Y COMUNIDADES AFRODESCENDIENTES
G. Protección frente al desplazamiento forzado
2.1 Revelation as Act
Ratzinger owes much of his theology of revelation to Bonaventure. In Milestones, Ratzinger summarizes Bonaventure’s position as he had developed it in his Habilitationschrift:
In Bonaventure (as well as in theologians of the thirteenth century) there was nothing corresponding to our conception of “revelation,” by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: it has even become a part of linguistic usage to refer to Sacred Scripture simply as “revelation.” Such an identification would have been unthinkable in the language of the High Middle Ages. Here, “revelation” is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself,
48 This section aims at providing a basic overview of Ratzinger’s theology of revelation. For more thorough
treatments of this topic, see Rowland, Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, 48-70; Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith, 48-65; Aidan Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Burns & Oates, 2007), 34-44; Cong Quy Joseph Lam, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Retractations (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), 30-88; Gaál, The
Theology of Pope Benedict XVI, 73-106; and Christopher Collins, The Word Made Love (Collegeville, MN:
not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of “revelation.” Where there is no one to perceive “revelation,” no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires someone who apprehends it.49
Ratzinger’s emphasis on the subjective element drew harsh criticism from Michael Schmaus, one of Ratzinger’s Habilitationschrift readers, who believed the theology smacked of “a dangerous modernism that had to lead to the subjectivization of the concept of revelation.”50 Ratzinger’s Habilitationschrift laid a foundation for his work on the theology of revelation, work that would
eventually impact Vatican II in a significant way. Jared Wicks deserves credit for publishing a lecture found in the archives that Ratzinger gave regarding the schemata De fontibus revelationis (On the Sources of Revelation), at Cardinal Frings’ request to the German-speaking bishops one day before the solemn opening of the Council.51 In this lecture, Ratzinger opens by criticizing the
schemata’s title as diverging from both Trent and Vatican I.52 He says:
Actually, Scripture and tradition are not the sources of revelation, but instead revelation, God’s speaking and his manifesting of himself, is the unus fons [one source], from which then the two streams of Scripture and tradition flow out. This is the true way of speaking of tradition, which Trent took for granted… [Calling Scripture and tradition “sources” of revelation] is flawed in failing to distinguish the order of reality from the order of our knowing…Scripture and tradition are for us sources from which we know revelation, but they are not in themselves its sources, for revelation is itself the source of Scripture and tradition.53
49 Ratzinger, Milestones, 108. See also Joseph Ratzinger, “Looking at Christ,” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans.
Michael Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 81-82.
50 Ratzinger, Milestones, 109.
51 For Wicks’ commentary on this lecture, see “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during
Vatican Council II,” 241-43. The text itself appears beginning on 269. For further commentary on Ratzinger’s assessment of De fontibus revalationis, see Lam, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Retractations, 57-64.
52 See Wicks, “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 270. 53 Wicks, Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 270.
While Scripture and tradition are rightly called sources for theology, calling them sources of revelation “does not depict the order of reality…God’s speaking and acting…comes before all historical formulations of this speaking, being the one source that feeds Scripture and
tradition.”54 Ratzinger notes that calling Scripture and tradition “sources of revelation” would
mean starting with historicism and not with faith, and that before speaking of the nature of Scripture and tradition as witnesses to revelation, Vatican II would do well to speak of the nature of revelation first.55 Without proceeding in this way, characterizing revelation with its “material
principles” could result in at least two errors: (1) a sola scriptura approach that claims Scripture and revelation are identical,56 and, as a corollary, (2) a kind of positivism that “identifies
revelation with its concrete attestations.”57 As it would turn out, Ratzinger’s influence was
certainly felt within the conciliar deliberations that eventually produced Dei Verbum.
Dei Verbum presents revelation personally. Following the Council, in his commentary on Dei Verbum, Ratzinger points out that, compared with Vatican I’s Dei Filius, Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, with its emphasis on God himself “in his wisdom and goodness,” gives “a far greater
emphasis to the personal and theocentric starting point.”58 He adds, "It is God himself, the person
of God, from whom revelation proceeds and to whom it returns, and thus revelation necessarily reaches — also with the person who receives it — into the personal centre of man, it touches him in the depth of his being, not only in his individual faculties, in his will and understanding.”59
54 Wicks, Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 270. 55 Wicks, “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 271.
