Introduction to Christianity
I’m working my way through this book by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a 358 page explication of the Apostles’ Creed first published in 1968. If anyone is qualified to deliver such a title it would seem to be the pope, and in this work Benedict XVI has presented us with an illuminating meditation on what it means to be a Christian. That’s my humble opinion after reading the first hundred pages, anyway. What I offer here isn’t really intended as a review, but more in the way of a collection of my favorite passages as I work my way through the book, and maybe a question or two here and there.
I’ve read Bernard Lonergan’s “Way to Nicea” about half a dozen times over the years, and the two studies make for an interesting comparison. Lonergan has given us a study of the dialectical development of Christian dogma and its early formulation by writers such as Hermas and Tertullian. While Ratzinger is certainly concerned with earlier sources, occasional references to the likes of Romano Guardini and Teilhard de Chardin reveal his purpose as something more than delineating the ancient setting of an ancient creed. For example, here’s a paragraph on “The Dilemma of Belief in the World of Today:”
“Belief appears no longer as the bold but challenging leap out of the apparent all of our visible world and into the apparent void of the invisible an intangible; it looks much more like a demand to bind oneself to yesterday and to affirm it as eternally valid. And who wants to do that in an age when the idea of “tradition” has been replaced by the idea of “progress”? (53)
After all, what does it really mean to say, “I believe”? This question and its relevance in the ‘world of today’ is the subject that Ratzinger takes up in the first eighty pages of the introduction. It is a question he approaches in at least seven different ways, including examinations of the relation between faith and doubt, the modern understanding of reality, and the rationality of faith. The most explicit statements made about faith are drawn from the ancient Hebrew word ‘amen,’ which embraces meanings as various as, ‘truth,’ ‘firm ground,’ ‘loyalty,’ ‘take one’s stand on something.’ “Thus faith in God appears as a holding on to God through which man gains a firm foothold for his life. Faith is thereby defined as taking up a position, as taking a stand trustfully on the ground of the word of God.” (69)
What comes through in this introduction is the author's intellectual honesty, so that at the end of this searching we are brought to ask, with John the Baptist, “Are you really he?” If I understand correctly, we can only really know the answer when we have the courage to ask the question.
In the second part of the introduction Ratzinger takes up ‘The Ecclesiastical Form of Faith.’ This part is in turn divided into sections concerning the History and Structure of the Creed, Limits and Meaning of the Text itself, Creed and Dogma, and the Creed as Expression of the Structure of Faith, including the sections Faith and Word and Belief as Symbol. Though short, I found these chapters especially striking for such a convincing demonstration of the clear development of Christian identity and community from the apostles’ experience (as revealed in the gospels) to the medieval form, in which there are many ways even now that we still understand ourselves.
Here Ratzinger writes of how the creed developed out of the gospels (specifically the words of the risen Christ in Matthew 28:19) as a dialogue ‘embedded in the ceremony of baptism.’ In the third and fourth centuries the form changed from question-and-answer into one continuous text, and into the Latin language. As the specifically Roman baptismal confession it was known by the Greek word ‘symbolum,’ symbol, and ‘finally Charlemagne secured the recognition of one form of the text throughout his empire, a form that – based on the old Roman text – had received its final shape in Gaul.’ Apparently the legend that the creed comes to us from the apostles themselves comes from the fifth century, and this legend later developed into the assumption that each of the twelve articles was contributed by one of the twelve apostles.
