THIS learned collection of essays emanates from a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity. Written in 1968, the Introduction (perhaps a misleading title for such a weighty tome) came into being at a time of ferment.
The aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, at which Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — himself had been a peritus (official theological adviser), the Vietnam War, and student protests in Europe and the United States created an atmosphere in which, in the words of Robert P. Imbelli, one of the contributors, “frenzy for change permeated both Church and Society.” Imbelli recounts how the Provincial of a small religious congregation remarked to him after grace before a meal, “Oh, I see you still pray; we have gone from formal prayer to informal prayer to no prayer.”
Ratzinger lamented such watering down of the faith. In his Introduction, he tells the story of “clever Hans”, who successively exchanges some gold that he had inherited for items of lesser value until he is finally left with a worthless stone, which he then discards. Of some of those who claimed to write “in the spirit of the Council”, Ratzinger would complain that “they sold goods from the old liberal flea-market as if they were new Catholic theology.”
As the essays make clear, however, it would be quite mistaken to understand him as a merely reactionary figure. Deeply influenced by the teachings of the Council, which he had helped to shape, Ratzinger saw the need for the Church to move on from a dominant mode of theology which he saw as frequently depersonalised and disembodied: one that tended at times to codify too much into propositional statements, and at others to be excessively sentimental.
For Ratzinger, in a theme that permeates all of his writing, knowledge of Jesus Christ must be not just a set of facts or ideas about him, but a living encounter with him. Hence, in a frequently cited passage of the Introduction, he writes: “Christian faith is more than an option in favour of a spiritual ground to the world; its central formula is not ‘I believe in something’ but ‘I believe in you’. It is an encounter with the man Jesus and in this encounter it experiences the meaning of the world as a person.”
Whilst Ratzinger emphasises the personal relationship between God and humanity through Christ, he resists the turn against philosophy and metaphysics characteristic of some schools of Protestant and Enlightenment thought. Jesus, whom we encounter personally in the scriptures and the sacramental life of the Church, is the incarnate logos, and so he points us towards meaning, structure, and truth that we find are embedded in the universe.
For those who prioritise praxis, or what modern Anglicans often call
“experience”, over theory, this is deeply suspect. In a fascinating essay on the reception of this work, Tracey Rowlands charts Walter Kasper’s longstanding criticism of Ratzinger’s work for what he sees as its “Platonising” tendencies. What he means by this is that Ratzinger refuses to start with insights derived from the embedded, concrete, and historical complexity of the world, and of people’s lives, in order to establish theological truths.
For Ratzinger, “meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning.” As a Christian, he writes, “I am called to say ‘Yes’ to a truth that simply is and which I, as a human being, simply receive and which transforms me to the extent that I receive it.”
The Ven. Dr Edward Dowler is Dean-designate of Chichester.
Gift to the Church and World: Fifty Years of Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity
Donald Wallenfang and John C. Cavadini, editors
James Clarke & Co £30
(978-0-227-17882-9)