By Mirko Testa
ROME, 25 JAN. 2010 (ZENIT)
Benedict XVI exhorts theologians to adopt an attitude of
listening, replacing with the virtue of humility the temptations
to consider themselves great.
This exhortation, according to Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto,
president of the Italian bishops' Commission for the Doctrine of
the Faith, Proclamation and Catechesis, is a safeguard against
the "only authentically Christian heresy."
ZENIT spoke with Archbishop Forte about a selection of Benedict
XVI's recent commentaries on theology. The archbishop notes how
the roots of Joseph Ratzinger's thinking are revealed in his
exhortations as Pope.
Part 2 of this interview, on theology as a science, will be
published Tuesday.
ZENIT: Last year, in the homily of the Mass celebrated in the
presence of members of the International Theological Commission,
the Pope explained that a true theologian is not one who
attempts to measure the mystery of God with his own
intelligence, but one who is conscious of his own limitations.
On that occasion the Pope indicated humility as the way to
arrive at truth, voicing a word of caution about expert
theologians who behave like the ancient scribes. Do you think
the Pope is referring to a marked tendency in our days?
Archbishop Forte: I believe this is an essential point that
distinguishes Christian theology from any form of gnosis. The
essential difference is that in theology everything stems from
hearing, hence, from auditus Verbi, whereas in gnosis everything
is the intellectual self-production of the individual. This is
the real reason why the only authentically Christian heresy is
gnosis: the pretension of a self-redemption of man who does not
need the intervention of the Other, of [One] on High, that is,
the intervention of God. A theology that is based, as is its
nature, on Revelation, cannot but be first of all listening,
hence humilitas: an attitude of profound willingness and
docility before God's action, who enters history in a surprising
way and at the same time confirms it in its dignity, opening it
to the novum adveniens of his promise.
It is a topic that Ratzinger, as theologian, has stressed
repeatedly, and which comes from his knowledge of Augustine, who
is the genius of the intellectus fidei lived in listening, in
the use of intelligence at the service of Franciscan-listening
that predominates in Joseph Ratzinger's theological formation,
which in his teaching as Pope reappears in his intense call to
humilitas and to auditus. I would add that this topic is very
important today in a society that has known the inebriation of
reason and, hence, the gnostic temptation in the different faces
of modern ideology, and that today, in the uneasiness of
post-modernity, if it does not open itself to listening and to
humilitas runs the risk of the great temptation of nihilism,
that is, of meaninglessness.
In other words, who will be able to save us? To this question,
one can only answer: the Other who comes to us, that is, the
living God, and this implies the humility of acceptance. Gnosis
in this post-modern society, is supplanted in its own
fundamental conviction, which is the absoluteness of the
individual and of his capacity for knowledge or production of
the true.
ZENIT: In September of 2007, on visiting the Cistercian abbey of
Heiligenkreuz, the Pope criticized a certain "theology that no
longer breathes in the realm of faith," putting the accent,
instead, on "kneeling theology," a beautiful expression coined
by Hans Urs von Balthasar. In the same way, on presenting the
figure of St. Bernard of Clairvaux during a general audience,
Benedict XVI said that without faith and prayer, reason on its
own cannot find God and theology becomes a vain intellectual
exercise. Is this a scene present in the realm of today's
theology?
Archbishop Forte: The first decisive element is that, precisely
because it is born from listening to the Word of God, theology
needs not only a radical humilitas, but also a form of loving,
hence prayerful acceptance of it. Von Balthasar insisted very
much on this aspect, maintaining that sanctity is not something
superfluous in relation to the theologian's exercise, but is an
essential condition. It is no accident that very great
theologians, especially fathers of the Church, were also saints.
Hence the need to kneel before the mystery and to listen, to
live the auditus not only with humility but with the loving and
persevering acceptance of worshipping faith which is inherent to
the identity of Christian theology.
And also in this, in Joseph Ratzinger's thought, there is not
only continuity with Augustine's and Bonaventure's line, but, on
the other hand, there is also another very important intuition
taken up by Vatican II, namely, that there is a relation between
Christian living, Christian thought and the liturgy.
The liturgy, in as much as culmen and fons, as Vatican II says,
is that from which everything stems and to which everything in
Christian existence tends, both in its living as well as in its
reflective dimension. Because of this, a theology without a
liturgical soul, that is, without the capacity to praise and
invoke God, is a vain intellectual exercise. It is another form
of that gnosis that runs the risk of contaminating man's
capacity to open himself to God. In the great Christian-Catholic
theological vision, man has been made capax Dei: but this
capacity is conditioned on one hand by humilitas and on the
other, by the capacity of invoking the gift of God and of
allowing oneself to be permeated by him in a doxological and
liturgical attitude, that is, of glorification of God, which is
no less than the willingness to let oneself be molded by his
action in our life. When all this is put into words, theology is
really born.
