“Gabriel Moran’s book is a tour de force of practical theology. Beginning from a creative reappropriation of the meanings of ‘faith’ and ‘revelation’ as ‘believing in a revealing God,’ Moran establishes a lively and relevant theological basis for addressing problems of authority and responsibility in the Church, for identifying the distinctively Christian faith-response to divine revelation, and for questions of teaching and learning. This remarkably stimulating and thoroughly original approach to our ecclesial life today offers real guidance through the perils and pitfalls of today’s Christian believing. Written with a clarity and attractiveness that should give it a wide readership, the book charts its own distinctive course through some very well-traveled waters.” — Paul Lakeland Aloysius P. Kelley SJ Professor of Catholic Studies Director, Center for Catholic Studies Fairfield University, Connecticut “Gabriel Moran, master-teacher, teaches us anew about old topics. He has fresh, insightful things to say about the God who reveals, the humans who accept and respond to this revelation, and the community in which the revelation is mediated. When a master teacher speaks, there is always much to be learned by all who listen carefully, and that is abundantly true in this book.” — Michael G. Lawler Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska “Once again Moran has shown he is one of the most underestimated Roman Catholic intellectuals of our time. No work is more timely. No project more important. The book is the summit of his life’s work on the question of revelation. Moran’s intention here is to be deeply conservative. He reclaims and restates wisdom from our Jewish and Christian past. His key question is: can the Christian church’s tradition of profound ideas on revelation be made intelligible and relevant to today’s problems and possibilities? Moran answers in the affirmative. However, everything depends on our interpretation of divine revelation. Moran’s new work is our indispensable guide on this fundamental issue at this critical point in the twenty-first century.” — Dr. Kieran Scott Fordham University Believing in a Revealing God The Basis of the Christian Life Gabriel Moran A Michael Glazier Book LITURGICAL PRESS Collegeville, Minnesota www.litpress.org A Michael Glazier Book published by Liturgical Press Cover design by David Manahan, OSB. Cover illustration © Rvs and Dreamstime.com. Excerpts from documents of the Second Vatican Council are from Vatican Council II: Volume 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, by Austin Flannery, OP, © 1996 (Costello Publishing Company, Inc.). Used with permission. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. © 2009 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America. 123456789 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moran, Gabriel. Believing in a revealing God : the basis of the Christian life / Gabriel Moran. p. cm. “A Michael Glazier book.” Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-8146-5388-3 (pbk.) 1. Revelation—Catholic Church. 2. Christian life—Catholic authors. 3. Church. I. Title. BT127.3.M668 2009 231.7'4—dc22 2008047361 Contents Introduction The Word of the Lord Is Always Spoken Now 1 Chapter One Believing in . 15 Chapter Two . a Revealing God 37 Chapter Three Authority in a Believing Church 61 Chapter Four A Responsible Church 83 Chapter Five Christian Interpretation of Divine Revelation 105 Chapter Six Aesthetic Understanding of Believing in a Revealing God 127 Chapter Seven Revealing-Believing as Teaching-Learning 151 Bibliography 173 Index 185 Introduction The Word of the Lord Is Always Spoken Now The Second Vatican Council initiated a series of changes in the Roman Catholic Church, the full extent of which may not be clear for a century. The changes reverberate in other Christian churches and in the secular world as well. Perhaps the single most important thing about the council was what it did not do: it did not define doctrines as previous councils had done; it did not condemn church heresies or secular movements. In the words of one historian, it moved “from threat to persuasion, monologue to conversation, ruling to service, exclusion to inclusion, the vertical to the horizontal.”1 The immediate result of the council was to release a great deal of pent-up energy for church reform. Some movements reflected the council’s concern for a “return to the sources” as a basis for proposed changes. Other attempts at reform may have been swept up in the fashions of the day. Already by the end of the 1960s there was movement by some church officials to put a brake on changes the council had initiated.2 The Catholic Church has entered a period in which inevitable change meets a constant resistance to almost all particular changes. From outside the church it is not a pretty sight. Inside the church there is a high level of frustration by many loyal members who recognize the need for a more radi- cal rethinking of doctrinal, liturgical, moral, and organizational issues so that the church can be true to its best self.3 The present pope said before his 1. John O’Malley, “Did the Council Change Anything?” in Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? ed. David Schultenover, 52–91 (New York: Continuum, 2007), 81; Giuseppe Alberigo, “Transi- tion to a New Age,” History of Vatican II, vol. 5 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 573–652. 2. Piero Marini, A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal 1963–75 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007). 3. U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (Washington, DC: The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life, 2008), 22–35. 1 2 Believing in a Revealing God election that “it seems certain to me that very hard times await the Church. Her own crisis has hardly begun.”4 What distinguishes today’s Catholic Church is that it faces a constant give-and-take with the surrounding world. It has to choose either to resist these influences or to enter into serious dialogue with other religious tradi- tions and with secular institutions. If dialogue is the choice, then that means acknowledging that the church does not control the language it uses. It has to negotiate religious terms with Jews, Muslims, and other groups. In ad- dressing the whole world it cannot simply decide on its own what the words mean. The church needs “scanners,” people who are removed from official positions and are comfortable in both the language of insiders and the lan- guage of outsiders. The Second Vatican Council took a great step forward by inviting Prot- estant, Orthodox, and Jewish observers to its proceedings. They provided a respectful but critical view of the Roman Catholic Church’s inner language. I would particularly note Orthodox writers, even though most Roman Catho- lics in the United States are barely aware of the Orthodox Church. This Eastern Christianity has a theology distinctly different from that of the Latin Church and could offer a corrective to emphases in the authority pattern and sacramental practices of Roman Catholicism. Some very pointed criti- cism of the council’s document on the church was provided by Orthodox theologians.5 Orthodox Christianity has given a prominence to the Holy Spirit that is still notably lacking in the Roman Catholic Church. We do not need a sepa- rate “theology of the Holy Spirit,” but a transforming of the way that faith in God and the revelation of God are perceived as the basis of all theology. The present pope has expressed the desire for dialogue with the Eastern half of the church. The Second Vatican Council opened a window for the Spirit to blow through every office, corridor, and corner of the church. It encouraged further thinking on the most basic issues of church life. The reflections in this book are based on respect for official pronouncements, including the documents of Vatican II, but the reflections are not always in complete agreement with official documents. 4. Robert Moynihan, Let God’s Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 144. 5. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985); Nikos Nissiotis, “The Main Ecclesiological Problems of Vatican II,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 2 (1965): 31–62. Introduction 3 The title and theme of this book, “believing in a revealing God,” is a simple idea: it is the relation between divine activity and human response. But simplicity in life comes from going beyond complexity rather than try- ing to avoid it. The complexity is due to the fact that the human mind divides things. Even though human life is all about relations, the human mind thinks in concepts, not relations. We live relationally—body/soul, individual/com- munity, past/present, human/nonhuman, creature/creator—but we struggle at the limits of language in trying to describe any of these relations. The relation that is the topic of this book is usually described with the words “faith and revelation.” But two nouns with a plus sign between them do not capture what is, in fact, a single relation composed of two activities. It is not surprising that in Christian history faith and revelation have so often been treated as two separable things.