From the second part: “Something absolutely central becomes visible here, namely, that faith has to do, and must have to do, with forgiving, that it aims at leading man to recognize that he is a being that can only find himself in the reception and transmission of forgiveness, a being that needs forgiveness even in his best and purest moments.” (86)
From Creed and Dogma: “This means that faith is located in the act of conversion, in the turn of one’s being from worship of the visible and practicable to trust in the invisible.” (88) And in comparing the Apostles’ Creed to the Nicean Creed: “If we wish to feel our way toward the fundamental nature of Christian faith, it will be right to go back beyond the later, purely dogmatic texts and to regard this its first dialogue form as the most appropriate one ever created. This form is also more suited to its purpose than the We-type of creed, which (unlike our I-creed) was developed in Christian Africa and then at the big Eastern Councils. The latter kind represents a new type of creed, no longer rooted in the sacramental context of the ecclesiastical ceremony of conversion in the execution of the about-turn, and thus in the real birthplace of faith, but proceeding from the striving of the bishops assembled at the Council for the right doctrine and thus clearly becoming the first step toward the future form of dogma.” (89)
Concerning faith and word: “in faith the word takes precedence over the thought, a precedence that differentiates it structurally from the architecture of philosophy. In philosophy the thought precedes the word; it is after all a product of the reflection that one then tries to put into words; the words always remain secondary to the thought and thus in the last resort can always be replaced by other words. Faith, on the other hand, comes to man from outside, and this very fact is fundamental to it.” (91)
From Belief as symbol: “Dogma (or symbol, respectively) is also always . . . essentially an arrangement of words that from a purely intellectual point of view could have been quite different yet, precisely as a form of words, has its own significance – that of uniting people in the community of the confessing word. It is not a piece of doctrine standing isolated in and for itself but is the form of our worship of God, the form of our conversion, which is not only a turn to God but also a turn to one another in the common glorification of God.” (98)
Less momentous questions that came up in the course of the reading for me have mainly to do with that emphasis on ‘standing firm.’ Ratzinger convincingly lays out the evidence that this is in the spirit of the creed, but I can’t help but feel that something else is left out of this equation, though not the creed itself. Taking to heart his own words, that “in our attempt at understanding the Creed we must take care to keep referring the whole to the New Testament and to read and interpret it in the light of the aims of the latter,” I respectfully bring up the following point. In my own experience ‘standing firm’ has at times too easily degenerated into stasis. The gospels contain many other conceptualizations of faith, some of which don’t place so much emphasis on standing firm; in fact some seem to run contrary to it. The calling (and sending forth) of the disciples, the many miracles, and, of course, many of the parables given to us by Christ: the prodigal son, the workers in the vineyard, the bridesmaids and their lamps, and more than a few others. The idea of standing firm is certainly prevalent: the parable of the mustard seed, the seeds in good soil, the house built on a firm foundation. And of course the crucifixion, the central Christian event, the central human event, is the ultimate ‘standing still,’ but even this points forward to the resurrection. The creed also points us forward to the resurrection (it’s right there between the descent into hell and the ascension to heaven, after all), but in the resurrection itself I don’t see much emphasis on standing. The two disciples on their way to Emmaus, Jesus saying to Peter “Feed my sheep,” and “You will be carried off where you do not want to go,” Thomas touching the wounds of the risen Christ. There seems to me something beyond ‘standing firm’ at work here.
I’ve read Bernard Lonergan’s “Way to Nicea” about half a dozen times over the years, and the two studies make for an interesting comparison. Lonergan has given us a study of the dialectical development of Christian dogma and its early formulation by writers such as Hermas and Tertullian. While Ratzinger is certainly concerned with earlier sources, occasional references to the likes of Romano Guardini and Teilhard de Chardin reveal his purpose as something more than delineating the ancient setting of an ancient creed. For example, here’s a paragraph on “The Dilemma of Belief in the World of Today:”
“Belief appears no longer as the bold but challenging leap out of the apparent all of our visible world and into the apparent void of the invisible an intangible; it looks much more like a demand to bind oneself to yesterday and to affirm it as eternally valid. And who wants to do that in an age when the idea of “tradition” has been replaced by the idea of “progress”? (53)
After all, what does it really mean to say, “I believe”? This question and its relevance in the ‘world of today’ is the subject that Ratzinger takes up in the first eighty pages of the introduction. It is a question he approaches in at least seven different ways, including examinations of the relation between faith and doubt, the modern understanding of reality, and the rationality of faith. The most explicit statements made about faith are drawn from the ancient Hebrew word ‘amen,’ which embraces meanings as various as, ‘truth,’ ‘firm ground,’ ‘loyalty,’ ‘take one’s stand on something.’ “Thus faith in God appears as a holding on to God through which man gains a firm foothold for his life. Faith is thereby defined as taking up a position, as taking a stand trustfully on the ground of the word of God.” (69)
What comes through in this introduction is the author's intellectual honesty, so that at the end of this searching we are brought to ask, with John the Baptist, “Are you really he?” If I understand correctly, we can only really know the answer when we have the courage to ask the question.
