Introduction to Christianity Part One: God, Chapter Three
“The God of Faith and the God of the Philosophers” is divided into three sub chapters: ‘The decision of the early Church in favor of philosophy’, ‘The transformation of the God of the philosophers’, and ‘The reflection of the question in the text of the Creed’.
Ratzinger begins by stating, “the choice made in the biblical image of God had to be made once again in the early days of Christianity and the Church; at bottom it has to be made afresh in every spiritual situation and thus always remains just as much a task as a gift.” (137)
On the confrontation of ancient culture by early Christians: “… early 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. Wherever the question arose as to which god the Christian God corresponded, Zeus perhaps or Hermes or Dionysus or some other god, the answer ran: To none of them. To none of the gods to whom you pray but solely and alone to him to whom you do not pray, to that highest being of whom your philosophers speak.” (138)
In a nutshell: “The choice thus made meant opting for the logos as against any kind of myth, it meant the definitive demythologization of the world and of religion.” (138)
Here is a paragraph remarkably relevant to today’s world, where science is so often politicized and religion mobilized in servitude of self: “In a situation in which the truth of the Christian approach seems to be disappearing, the struggle for Christianity has brought to the fore again the two very methods employed by polytheism to fight – and lose – its last battle. On one side, we have the retreat from the truth of reason into a realm of mere piety, mere faith, mere revelation; a truth that in reality bears a fatal resemblance, whether by design or accident and whether the fact is admitted or not, to the ancient religion’s retreat before logos, to the flight from truth to beautiful custom, from nature to politics. On the other side, we have an approach I will call for short, ‘interpreted Christianity’: the stumbling blocks in Christianity are removed by the interpretive method, and, as part of the process of rendering it unobjectionable, its actual content is written off as dispensable phraseology, as a periphrasis not required to say the simple things now alleged, by complicated modes of exposition, to constitute its real meaning.” (142)
In The Transformation of the God of the Philosophers Ratzinger follows the change brought about in our understanding of God, from Being as the originator and object of Pure Thought to the Relational Being as revealed in logos. “The logos of the whole world, the creative original thought, is at the same time love; in fact this thought is creative because, as thought, it is love, and, as love, it is thought.” (148) As he writes elsewhere, agape. This chapter includes a powerful reading of Luke 15:1-10, the parables of the lost sheep and the lost drachma, concerning our understanding of the Christian reality.
The Reflection of the Question in the Text of the Creed is concerned with the Christian image of God as “Father” and “Almighty”, pantokrater in Greek, and how it points back to the Old Testament title Yahweh Zebaoth, which means something like “God of powers.”
“The word “Father”, which in its reference point here still remains quite open, at the same time links the first article of the Creed to the second; it points forward to Christology and thus harnesses the two sections together in such a way that what is said of God only becomes fully comprehensible when one at the same time looks over at the Son. For example, what “almightiness” and “lordship of all” mean only becomes clear from a Christian point of view in the crib and the Cross.” (149)
Ratzinger begins by stating, “the choice made in the biblical image of God had to be made once again in the early days of Christianity and the Church; at bottom it has to be made afresh in every spiritual situation and thus always remains just as much a task as a gift.” (137)
On the confrontation of ancient culture by early Christians: “… early 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. Wherever the question arose as to which god the Christian God corresponded, Zeus perhaps or Hermes or Dionysus or some other god, the answer ran: To none of them. To none of the gods to whom you pray but solely and alone to him to whom you do not pray, to that highest being of whom your philosophers speak.” (138)
In a nutshell: “The choice thus made meant opting for the logos as against any kind of myth, it meant the definitive demythologization of the world and of religion.” (138)
Here is a paragraph remarkably relevant to today’s world, where science is so often politicized and religion mobilized in servitude of self: “In a situation in which the truth of the Christian approach seems to be disappearing, the struggle for Christianity has brought to the fore again the two very methods employed by polytheism to fight – and lose – its last battle. On one side, we have the retreat from the truth of reason into a realm of mere piety, mere faith, mere revelation; a truth that in reality bears a fatal resemblance, whether by design or accident and whether the fact is admitted or not, to the ancient religion’s retreat before logos, to the flight from truth to beautiful custom, from nature to politics. On the other side, we have an approach I will call for short, ‘interpreted Christianity’: the stumbling blocks in Christianity are removed by the interpretive method, and, as part of the process of rendering it unobjectionable, its actual content is written off as dispensable phraseology, as a periphrasis not required to say the simple things now alleged, by complicated modes of exposition, to constitute its real meaning.” (142)
In The Transformation of the God of the Philosophers Ratzinger follows the change brought about in our understanding of God, from Being as the originator and object of Pure Thought to the Relational Being as revealed in logos. “The logos of the whole world, the creative original thought, is at the same time love; in fact this thought is creative because, as thought, it is love, and, as love, it is thought.” (148) As he writes elsewhere, agape. This chapter includes a powerful reading of Luke 15:1-10, the parables of the lost sheep and the lost drachma, concerning our understanding of the Christian reality.
The Reflection of the Question in the Text of the Creed is concerned with the Christian image of God as “Father” and “Almighty”, pantokrater in Greek, and how it points back to the Old Testament title Yahweh Zebaoth, which means something like “God of powers.”
“The word “Father”, which in its reference point here still remains quite open, at the same time links the first article of the Creed to the second; it points forward to Christology and thus harnesses the two sections together in such a way that what is said of God only becomes fully comprehensible when one at the same time looks over at the Son. For example, what “almightiness” and “lordship of all” mean only becomes clear from a Christian point of view in the crib and the Cross.” (149)
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