56 Frequently, Ratzinger notes Geiselmann’s contribution in this regard. See Joseph Ratzinger, “The Question of the
Concept of Tradition,” in God’s Word: Scripture—Tradition—Office, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 47-48. J.R. Geiselmann, a dogmatician at Tübingen, argued prior to the start of Vatican II, that Trent’s statement “in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus,” traditionally been understood as meaning Scripture did not contain the whole truth and that there was no possibility of sola scriptura, should be interpreted in light of the first draft of the Tridentine text. The formulation in the first draft clearly divided revelation into two sources, saying that truth is contained “partim in libris scriptis partim in sine scripto traditionibus.” In the final text, however, Trent dropped the “partim” — “partim,” and Geiselmann sees this as not dividing truth into two sources, thus opening the door for a Catholic theologian to “argue the material sufficiency of Scripture,” and “that Holy Scripture transmits revelation to us sufficiently” (Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 48). Geiselmann thus
concludes that Trent intended to point in the direction of a thoroughly acceptable sola scriptura. Ratzinger critiques Geiselmann’s thesis, though he appreciates the enthusiasm behind it for ecumenical progress. Nonetheless, he questions its historical and factual basis, along with the definition of “sufficiency of Scripture,” etc.
57 Wicks, Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 271.
58 Joseph Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, trans. Lalit
Adolphus, et al. (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 171.
Commenting on Ratzinger’s comparison between Vatican I and II, Christopher Collins notes that in Dei Filius, “revelation is seen as a monologue from God to humanity rather than a dialogue between God and humanity,” and one that follows the “material tradition” whereby God hands on that which is extrinsic to himself.60 In other words, the neo-scholastic conception of revelation
resulted in a loss of the dynamism of dialogue that is central to a personalist conception of reality. In the neo-scholastic approach, revelation is seen as a matter of God giving to humanity truths about himself, as if the truths are extrinsic and outside of his person, instead of giving himself. Dei Verbum would proceed to develop “an understanding of revelation that is seen basically as dialogue.”61 With this, both the Council and Ratzinger move away from the neo-
scholastic propositional understanding of revelation, a position that Ratzinger calls historicist and intellectualist, for which “revelation chiefly meant a store of mysterious supernatural teachings, which automatically reduces faith very much to an acceptance of these supernatural insights.”62
Rather than springing from revelation-as-ethical-choice or revelation-as-lofty-propositions, Ratzinger calls for faith that springs from revelatio-as-actio, one which has narrative and personalist undertones as opposed to propositional ones.
Diverging from a neo-scholastic view that reduces revelation to propositions, Ratzinger highlights the relationship of Scripture and revelation vis-á-vis tradition, by identifying the following “roots” or “layers" of the relationship:63
• First Root: Revelation goes beyond Scripture in two directions: (1) given its basis in God, revelation extends upward into God’s action; and (2) as a reality that involves man and happens within the dynamism of faith, it extends beyond the mediating fact of Scripture. Scripture is not revelation, but is part of the greater reality known as revelation.64 In the same vein, Ratzinger elsewhere says: “the Word is always greater
60 Collins, The Word Made Love, 43. 61 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 171.
62 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 172. See also Ratzinger, “Looking at Christ,” 82; and Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 107-08.
