The theologian Fr Mauro Gagliardi has published a book presenting and evaluating overall Joseph Ratzinger’s thought regarding a core of fundamental theological themes: “Revelation, hermeneutics and doctrinal development in Joseph Ratzinger”, published by the Roman Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome 2023. This is an important work that does not focus on a particular aspect of Ratzinger’s theological legacy, but concerns his overall approach to faith, theology and dogma. The exposition follows the chronological development of Ratzinger’s publications on the considered topics, starting from the qualification thesis dedicated to the theology of Revelation in Saint Bonaventure, moving on to the writings of his maturity, to the publications of the “episcopal” period in Munich and to the Congregation for Doctrine of the faith, to finally arrive at the interpretations on hermeneutics which also touch on the period of the pontificate, with some mention of Jesus of Nazareth and a reference in the note to the speech of December 2005 to the Roman Curia on the hermeneutics of the Council, a topic in which however our Author does not enter. The book is dedicated to the “Dear memory of Benedict XVI”, demonstrating the great esteem towards him, however the exposition is done with great rigor and here and there some respectful critical observations can also be noted. This is an important work to fully understand the broad theological lines of the person who would later become Pope Benedict.
According to Gagliardi, Ratzinger, since the years of the Council, has shown himself influenced by personalism – even if reread in the light of Saint Augustine – and by attention to history, in a critical key compared to the neo-Thomism of the time, without however neglecting metaphysics (page 29), as his other travel companions did. This guides him to reconsider the Tridentine thesis of the two sources of Revelation, Scripture and Tradition, and to think of Revelation as the only source from which “both streams of Scripture and Tradition flow” (p. 33). The first would represent the ontological dimension and the second the epistemological dimension of Revelation. This leads him to contrast the teaching of Pius X who said, through the Holy Office’s decree Lamentabili (1907), that the Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Tradition, according to Ratzinger, does not involve the oral transmission of revealed knowledge, which is not in the Bible – as the thesis of the two sources believes -, because in this case the Christian faith would be tinged with Gnosticism characteristic of heretical traditions. Tradition is understood not as a “mechanical transmission” but as a “dynamic process”, it is not an external source with respect to Scripture, but is in the Sacred Scripture itself on the basis of the power of interpretation transmitted to the Church (p. 37). Here hermeneutics emerges, whereby Scripture refers to what happened once in History and is always valid (ontological aspect), while Tradition embodies the living present of faith (epistemological aspect). In this way the Revelation is not only of the past but also of the future.
This vision assigns an essential role to hermeneutics. Revelation as it was understood by Dei Filius of Vatican I is, according to Ratizinger, too intellectual and doctrinal as it understands Revelation as the transmission of news and notions. Faith is superior to Scripture and Tradition consists precisely in this, which is “always interpretation” (p. 41). Revelation is superior to revealed truths because it is centered on the event of Jesus and involves a “fundamental hermeneutic decision” whereby “the process of understanding is not clearly distinguishable from what is understood” (p. 44). Can’t we fall into “arbitrary creativity” in this way? asks Gagliardi, and replies that according to Ratzinger no, it cannot, because the conceptual aspect is not denied, but is only considered not isolated with respect to the interpretation of the Apostolic Creed starting from faith.
