Abstract
As a student, Ratzinger learned from Romano Guardini that liturgy is the proper context to understand the Bible: it is the product of the Church celebrating the Eucharist and proclaiming the gospel. Church, scripture, and liturgy form one hermeneutic unit.1 A person cannot understand one without the two other elements. Famously, Kant had argued that the voice of being itself cannot be heard by human beings shackled to contingent, phenomenal reality. Only the postulates of practical reason access God. In contrast, John the Evangelist holds that the Spirit-inspired memory of the “we” of the Church brings about a remembering of the reality underlying scripture. Divine initiative is not constrained by a Kantian perspective. Only with the Easter Kerygma (preaching) does the integrity of scripture become apparent. All else evaporates into private musings or even ideologies. Good exegesis “is rooted in the living reality… of the Church of all ages.”2
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Notes
Joseph Ratzinger, “Guardini on Christ in Our Century,” Crisis (June 1996): 14.
Joseph Ratzinger, “Assessment and Future Perspectives,” in Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, ed. Alcuin Reid (Farnborough: St. Michael’s Abbey Press, 2003), 148.
Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 145.
Heinrich Schlier, Die Zeit der Kirche (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1955).
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Franz Mußner, Die johanneische Sehweise, Quaestiones Disputatae 28 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1965).
Cf. Paul VI, Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church, Christus Dominus (October 28, 1965), §6, §23.
Cf. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1974).
Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 13–27.
Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 330.
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Joseph Ratzinger, “Antwort,” in Wer ist Jesus von Nazaret—für mich? 100 zeitgenössische Antworten, ed. Heinrich Spaemann, 23–26 (Munich: Kösel, 1973).
Karl Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1976), 25.
H. Küng, Menschwerdung Gottes. Eine Einführung in Hegels theologisches Denken als Prolegomena zu einer künftigen Christologie (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1970).
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Joseph Ratzinger, “Die Stimme der Zeit-die Stimme Gottes. Michael Kardinal Faulhaber,” in ibid., Christlicher Glaube und Europa. 12 Predigten (Munich, 1981): 128f.
Cf. Albert Gelin, “La Question des ‘Relectures’ Bibliques à l’Intérieur d’une Tradition Vivante,” Sacra Pagina: Miscellanea Biblica I, Biblioteca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium XII (Gembloux: Duculot, 1958): 303–5.
Romano Guardini, Die menschliche Wirklichkeit des Herrn. Beiträge zu einer Psychologie Jesu (Mainz: Grünewald, 1999), 85.
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© 2010 Emery de Gaál
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de Gaál, E. (2010). The Biblical Basis of Christology. In: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114760_14
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