Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI

John C. Cavadini, John C. Cavadini

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780268077136
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Benedict XVI's writing as priest-professor, bishop, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and now pope has shaped Catholic theological thought in the twentieth century. In Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, a multidisciplinary group of scholars treat the full scope of Benedict's theological oeuvre, including the Augustinian context of his thought; his ecclesiology; his theologically grounded approach to biblical exegesis and Christology; his unfolding of a theology of history and culture; his liturgical and sacramental theology; his theological analysis of political and economic developments; his use of the natural law in ethics and conscience; his commitment to a form of interreligious dialogue from a place of particularity; and his function as a public, catechetical theologian.

Chapter One

BENEDICT THE AUGUSTINIAN

CYRIL O’REGAN

The title of this essay expresses the claim that the theology of Benedict XVI is constitutively Augustinian, that is, that “Augustinianism” is the proper description of Benedict’s oeuvre in whole and in part. And although the point should be obvious, I will make it anyway: this is to deny that Benedict’s theology is best described as Thomistic, transcendental, or political; even if should we look carefully we would find some measure of all three in the almost sixty-year writing career of the current pope. To avoid vacuity, criteria of ascription have to be adduced and satisfied. Ruled out from the beginning is deploying “Augustinian” as a trope for a dialectical or negative view with regard to the saeculum. This view not only suffers from an indeterminacy; it also dismally fails to capture either Augustine’s or Benedict’s complex and highly nuanced negotiation with culture. Criteria of ascription would minimally involve the following: (i) Benedict demonstrates real familiarity with and admiration of the classic texts of Augustine; (ii) correlatively, there is significant evidence in Benedict of the adoption of an Augustinian theological style; (iii) in his work Benedict illustrates significant overlap in terms of topic focus and self-consciously articulates substantive theological positions which are Augustinian in kind; and (iv) the operation of the principle of historical analogy, that is, Benedict’s sense that he is living in a time of crisis and senescence similar to that of Augustine, in which not only is there massive contestation of Christianity’s truths, but Christianity is determined to be obsolete. I speak to all four of these elements here, even if a considerable portion of my efforts go into exploring the overlap in topic focus and Benedict’s repetition of substantive Augustinian positions. This task is executed in the second and by far the longest section of the essay. I cover five theological topics that are important to both thinkers and indicate how, in each case, Benedict takes an Augustinian stance: (a) eschatology, (b) the relation of faith and reason and the dire consequences of separation, (c) biblical interpretation, (d) the relation of faith and culture, and (e) prayer and liturgy as indelible features of Christian faith. It is with the first two points that I begin. Evidence needs to be produced that throughout his career Benedict not only turns again and again to Augustine as his theological model, but also that in Benedict’s self-understanding the basic figuration of his theology is Augustinian. The fourth and last of these elements, that is, Benedict’s perception of the analogy between his situation and that of Augustine, functions as something of a free radical. Without giving it freestanding treatment, I recur to the point from time to time throughout the essay and conclude with a discussion of what I think is their shared apocalyptic sensibility, which both consider to be inscribed in the very nature of Christianity.

ADMIRING, FIGURING, AND REPEATING A THEOLOGICAL STYLE

It is Heidegger who is fond of quoting the Hölderlinian line, “as you started so you will remain,” with a view less to underscoring a thinker’s integrity than pointing to the phenomenon of thought circling back to a beginning and deepening it.1 This could well describe Benedict’s engagement with Augustine over the years, from his dissertation on Augustine’s City of God in the 1950s to his quite recent reflections on Augustine given under the auspices of a kind of catechetical retrieval of the Church fathers in general.2 These texts, one written as a theological tyro, the other as pope, offer, at once, Benedict’s most express judgments on Augustine and provide boundaries that roughly mark beginnings and ends. “Roughly” needs to be underscored. Benedict’s love of Augustine may well have preceded his dissertation. More important, it is obvious that the loyalty to the thought of Augustine is ongoing and expresses itself in Benedict’s encyclicals, especially in Deus Caritas Est (2005) and Spe Salvi (2007), and also in his recent two-volume Jesus of Nazareth (2007, 2011).3 I will make substantive comments on these texts in due course, but for the moment I wish to say a little more about what the two bookends tell us about Benedict’s perception of what is enduringly valid in the thought of Saint Augustine. In his dissertation on the City of God, Benedict underscored and validated Augustine’s judgment of the importance of history as the context in which the Church finds itself between a determinate past and an indefinite future, and as it is forced to deal with a complex and ambiguous world that proposes different goods and holds out different incentives for these goods. As such, the context cannot fail to be dramatic. Although it is less obvious, it is the case nevertheless that in validating Augustine’s theology of history Benedict is also, to a considerable extent, validating theology in history; more specifically, he is validating theology as an intervention in disclosing the times, attending to the larger patterns of movement in history, and articulating the ways salvation relates negatively and positively to the rush of change as well as to imminent crisis and the prospect of chaos. It would be true, although a bit trivial, to say that here Benedict introduces the topic of eschatology, which will never leave him, which he critically addresses in his Habilitation on Bonaventure (1957), which finds classic expression in his enduring Eschatology (1971), and which gets powerfully expressed as recently as Spe Salvi, which he insists is “largely indebted to Augustine and his encounter with God.”4 It would probably be more accurate to say that Benedict discovers in Augustine, and thereafter never forgets, that theology is eschatologically indexed as a matter of necessity since, as historical beings, we hurdle toward a future that either is empty or is the future of God, a future that evacuates the very meaning of history or, in judgment, confirms its ineluctable gravity and bivalence.