At this point the problem of the so-called “evolution” of dogmas opens up. Given the centrality of hermeneutics, Ratzinger says that “dogma is the ecclesial form of hermeneutics of the Holy Scripture” (p. 51) and, given his dynamic vision of Tradition, he speaks of historicity of dogma. Tradition, as we have seen, is not a separate source, but is the true hermeneutics of Scripture and for this reason it cannot be thought that it ended with the death of the last apostle (p. 53). Experience is a fundamental part of Revelation because Tradition is the living explanation in the present of the message conveyed by Scripture and Scripture can only be Revelation in the experience of faith” (p. 61). Contrasting himself with a purely intellectual vision of faith, Ratzinger does not, however, intend to exalt experience beyond measure, as Karl Rahner would have done who considered every act of existential faith as such, and rejects the doctrine of “anonymous Christianity”. Ratzinger, understanding theology as a “hermeneutic science”, holds firm both metaphysics against liberal theology and experience, which however should not be understood in a descriptive sense, as the separation in liberal theology between Kerygma and dogma would require (p. 66). The two dimensions of the object and the subject typical of theology as hermeneutics live together in the Church: “…the new, great subject, in which past and present, subject and object meet” (p.70). As stated in the speech to the Bernardins on September 12, 2008, “Scripture needs interpretation, and it needs the community in which it was formed and in which it is lived. In it it has its unity and in it the meaning that holds everything together is revealed” (p. 88).
According to Ratzinger, the expression “historicity of dogma”, a concept that arises from his idea that Tradition is interpretation, does not mean that constant interpretation can change the dogmatic contents of the Apostolic Creed, nor that the words of Scripture can be changed. He means that there must be an ever renewed interpretation of Scripture. Faith is the text and theology is the interpretation (p. 74). This means “saying again what the Bible says” (p. 83). It is not a question of “modernizing” by giving primacy to the ideas that are currently fashionable.
Ratzinger talks about interpretation and hermeneutics especially in the field of biblical exegesis. In this context he is also forced to address the philosophical aspect of hermeneutics. For example, he reproaches the critical historical method for having assumed an inadequate philosophical context, such as that of the Enlightenment, and the difficulties that faith encounters when faced with this method derive precisely from this. Here the problem arises of Ratzinger’s relationship with contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, the acquisitions of which, he says, cannot be overlooked (p. 109). Contemporary hermeneutics brings the text out in the context. Ratzinger seems to say the same when he states that “Scripture is interpreted by Tradition and the subject of Tradition is the Church” (p. 110), and that the faith of the Church is the understanding absolutely necessary to truly enter into the text, only in the personal relationship with Jesus the believer can know the Jesus “written in the texts of two thousand years ago” (p. 92). He also states that “explanation as a process of understanding is in fact not clearly distinguishable from what is understood” (p. 124). Contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, however, replaces metaphysics and, thus, ceases to be knowledge to be only interpretation. The subject is closed in the interpretation because in the interpreted there is also himself who interprets. The point is very important. The tradition of metaphysical realism and Thomism would not have placed itself on this path, a path that Ratzinger follows trying to guarantee a healthy balance between metaphysics and history, and also progressively gets closer to Saint Thomas, as some have noted, but which does not always is completely clarified. The reflections of this problem were noted in some critical evaluations that were given of the hermeneutics of the reform in continuity by Benedict XVI expressed in the speech to the Roman Curia in December 2005. Some commentators have noted that here we are talking about “the reform in the continuity of ‘Church as single subject’, while there is no mention of the continuity of the doctrinal contents. It is clear the dependence of this approach on the general framework of biblical hermeneutics according to Ratzinger: there is no Scripture without Tradition and, without the Church, the contents are such only within the Church-subject. According to him, the notion of Tradition as communication of contents is not excluded but is considered secondary (p. 115) because the subject who receives the revelation in the faith is itself part of the concept of Revelation, given that the text is always contained in a context: we need a fixed doctrine but also an existential dimension of faith. For him, Revelation has primacy over the depositum fidei (p. 118). We thus return to young Ratzinger’s opposition to the doctrine of the two sources of Revelation, when he denied that oral Tradition had its own material contents and claimed that “there are no single truths which as such, starting from the apostles, would have been transmitted by the Church ” (p. 121), with arguments that Mauro Gagliardi considers “not stringent” (p. 122). The topic also has an impact on the relationship between theology and the magisterium: assuming that theology is interpretation, would the magisterium too carry out a hermeneutic task? And would this hermeneutic task be Revelation?
Stefano Fontana