And here is another consideration to be made on the relation
between theology and spirituality. We have lived through a
crisis of this relationship in the period of modern theology,
that is, of that theology influenced by the opposition between
Vernunftswahrheit and Geschichtswahrheit, the truth of reason
and the truth of fact.
In the Enlightenment's conception only the truth of reason is
truth, because it presents an absoluteness and universality that
the truths of fact don't have. Christianity, on the contrary, is
based on a truth of fact, which is God's historical revelation.
Then it seemed to a certain theology of an enlightened-liberal
hue that pure theological exercises could not be reconciled with
a form of spirituality, of spiritual living, left rather to
devotion.
This abyss between theology and spirituality has caused great
harm in the era of modern theology: This has been seen
especially in liberal theology and in some forms of Catholic
modernism, but it continues to cause harm there where, for
example, in the 60s and 70s some forms of Christian theology
allowed themselves to be conditioned by modern ideology,
including revolutionary [currents]. Today we feel, instead, that
we must return to the original founding statute of theological
endeavor, which is to take to thought the experience of the
Mystery proclaimed and, therefore, heard and celebrated in the
liturgy, lived and witnessed in faith and charity.
Therefore, theology is not only docta fides, that is, a fides
quaerens intellectum, but also docta caritas, that is, to take
the word to the living of love, the gift of the love of God
which is given us in the liturgy and in the grace of the
sacraments, but which must then be witnessed in living, in
gestures of the silent eloquence of charity. Thus theology and
spirituality rediscover the fundamental nexus that constitutes
them reciprocally as Christian theology and spirituality. A
theology without spirituality runs the risk of being empty, a
spirituality without theology runs the risk of being blind,
paraphrasing Kant's well-known saying on intuitions and
concepts.
Part 2
Interview With Archbishop Bruno Forte
By Mirko Testa
ROME, 26 JAN. 2010 (ZENIT)
The magisterium of the Church is not repressive, but
progressive. Far from restricting research, it keeps it
from regressing and falling into old errors.
This explanation was given by Archbishop Bruno Forte of
Chieti-Vasto, president of the Italian bishops'
Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith, Proclamation
and Catechesis.
ZENIT spoke with Archbishop Forte about a selection of
Benedict XVI's recent commentaries on theology. Here,
the archbishop explains how theology can be regarded as
a science and why the role of the magisterium is so
important.
Part 1 of this interview, on the roots of Joseph
Ratzinger's theology, was published Monday.
Q: The Holy See's adherence to the "Bologna Process" has
led to a global re-ordering of theological formation in
Italy, geared to revising the existing curriculum
standards in light of those required [by the accord]. In
your opinion, does not the fact of having to conform to
the precise characteristics of "scientific nature," lead
the teaching of this discipline to put aside a
conception that presupposes faith in theological
research?
Archbishop Forte: This is an old question which always
returns anew in the history of theology. I would like to
give two answers: one of a historical character and one
of a current character, but also of methodological hue.
The first is the one St. Thomas gave to the same
question that you pose, when he begins the Summa
Teologica with an unthinkable audacity at the time of
the fathers of the Church. Thomas asks himself: utrum
praeter philosophicas disciplinas aliam doctrinam haberi?
That is, he asks not if the philosophical disciplines
are legitimate but if theology is legitimate, with an
absolutely modern approach that seems to claim the
autonomy of reason. His answer is that the rationality
required by scientific disciplines is above all in the
scire per causas, in knowing through the connections
between premises and deductions. However, this scire per
causas, can be exercised in two ways: beginning from the
first internal principles of science, the so-called
subalternating sciences (he speaks, for example, of
mathematics, which has its most intrinsic principles
with which one begins and which cannot be demonstrated
— in this, Thomas anticipates Goedel
— and of which the consequences are deduced); on
the other hand, however, are the subalternate sciences,
which use the principles that the other sciences offer
them. To this end, Thomas gives as an intriguing example
that of music, which depends on mathematics, precisely
because of its harmonies and its relations of
proportion.
Similarly
—Thomas says
— theology depends on scientia Dei et beatorum,
that is, on Revelation. In other words, the source of
theological knowledge by its nature is lumen fidei, but
in regard to the argumentation it has the same
epistemological statute of the other sciences, hence it
has the full dignity of universitas scientiarum.