What I am pragmatically taking to be the other bookend of Benedict’s circling from and back to Augustine consists of the reflections on Augustine that make their way into Benedict’s popular book Church Fathers. The importance of Augustine is already indicated in the number of reflections devoted to him. He gets five; no other patristic figure gets more than two. The reason Augustine is treated thus is not because he is especially venerable, or because of his huge literary production, or because of his overwhelming theological intelligence. All this can be granted. But what is truly significant about Augustine is that he is not so much past as present: Augustine is “a man of today, a friend, a contemporary who speaks to me.”5 What comes through Augustine’s writings is the “everlasting timeliness of his faith.”6 What mattered most for Augustine also matters most for Benedict: while this faith is appropriated by Augustine through conversion, as it needs to be appropriated by all of us, this faith, as a gift, belongs proximally to the Church and ultimately to Christ. Benedict makes it a point to avoid unnecessarily inflating Augustine’s own faith, as if it were special in kind over and beyond the fact that faith is personal and thus unique. Benedict is neither being deliberately democratic nor showing anxiety with regard to how specialness is likely to play in popular Catholic piety or in high culture contexts inclined to appreciate and laud religious talent. His sole purpose is to make sure that the ground on which Augustine stands, and from which he preaches, prays, ministers, and writes, is the same ground of every Christian.7 Augustine exemplifies, rather than constitutes an exception to, the rule that there is nothing superior to simple faith. The faith of the theologian does not rise higher than simple faith but rather attends and tends to it. This provides the horizon of interpretation for Augustine’s famous formula to which Benedict commits himself without reservation: credo ut intelligas. All genuine theology, no matter how conspicuous the level of intellect, and no matter how salient the mastery of intellectual disciplines, is but faith seeking understanding. And if this seeking of understanding is for the individual inquirer, it is even more for the Church. It is easy for Benedict to interpret the Confessions in this way, and it is not difficult to follow suit with regard to the very sophisticated City of God, which unsurprisingly Benedict believes is Augustine’s greatest book, and also with regard to On Christian Doctrine, the classical text of both biblical hermeneutics and Christian cultural engagement.8

Benedict’s point is not simply formal: he means to suggest that if theology can go under the banner of faith seeking understanding, then theology is irreducibly pastoral. The pastoral designation is intended to cover all of Augustine’s work and admits of no exception. Nonetheless, there is an interesting rhetorical moment in Benedict’s fourth conference on Augustine, when he entertains the prospect that De Trinitate, with its conceptual intricacies and its articulation of analogies, might be deemed intellectualist and speculative rather than pastoral. Without conceding the point, Benedict speaks approvingly of how Augustine was prepared to interrupt his reflection on the Trinity in favor of more pastorally useful instruction and writing.9 I will explore Benedict’s telling distinction between pastoral and nonpastoral theology in due course, and comment on what is at stake for him.10 Here, however, I would like to underscore how Benedict refuses to introduce a hierarchy between Augustine’s treatises and catechesis, on the one hand, and his biblical commentary, on the other. Benedict mentions with approval Augustine’s de Catechizandis Rudibus, and this courtesy could be extended to the Enchiridion, which provides a digest of Christian faith.11 And Benedict does not fail to praise Enarrationes in Psalmos, which is not only Augustine’s longest biblical commentary but also a text about prayer, its necessity, possibility, and actuality, which is constitutive of the Church itself.12

These reflections, both on the texts of Augustine and on Augustine’s figuration, throw light back on the books and essays produced in the interregnum between what I am referring to as bookends. It suggests a reason as to why Benedict would move from the more Wissenschaft-oriented Tübingen to the more Church-oriented Regensburg. It gives a clue as to why Benedict would be directly involved in the production of the Catholic catechism. It helps to explain Benedict’s preference for laying bare in a nontechnical way the deposit of faith, either in whole, in, for example, Introduction to Christianity (1968),13 or in part, whether the theological topic to be presented is God, last things, creation, liturgy, or the Christ of Christian faith.14 Without any animus toward academic theology, and adamant about the positive relation between reason and faith, Benedict is persuaded that theology goes astray if it becomes reductively apologetic and reduces itself to being the handmaid of other disciplines, whether sociology, political theory, or philosophy. Thus Benedict’s recurring criticisms of the hegemony of the historical-critical method in biblical interpretation and his argument for the continuing validity of the canonic modality of exegesis.15 Benedict also makes it evident that he has heard the call of another famous modern Augustinian, Henri de Lubac, who, with his equally famous protégé Hans Urs von Balthasar, advised a “kneeling theology.” Theology and prayer go hand in hand, with theology arising from prayer and prayer being a form of theology. Prayer is the dialogue between the Christian and God, made possible by the grace spoken in the Word. Theology either reflects this dialogue or in its failure risks emptiness and distortion. And all prayer is theology insofar as it has the Word as its subject and object.

Together with Augustine’s agonistic view of history and his articulation of its eschatological horizon and his sense that theology should speak from and to the Church, there is a third trait in Augustine’s theological figuration that gets repeated in Benedict. This trait is that of the controversialist who feels called ...