Introduction to Christianity Part One: God, Chapter Four
The end of the first paragraph of “Faith in God Today” is both a call and a question: “the Christian statement ‘I believe in God’ is always a process of separation, of acceptance, of purification, and of transformation. Only in this way can the Christian confession of faith in the one God be maintained in the passing ages. But in what direction does the process point today?” (151)
From the first part, ‘The Primacy of Logos’: “After two and a half thousand years of philosophical thinking it is no longer possible for us to speak blithely about the subject itself as if so many different people had not tried to do the same thing before us and come to grief. Moreover, when we survey the acres of shattered hypotheses, vainly applied ingenuity, and empty logic that history shows us, we might well lose all heart in the quest for the real, hidden truth that transcends the obvious.” (156)
Ratzinger then proposes that there are two possibilities for an explanation of being. The first is the materialistic solution, in which being-thought is a consequence of material forces and is therefore incapable of comprehending itself. The second is the idealistic solution, in which an idealistic being-thought precedes material forces. Christianity points towards being-though, but not, interestingly enough, in its idealistic form.
In conclusion, “At the beginning of all being [Christian belief] puts not just some kind of consciousness but a creative freedom that creates further freedoms.” (158)
In ‘The Personal God’, Ratzinger endeavors to show that God cannot be mere oneness. “Christian belief in God compels us to go beyond mere monotheism and leads to the belief in the triune God, who must now, in conclusion, be discussed.” (161)
Perhaps this only makes sense after the discussion that has gone before it, but this in itself is an arresting sentence: “Christian belief in God compels us to go beyond mere monotheism …” I understand that we must try to understand God as something more than a kind of deified monism that is the summit of what he has earlier called ‘mathematical’ or ‘philosophical’ thinking. What puzzles me is when he writes that plurality, “which follows by an inner necessity from the Christian option, leads of its own accord to a transcending of the concept of a God who is mere oneness.” (161) How is this not merely a replacement of one brand of grim necessity with another? Note the words compels and necessity above. It seems to me that we have just been led to believe ourselves free of materialistic necessity, only to be handed over to (an admittedly more complex) theological necessity.
From the first part, ‘The Primacy of Logos’: “After two and a half thousand years of philosophical thinking it is no longer possible for us to speak blithely about the subject itself as if so many different people had not tried to do the same thing before us and come to grief. Moreover, when we survey the acres of shattered hypotheses, vainly applied ingenuity, and empty logic that history shows us, we might well lose all heart in the quest for the real, hidden truth that transcends the obvious.” (156)
Ratzinger then proposes that there are two possibilities for an explanation of being. The first is the materialistic solution, in which being-thought is a consequence of material forces and is therefore incapable of comprehending itself. The second is the idealistic solution, in which an idealistic being-thought precedes material forces. Christianity points towards being-though, but not, interestingly enough, in its idealistic form.
In conclusion, “At the beginning of all being [Christian belief] puts not just some kind of consciousness but a creative freedom that creates further freedoms.” (158)
In ‘The Personal God’, Ratzinger endeavors to show that God cannot be mere oneness. “Christian belief in God compels us to go beyond mere monotheism and leads to the belief in the triune God, who must now, in conclusion, be discussed.” (161)
Perhaps this only makes sense after the discussion that has gone before it, but this in itself is an arresting sentence: “Christian belief in God compels us to go beyond mere monotheism …” I understand that we must try to understand God as something more than a kind of deified monism that is the summit of what he has earlier called ‘mathematical’ or ‘philosophical’ thinking. What puzzles me is when he writes that plurality, “which follows by an inner necessity from the Christian option, leads of its own accord to a transcending of the concept of a God who is mere oneness.” (161) How is this not merely a replacement of one brand of grim necessity with another? Note the words compels and necessity above. It seems to me that we have just been led to believe ourselves free of materialistic necessity, only to be handed over to (an admittedly more complex) theological necessity.
posted by Quin Finnegan at 6:45 PM
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