An Ecclesiological Dispute at the Turn of the Millennium

Abstract

It is Ratzinger’s claim that the universal Church (ecclesia universalis) is in its essence a mystery: it is a reality that takes precedence, both ontologically and temporally, over the individual local churches. Ratzinger describes the dispute between his thought and Walter Kasper’s in the following terms: “The thesis of the ontological and temporal priority of the universal Church to the individual churches was now treated as a question ‘not of church doctrine but of theological opinions and of the various related philosophies.’ The statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was categorized as my personal theology and tied with my ‘Platonism,’ while Kasper traced his own view back to his more Aristotelian (Thomistic) approach.”¹ But if one considers that the Church celebrates and lives the one body of Christ, the question is not one of choosing the appropriate philosophy, such as Platonism or Aristotelianism. Rather, the question becomes one of either ascribing a real, ontological valence to the Eucharist or of assuming something like a multitude of “bodies of Christ” existing within a loose federation or confederation of churches. Ratzinger summarizes this misunderstanding in his observation:

Cardinal Kasper, invoking [the Catholic New Testament exegete] J. Gnilka observes that “in Paul the local community is the focus.” But in [the Protestant exegete] Rudolf Bultmann we can read the exact opposite. According to Bultmann: “The church’s organization grew primarily out of the awareness that the community as a whole takes precedence over the individual communities. A symptom of this is that the word ekklesia (church) is used to refer, in the first instance, by no means to the individual community but to the ‘people of God.’… The notion of the priority of the church as a whole over the individual community is further seen in the equation of the ekklesia with the soma Christou (body of Christ), which embraces all believers.

This conflict between Gnilka and Bultmann shows, first of all, the relativity of exegetical judgments. But for that very reason it is especially instructive in our case, because Bultmann, who vigorously defended the thesis of the precedence of the universal church over the local church, could certainly never be accused of Platonism or of a bias in favor of bringing back Roman centralism. Perhaps it was simply because he stood outside these controversies that he was able to read and expound the texts with a more open mind.”²