Introduction to Christianity Part Two: Jesus Christ, Chapter One
Probably out of stubborness more than anything else, here are some more selected passages from the Ratzinger book:
Excursus: Christian Structures: “Who can explain comprehensibly and with reasonable brevity what ‘being a Christian’ really means? Who can explain comprehensibly to someone else why he believes and what the plain direction, the nub, of the decision implicit in faith is?” (243)
1. The individual and the whole: “The salvation of the individual as individual can and could always be looked after directly and immediately by God, and this does happen again and again. He needs no intermediary channels by which to enter the soul of the individual, to which he is more present interiorly than he is to himself; nothing can reach more intimately and deeply into man than he, who touches this creature man in the very innermost depth of his being. For the salvation of the mere individual there would be no need of either a Church or a history of salvation, and Incarnation or a Passion of God in this world. But precisely at this point we must also add the further statement: Christian faith is not based on the atomized individual but comes from the knowledge that there is no such thing as the mere individual, that, on the contrary, man is himself only when he is fitted into the whole: into mankind, into history, into the cosmos, as is right and proper for a being who is ‘spirit in body’” (245)
“One is not a Christian because only Christians are saved; one is a Christian because for history Christian loving service has meaning and is a necessity.” (249)
2. The principle of “for”: “In conclusion it must be stated that all man’s own efforts to go beyond himself can never suffice. He who only wants to give and is not ready to receive, he who only wants to exist for others and is unwilling to recognize that he for his part, too lives on the unexpected, unprovokable gift of others’ ‘for’, fails to recognize the basic mode of human existence and is thus bound to destroy the true meaning of living ‘for one another’. To be fruitful, all self-sacrifices demand acceptance by others and, in the last analysis; by the other who is the truly ‘other’; of all mankind and at the same time completely one with it: the God-man Jesus Christ. (254)
3. The law of disguise: “The fact that “for” is to be regarded as the decisive principle of human existence, and in coinciding with the principle of love becomes the real point at which the divine manifests itself in the world, brings a further consequence with it. it has the result that the “entirely-otherness” of God, which man can figure out for himself, becomes total dissimilarity, the complete unknowability of God. It means that the hidden quality of God, on which man counts, assumes the scandalous form of his palpability and visibility as the Crucified One.” (255)
4. The law of excess or superfluity: “In the ethical statements of the New Testament, there is a tension that looks as if it cannot be resolved: the tensioin between grace and ethos, between total forgiveness and just as total a demand on man, between the complete endowment of man, who has everything showered upon him because he can achieve nothing, and the equally complete obligation to give himself, an obligation that culminates in the unheard-of demand, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). When, confronted with this upsetting polarity, one looks for a connecting link, one comes across again and again, especially in Pauline theology, but also in the first three Gospels, the word ‘excess’ (περισσευμα), in which the talk of grace and that of demands meet and merge.” (257)
5. Finality and hope: “Christian faith says that in Christ the salvation of man is accomplished, that in him the true future of mankind has irrevocably begun and thus, although remaining future, is yet also perfect, a part of our present. This assertion embraces a principle of finality that is of the highest importance for the form of Christian existence, that is to say, for the sort of existential decision that being a Christian entails.”
6. The primacy of acceptance and Christian positivity: “… man comes in the most profound sense to himself, not through what he does, but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift. It cannot be ‘made’ on one’s own, without anyone else, one must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved. The love represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and his deepest need and that this most necessary thing is at the same time the freest and the most unenforceable means precisely that for his ‘salvation’ man is meant to rely on receiving.” (267)
7. Summary: The ‘spirit of Christianity’: “Let us be blunt, even at the risk of being misunderstood: the true Christian is not the denominational party member but he who through being a Christian has become truly human; not he who slavishly observes a system of norms, thinking as he does so only of himself, but he who has become freed to simple human goodness.” (270)
Excursus: Christian Structures: “Who can explain comprehensibly and with reasonable brevity what ‘being a Christian’ really means? Who can explain comprehensibly to someone else why he believes and what the plain direction, the nub, of the decision implicit in faith is?” (243)
1. The individual and the whole: “The salvation of the individual as individual can and could always be looked after directly and immediately by God, and this does happen again and again. He needs no intermediary channels by which to enter the soul of the individual, to which he is more present interiorly than he is to himself; nothing can reach more intimately and deeply into man than he, who touches this creature man in the very innermost depth of his being. For the salvation of the mere individual there would be no need of either a Church or a history of salvation, and Incarnation or a Passion of God in this world. But precisely at this point we must also add the further statement: Christian faith is not based on the atomized individual but comes from the knowledge that there is no such thing as the mere individual, that, on the contrary, man is himself only when he is fitted into the whole: into mankind, into history, into the cosmos, as is right and proper for a being who is ‘spirit in body’” (245)
“One is not a Christian because only Christians are saved; one is a Christian because for history Christian loving service has meaning and is a necessity.” (249)
2. The principle of “for”: “In conclusion it must be stated that all man’s own efforts to go beyond himself can never suffice. He who only wants to give and is not ready to receive, he who only wants to exist for others and is unwilling to recognize that he for his part, too lives on the unexpected, unprovokable gift of others’ ‘for’, fails to recognize the basic mode of human existence and is thus bound to destroy the true meaning of living ‘for one another’. To be fruitful, all self-sacrifices demand acceptance by others and, in the last analysis; by the other who is the truly ‘other’; of all mankind and at the same time completely one with it: the God-man Jesus Christ. (254)
3. The law of disguise: “The fact that “for” is to be regarded as the decisive principle of human existence, and in coinciding with the principle of love becomes the real point at which the divine manifests itself in the world, brings a further consequence with it. it has the result that the “entirely-otherness” of God, which man can figure out for himself, becomes total dissimilarity, the complete unknowability of God. It means that the hidden quality of God, on which man counts, assumes the scandalous form of his palpability and visibility as the Crucified One.” (255)
4. The law of excess or superfluity: “In the ethical statements of the New Testament, there is a tension that looks as if it cannot be resolved: the tensioin between grace and ethos, between total forgiveness and just as total a demand on man, between the complete endowment of man, who has everything showered upon him because he can achieve nothing, and the equally complete obligation to give himself, an obligation that culminates in the unheard-of demand, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). When, confronted with this upsetting polarity, one looks for a connecting link, one comes across again and again, especially in Pauline theology, but also in the first three Gospels, the word ‘excess’ (περισσευμα), in which the talk of grace and that of demands meet and merge.” (257)
5. Finality and hope: “Christian faith says that in Christ the salvation of man is accomplished, that in him the true future of mankind has irrevocably begun and thus, although remaining future, is yet also perfect, a part of our present. This assertion embraces a principle of finality that is of the highest importance for the form of Christian existence, that is to say, for the sort of existential decision that being a Christian entails.”
6. The primacy of acceptance and Christian positivity: “… man comes in the most profound sense to himself, not through what he does, but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift. It cannot be ‘made’ on one’s own, without anyone else, one must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved. The love represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and his deepest need and that this most necessary thing is at the same time the freest and the most unenforceable means precisely that for his ‘salvation’ man is meant to rely on receiving.” (267)
7. Summary: The ‘spirit of Christianity’: “Let us be blunt, even at the risk of being misunderstood: the true Christian is not the denominational party member but he who through being a Christian has become truly human; not he who slavishly observes a system of norms, thinking as he does so only of himself, but he who has become freed to simple human goodness.” (270)
posted by Quin Finnegan at 12:05 PM
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