta sunt secundum modum recipientis” (“Everything received is received according to the mode of the one who receives”). As they received the message of Vatican II, some societies were engulfed in a profound cultural upheaval: a previously unheard of period of peace and prosperity was disturbed by radical questioning of the very foundations Europe and North America had been built upon for millennia.
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