In the second part of the introduction Ratzinger takes up ‘The Ecclesiastical Form of Faith.’ This part is in turn divided into sections concerning the History and Structure of the Creed, Limits and Meaning of the Text itself, Creed and Dogma, and the Creed as Expression of the Structure of Faith, including the sections Faith and Word and Belief as Symbol. Though short, I found these chapters especially striking for such a convincing demonstration of the clear development of Christian identity and community from the apostles’ experience (as revealed in the gospels) to the medieval form, in which there are many ways even now that we still understand ourselves.
Here Ratzinger writes of how the creed developed out of the gospels (specifically the words of the risen Christ in Matthew 28:19) as a dialogue ‘embedded in the ceremony of baptism.’ In the third and fourth centuries the form changed from question-and-answer into one continuous text, and into the Latin language. As the specifically Roman baptismal confession it was known by the Greek word ‘symbolum,’ symbol, and ‘finally Charlemagne secured the recognition of one form of the text throughout his empire, a form that – based on the old Roman text – had received its final shape in Gaul.’ Apparently the legend that the creed comes to us from the apostles themselves comes from the fifth century, and this legend later developed into the assumption that each of the twelve articles was contributed by one of the twelve apostles.
From the second part: “Something absolutely central becomes visible here, namely, that faith has to do, and must have to do, with forgiving, that it aims at leading man to recognize that he is a being that can only find himself in the reception and transmission of forgiveness, a being that needs forgiveness even in his best and purest moments.” (86)
From Creed and Dogma: “This means that faith is located in the act of conversion, in the turn of one’s being from worship of the visible and practicable to trust in the invisible.” (88) And in comparing the Apostles’ Creed to the Nicean Creed: “If we wish to feel our way toward the fundamental nature of Christian faith, it will be right to go back beyond the later, purely dogmatic texts and to regard this its first dialogue form as the most appropriate one ever created. This form is also more suited to its purpose than the We-type of creed, which (unlike our I-creed) was developed in Christian Africa and then at the big Eastern Councils. The latter kind represents a new type of creed, no longer rooted in the sacramental context of the ecclesiastical ceremony of conversion in the execution of the about-turn, and thus in the real birthplace of faith, but proceeding from the striving of the bishops assembled at the Council for the right doctrine and thus clearly becoming the first step toward the future form of dogma.” (89)
Concerning faith and word: “in faith the word takes precedence over the thought, a precedence that differentiates it structurally from the architecture of philosophy. In philosophy the thought precedes the word; it is after all a product of the reflection that one then tries to put into words; the words always remain secondary to the thought and thus in the last resort can always be replaced by other words. Faith, on the other hand, comes to man from outside, and this very fact is fundamental to it.” (91)
From Belief as symbol: “Dogma (or symbol, respectively) is also always . . . essentially an arrangement of words that from a purely intellectual point of view could have been quite different yet, precisely as a form of words, has its own significance – that of uniting people in the community of the confessing word. It is not a piece of doctrine standing isolated in and for itself but is the form of our worship of God, the form of our conversion, which is not only a turn to God but also a turn to one another in the common glorification of God.” (98)
Less momentous questions that came up in the course of the reading for me have mainly to do with that emphasis on ‘standing firm.’ Ratzinger convincingly lays out the evidence that this is in the spirit of the creed, but I can’t help but feel that something else is left out of this equation, though not the creed itself. Taking to heart his own words, that “in our attempt at understanding the Creed we must take care to keep referring the whole to the New Testament and to read and interpret it in the light of the aims of the latter,” I respectfully bring up the following point. In my own experience ‘standing firm’ has at times too easily degenerated into stasis. The gospels contain many other conceptualizations of faith, some of which don’t place so much emphasis on standing firm; in fact some seem to run contrary to it. The calling (and sending forth) of the disciples, the many miracles, and, of course, many of the parables given to us by Christ: the prodigal son, the workers in the vineyard, the bridesmaids and their lamps, and more than a few others. The idea of standing firm is certainly prevalent: the parable of the mustard seed, the seeds in good soil, the house built on a firm foundation. And of course the crucifixion, the central Christian event, the central human event, is the ultimate ‘standing still,’ but even this points forward to the resurrection. The creed also points us forward to the resurrection (it’s right there between the descent into hell and the ascension to heaven, after all), but in the resurrection itself I don’t see much emphasis on standing. The two disciples on their way to Emmaus, Jesus saying to Peter “Feed my sheep,” and “You will be carried off where you do not want to go,” Thomas touching the wounds of the risen Christ. There seems to me something beyond ‘standing firm’ at work here.
posted by Quin Finnegan at 3:11 PM
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