63 See Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 62-63.
64 Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 53. See also pg. 62 where he calls tradition “the surplus of
than the words and is never exhausted by the words. On the contrary: the words take part in the inexhaustibility of the Word; they become accessible on the basis of him and therefore grow, as it were, in their encounter with all generations.”65 To this
point, Ratzinger notes that “Bonaventure believed that there was a gradual, historical, progressive development in the understanding of Scripture which was in no way closed.”66 Getting behind the words of Scripture, to the Word itself, can take place
through the (1) spiritual understanding of Scripture (spiritualis intelligentia), meaning the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical interpretations of Scripture,67 (2) the figurae sacramentales (akin to typological figures who historically pre-date Jesus
Christ),68 and (3) the multiformes theoriae, “through which the reader can apprehend
many manifestations of theoria or meaning of the one truth, the one Word being spoken throughout the whole of Scripture.”69 From the one Logos, many logoi spermatikoi are "produced and planted in the soil of human history,” and not only
within what is recounted in Scripture, meaning the present circumstances can be a place in which the Logos can be encountered and which must be interpreted in light of the narrative that has preceded it.70
• Second Root: “The specific character of New Testament revelation as pneuma compared with gramma…The creed, as a rule of faith, over the particular details of what was written. The creed appears as the hermeneutic key to the Scriptures, which without any hermeneutic would ultimately have to remain silent.”71 Essentially, this
means that Scripture cannot be “objectivized,” or that a sola scriptura position is untenable with regard to history and, therefore, with regard to interpretation.
65 Ratzinger, “Looking at Christ,” 82.
66 Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes (Chicago: Franciscan Herald
Press, 1989), 75.
67 Ratzinger, Theology of History in Bonaventure, 62-63. For an overview of Ratzinger’s treatment of Bonaventure
on these ways of entering into Scripture, see Collins, The Word Made Love, 27-28.
68 Ratzinger, Theology of History in Bonaventure, 10.
69 Collins, The Word Made Love, 28. See also Ratzinger, Theology of History in Bonaventure, 7. 70 Collins, The Word Made Love, 28-29.
• Third Root: The Christ-event remains present in the “presence of Christ’s Spirit in his body, the Church, and associated with this the authority to interpret the Christ of yesterday with the Christ of today.”72
Ratzinger notes that Bonaventure does not speak of “revelation,” as in a singular event, but of “revelations,”73 many events that disclose meaning. Collins argues that at the heart of the
narrative of salvation history one finds the acts of God, and “not simply the content of what is ultimately revealed. Revelation…is not a static body of data or knowledge but rather always characterized by the dynamic of an unfolding event, in turn giving it a narrative texture rather than a propositional one…what is behind Scripture is always more than the ‘letter’ of Scripture itself.”74 Concretely, this means that for tradition, the following is true: (1) “the entire mystery of
Christ’s presence is in the first instance the whole reality that is transmitted in tradition, the decisive and fundamental reality that is always antecedent all individual explications…and which represents what in actual fact has to be transmitted;”75 (2) consequently, tradition’s
concrete form is present in faith, which is “the indwelling of Christ;”76 (3) tradition’s “organ” lies
in the authority of the Church; (4) tradition is articulated in the creed (fides quae), the rule of faith.77 The revelation of God in his Word is the source of revelation, of which Scripture and
Tradition participate and mediate, but the whole of which they cannot and do not contain. Revelation requires the receiving subject, but not only that: revelation requires faith, the
receptivity of the subject to that which is revealed, in order for revelation to take place. The Holy Spirit, operative within the Church and her living and listening memory, makes Christ's presence accessible today.78
72 Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 63. 73 See Ratzinger, The Theology of History in Bonaventure, 57. 74 Collins, The Word Made Love, 27.
75 Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 63-64. 76 Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition," 64. 77 Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 64.