How will we respond today to the developments of
theology, but also of modern epistemology? I would
answer by referring to the great 20th century
philosophical and theological conquest, which is the
powerful rediscovery of hermeneutics, that is, of the
science of interpretation. When many years ago, as dean
of the faculty of theology in Naples, I invited Hans
Georg Gadamer, the father of contemporary hermeneutics,
author of "Truth and Method," to a quaestio
quodlibetalis. A first year [student] asked him this
question: "What is hermeneutics?" To which Gadamer,
without being ruffled, said, after a moment of
reflection: "Hermeneutics means that when you and I
speak we make an effort to reach the vital world that is
behind the other's words, and from which they proceed."
Therefore, epistemology illumined by hermeneutics means
not only to understand what is immediately perceptible,
the visible, the phenomenalistic, the rational, but to
also understand, or at least to try to reach, those
vital worlds from which these expressions stem. In this
context, one discovers that science is not only that of
phenomena, but that there is an ensemble of sciences,
which are the sciences of the spirit, which make an
effort to reach what is not said, what cannot be said,
what cannot be wholly divided into parts, but which is
the vital world in which human processes, historical
processes, etc. are situated. And there is a further
level that points to that experience of the mystery of
life and of the world and that all of us have and which
cannot be referred to a mere linguistic or rational
formula, that is, an excess of the Mystery that
surrounds the world, that surrounds the life of each one
of us and that we continually perceive with surprise,
with wonder, which we can reflect in words only up to a
certain point.
However, a science that takes wonder seriously in face
of this Mystery, the possibility that the latter be said
without betraying oneself, that is, the possibility of
Revelation, and that one make it the subject of one's
thought, becomes an absolutely precious science. In a
similar hermeneutical dimension, interpretative of
reality
— which does not stop at the immediate but always
seeks the ultimate, the profound connections
— it seems to me that theology is presented with
full dignity as a science of which man is in need to
live and to die, as he needs God and the meaning of life
to live and to die.
Q: In 1986, intervening in Brescia in a meeting
organized by the Italian editorial board of Communio
magazine, Ratzinger affirmed that in the widespread
awareness of Catholic theology the authority of the
Church often appears as something foreign to science, as
something that limits, when it doesn't mortify,
research. In your opinion, especially after what has
happened with liberation theology, is this perception
still present?
Archbishop Forte: The task of the magisterium in the
Church is not a regressive task, but almost a task of
exploration. In a famous essay of 1953, which made
history in the theological debate, Karl Rahner,
wondering about the Council of Chalcedon and about the
dogmatic definition of Christ as a divine person with
two natures, human and divine
— which continues to be binding for every
Christian, regardless of his confessional membership
— asked himself: "Chalkedon
— Ende oder Anfang?" (Chalcedon, an end or a
beginning?). His answer was very clear: Dogma is not an
end, it does not stop thought, it doesn't paralyze it,
but establishes milestones in regard to which there is
no going back, because to want to go back would mean to
fall on one hand into forms of Arianism, that is, into
an only human and worldly vision of Christ, who would
not be the mediator of the Covenant and Savior, and on
the other into a form of modalism, that is, a God who
appears among men but who has not truly assumed our
mortal flesh, who has not truly committed himself to the
human.
Karl Rahner rightly said that Chalcedon's dogmatic
definition in this connection is a bulwark against
regression, not against progress. Hilary of Poitiers, in
turn, intuited a most beautiful dimension of this
exercise of magisterial discernment of the Church. He
said: Dogma is defined by an exigency of charity, to
help to not lose the road, to not lose the respectful
way that God has indicated to us. Also here, the vision
was clearly not defensive or repressive but prospective.
And, precisely the case of liberation theology that you
mentioned, seems to me an eloquent example, because the
fundamental interventions in this regard by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were two: one
eminently critical, which illumined the limits often
connected with the ideological dependence of this
theology; the other, which instead brought to light its
good ideas, the positive contributions above all in face
of a theology inspired in the primacy of charity and of
service.
I believe that with this action the magisterium did
exactly what Hilary of Poitiers said, and which much
more recently Karl Rahner affirmed, that is, not only a
repressive action to extinguish life, but of protection
and promotion of that authentic life that only the truth
of God is able to release in us. I would summarize with
verse 8:32 of John, which John Paul II liked to repeat
and which he also repeated to us in the International
Theological Commission, when working on the document
"Memory and Reconciliation" to support the petition for
forgiveness for the faults of the Church: "The truth
will make you free."
Therefore, the more the cause of truth is served, the
more the magisterium is placed at the service of the
witness of truth, the more the latter fosters liberty,
the genuine liberty that gives meaning, fullness, life
and salvation to man's heart.
[Translation of the Italian original by ZENIT]