Abstract
All philosophical inquiries into the origin and purpose of history can be traced back to prephilosophical interpretations of reality, insofar as there is contained in the philosophical query something that is not generated by philosophy on its own, but is, nevertheless, original to that discipline. There exists something like an inchoate revelation of God in the primordial creative forces that predates God’s explicit self-disclosure in scripture and Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is experienced as “the end of history,” inasmuch as history has been confronted with its terminal point. History is unveiled as a single Theo-human drama, as God’s offer to humanity of dialogue with him. All secularized, often ideology-driven, attempts to find meaning without God—be they religious or areligious—are unmasked as sublimated efforts to redirect human hope toward an inner-worldly perfection. Giordano Bruno’s (1545–1600) humanist attempt to divinize the cosmos was later reinforced by Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770–1831). Hegel tried to overcome dualism by reducing God to an entity within the world process. To the believer, in contrast, in the God-man Jesus Christ the meaning of history is definitively revealed. “The beginning and end of this new history is the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, who is recognized as the last man (the second Adam), that is, as the long-awaited manifestation of what is truly human and the definitive revelation to man of his hidden nature; for this very reason, it is oriented toward the whole human race and presumes the abrogation of all partial histories, whose partial salvation is looked upon as essentially an absence of salvation.”1
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Notes
Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), 155.
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Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994).
Joseph Ratzinger, “Europe in the Crisis of Cultures,” Communio 32 (2005), 345–56.
Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? Lectures Delivered at the University of Berlin during the Winter Term 1899–1900 (London: SPCK, 1901).
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Jürgen Moltmann, Das Kommen Cottes. Christliche Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Kaiser, 1995), 83.
Jürgen Moltmann, Der Weg Jesu Christi. Christologie in messianischen Dimensionen. (Munich: Kaiser, 1989), 285.
Gisbert Greshake, Auferstehung der Toten. Ein Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen theologischen Diskussion über die Zukunft der Geschichte (Essen: Ludgerus, 1969), 385. Cf. ibid., “Auferstehung im Tod. Ein ‘parteiischer’ Rückblick auf eine theologische Diskussion.” Theologie und Philosophie 73 (1998): 538–57.
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For an informative review of his eschatology, see Gerhard Nachtwei, Dialogische Unsterblichkeit. Eine Untersuchung zu Joseph Ratzingers Eschatologie und Theologie (Leipzig: St. Benno, 1986).
Ibid., 152–54. Along with Origen in his seventh Homily on Leviticus, Ratzinger was stimulated by Henri de Lubac, Glauben aus der Liebe (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1970), 368–73.
Oscar Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit, 3rd ed. (Zurich: Mohr, 1962). Ratzinger, Eschatology, 51–55.
Ratzinger, “Auferstehung des Fleisches,” Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. II, 3rd ed. (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1995), 1049ff. Ratzinger, Introduction, 292.
Joseph Ratzinger, “Jenseits des Todes,” Communio 1 (1972): 231–44, at 234.
Joseph Ratzinger, “Eschatologie und Utopie,” Communio 6 (1977): 97–110, at 98.
Joseph Ratzinger, Dogma und Verkündigung (Munich: Wewel, 1977), 297–310.
Joseph Ratzinger, “Zwischen Tod und Auferstehung,” Communio 9 (1980): 209–23, at 218.
Alexander Kissler, “Am Scheideweg, Benedikt XVI. und das Christentum des 21. Jahrhunderts,” Communio 35 (2006): 622–36.
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Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? Cf. Karl-Heinz Neufeld, Adolf Harnacks Konflikt mit der Kirche: Weg-Stationen zum ‘Wesen des Christentums,’ Innsbrucker theologische Studien 4 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1979).
Leo Baeck, The Essence of Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1961).
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© 2010 Emery de Gaál
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de Gaál, E. (2010). Jesus Christ, the Definer and Personification of the Eschaton. In: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114760_26
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