78 Cf. Lorenzo Albacete, “The Key to the Christian Life,” Traces (April 2003), accessed on Mar. 27, 2018 at
From what has been determined thus far, one can say that Ratzinger’s position regarding revelation is similar to that of Moran’s in many ways.79 Ratzinger also believes the assertion that
revelation “closed with the death of the last apostle must appear as far too simplistic.”80 Jesus
Christ is the fullness and perfection of revelation, therefore he is the “end.” At the same time, the “end” is also the “beginning” of the fullness of revelation. The Incarnate Word does not end God’s speaking, but is, "Man’s being constantly addressed by God, it is the constant relating of man to the one man who is the Word of God himself.”81 He continues:
Thus subsequent history cannot surpass what has taken place in Christ, but it must attempt to catch up with it gradually, to catch up all humanity in the man who, as a man coming from God, is the man for all others, the area of all human existence and the one and only Adam. And if we made the point that Christ was the end of God’s speaking because after him there was nothing more to say, then that also means that he is the constant address of God to man, that nothing comes after him, but that in him the whole extent of God’s word begins to reveal itself.82
In Jesus Christ, revelation has reached it “high point,” to use Moran’s terminology. Nothing can surpass the perfect union of the dialogue between God and man as is present in the very person of Jesus Christ, and, in this way, the Word incarnate is the “end” of revelation because the veil cannot be removed any further. Still, insofar as Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and is present now, he is the constant presence of the perfection of God’s revelation which all of history, indeed, each person’s history, attempts to catch up with, to enter into, to understand. Here, however, the divergence between Moran’s position and Ratzinger’s begins to become apparent. Moran’s “high point” of revelation ultimately comes “from below,” with Jesus Christ’s
79 Cf. Moran, Theology of Revelation, 63-ff.
80 Ratzinger, "The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 86. 81 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 175.
82 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 175. In his examination report for this dissertation, Fr. D. Vincent Twomey
recommended the following translation of the cited text: "Thus while subsequent history cannot indeed surpass what happened in Christ, yet it must however attempt gradually to retrieve it, to retrieve humanity in the one who, as coming from God, is the man for all others, the sphere of all human existence and the definitive Adam." See Joseph Ratzinger Gesemmelte Schriften 7/2, p. 743. See also Ratzinger, “Looking at Christ,” 82-83.
human nature, his “reflexive consciousness,” becoming aware of his identity as the Son of God, and manifesting this identity in the Paschal Mystery. For Moran, the “fullness of time” seems to be reconfigured as Jesus' transcendent experience of himself wherein he realizes most fully his identity as the Son.83 The starting point for Moran is largely anthropocentric and transcendental,
and revelation is recast as an event within time — ongoing, transcendental religious experience. It is also worth noting that Boeve does not place the emphasis so much in the transcendental experience as he does in the hermeneutical implications, wherein the particulars (note the plural) within history become capable of speaking about God. The Incarnation is “fullness” in that the all-too-human, the all-too-particular manifests the divine — Jesus is the “fullness” of
interruption and marks the definitive hermeneutical path in his humanity and not in spite of it. Rather than trying to understand how the particular can contain the universal, Boeve attempts to show how the particular, “the concrete and the accidental make the manifestation of God
possible,” which “does not mean that God coincides with the concrete and accidental.”84
According to Boeve, God is revealed in and through Jesus’ humanity, and it is only the all-too- human, in the particular, that can give expression to God, thus relativizing divine revelation “since the particular never coincides with God, just as God and humanity are united in a single person, undivided and undiluted…the latter cannot be substituted nor can it be absolutized.”85
Jesus’ humanity can speak about God, but Jesus is not God.
For Ratzinger, the fullness of revelation is neither something brought about by time itself, nor is it the reduction of revelation to history, but because, in the Incarnation, eternity enters into time and brings time into eternity, Love, too, becomes the causality operating in the world.86 “It
is not that God is time, but he has time.”87 Because God has time both by creating time and
entering into time, revelation does have a past “insofar as it took place in historical facts, but also has its constant ‘today,’ insofar as what once happened remains forever living and effective in the faith of the Church, and Christian faith never refers merely to what is past; rather, it refers
83 Moran, Theology of Revelation, 74. 84 Boeve, God Interrupts History, 176. 85 Boeve, God Interrupts History, 176.
86 Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Theological Basis of Prayer and Liturgy,” in The Feast of Faith trans. Graham Harrison
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 31-32.
equally to what is present and what is to come.”88 Here, Ratzinger’s position aims to solve what
both he and Moran believe to be a simplistic assertion, that revelation “closed” with the death of the last apostle. However, unlike Moran, Ratzinger solves the problem not by moving beyond the historical, or material, aspects of the tradition (Christianity has a past and it has a content), nor by moving beyond the Church, but by holding a position that revelation is “closed in terms of its